SquashFS

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SquashFS
Developer Phillip Lougher, Robert Lougher
Introduced 2009 (Linux 2.6.29)
Limits
Max file size 16 EiB
Max volume size 16 EiB
Features
Transparent compression gzip
Supported operating systems Linux

Squashfs (.sfs) is a compressed read-only file system for Linux. Squashfs compresses files, inodes and directories, and supports block sizes up to 1024 MB for greater compression. Squashfs is also free software (licensed under the GPL) for accessing Squashfs filesystems.

Squashfs is intended for general read-only file system use and in constrained block device/memory systems (e.g. embedded systems) where low overhead is needed. The standard version of Squashfs uses gzip compression, although there is also a project that brings LZMA compression to SquashFS [1].

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[edit] Uses

Squashfs is used by the Live CD versions of Debian, Finnix, Gentoo Linux, GParted, Ubuntu, Fedora and gNewSense and on embedded distributions such as the OpenWRT and DD-WRT router firmware. It is often combined with an union mount filesystem, such as UnionFS or aufs, to provide a read-write environment for live Linux distributions. This takes advantage of both the SquashFS's high speed compression abilities with the ability to alter the distribution while running it from a live CD. Distributions such as Slax, Debian Live, Mandriva One and Puppy Linux use this combination.

The on-disk format of SquashFS has stabilized enough that it has been merged into the 2.6.29 version of the Linux kernel.[2]

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