Linux – Filesystem to share disks between Linux and FreeBSD

filesystemsfreebsdlinux

I have recently decided to install FreeBSD on my desktop but I still have several computers running GNU/Linux and I would like to share disk partitions between the two OSs, in particular:

  • The computer using FreeBSD will also have a GNU/Linux distribution installed and I would like to have a shared partition that can be read / written by both FreeBSD and GNU/Linux.
  • I would like to use external hard-disk drives and USB-sticks from both operating systems.

By reading various documentation and online forums, I understood that ext2 is the only solution right now: ufs write-support in Linux is still experimental, FreeBSD has limited support for ext3, and supports ext4 and ReiserFS read-only. Did I miss something, i.e. are there other viable filesystems?

Best Answer

You can use ext2. Support for ext2 has existed in FreeBSD for a while and can probably be considered stable. Of course it is native in GNU/Linux as you know.

You could also use ext3 but without journal and extended attributes (use mount options in Linux /etc/fstab), which would increase some limits.

This is probably much better than using a fs which is not native on any of the two systems, like NTFS and the like.

Source: https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/filesystems-linux.html

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