Squashfs

Squashfs is a cool project that gives you a compressed read-only filesystem for Linux. Basically, it’s super handy for those times when you want to keep things tidy and organized. It's great for general use where you just need to read files, or even when you're archiving stuff like using a .tar.gz file. Plus, it really shines in systems with limited space and memory—like embedded systems—where keeping things lightweight is key.

Stability Across Architectures

The good news? This filesystem is stable and has been put through its paces on different architectures like PowerPC, i586, Sparc, and ARM. So whether you're running an older system or something more recent, Squashfs has got you covered!

Key Features of Squashfs

Here are some standout features:

• Data, inodes, and directories are all compressed.


• It keeps track of full UID/GIDs (32 bits) and file creation time.


• You can work with files up to 2^32 bytes! Filesystems can also reach that size.


• The inode and directory data are super compacted and packed on byte boundaries. Each compressed inode averages around 8 bytes long!


• You can use block sizes up to 64K (with the default being 64K). Going with this larger block size helps get better compression than the usual 4K block size.


• If there are duplicate files, Squashfs will spot them and get rid of them!


• It supports both big-endian and little-endian architectures. The mksquashfs program can create filesystems for different endian architectures too—handy for embedded systems!

What’s New in This Release?

This latest release packs in tons of improvements! You’ll see enhancements to the filesystem itself (think bigger blocks and sparse files), plus upgrades to tools like Mksquashfs and Unsquashfs. They now support wildcard pattern matching in exclude/extract files. Pretty neat right? There are also other improvements along with bug fixes to make everything run smoother.

If you're interested in checking out more about Squashfs or even downloading it here, head over to Softpas for all the details!