LinuxFest Northwest 2019: Linux Timestamps: Where have all the files gone, long-time passing?
Channel: linuxfestnorthwest
Date: 2019-04-30

Presented by Yad 

Summary

    1 A presentation on the history, current state, and vision for a better future of filesystems for the non-technical user.
    2 How people loose metadata and how they preserve it.
    3 How the GNU/Linux community may improve the situation.
    4 Room for discussion of personal experience with these topics, and sharing of ideas for making life easier.

Past

    1 Proprietary filesystems.
    2 Early attempts at metadata storage.
    3 Storage media.
    4 Filesystems
        4.1 FAT16/32/EX
        4.2 HFS
        4.3 Ext2/3
        4.4 Ext4
        4.5 ZFS
        4.6 ReiserFS
        4.7 NTFS
        4.8 HFS+
        4.9 database filesystems
            BTRFS

Present

    1 Fixed timestamps
        1.1 Date Created
        1.2 Date Copied
            Date Downloaded
        1.3 Date Modified
        1.4 Date Accessed
    2 Fixed attributes
        2.1 FAT
            read-only
            archive
            hidden
        2.2 NTFS
            compressed
            encrypted
            indexing
        2.3 HFS+
            color
            label
        2.4 Ext2/3/4/ReiserFS
            executable
            hidden via .
    3 resource forks
        3.1 NTFS
            from remote source
        3.2 HFS+
            remote URL
            transfer application
    4 sidecar files
        4.1 Windows
            desktop.ini
            recognizing custom icon use
        4.2 Mac OS
            .DS_Store
    5 behavior of file operations
        5.1 create
            Ext4
        5.2 copy
            within filesystem
            between volumes
        5.3 move
            within filesystem
            between volumes
    6 Viewing file metadata
        6.1 Windows
            Windows Explorer
            robocopy
            Hashcheck Shell Extension
            WinMerge
        6.2 Mac OS
            Finder
            Terminal
        6.3 Linux
            find . -maxdepth 1 -printf
        6.4 Haiku
    7 data corruption
        7.1 sources of entropy
        7.2 accuracy preservation
            during copy operations
        7.3 visual-redundancy mitigation

Future

    1 Database filesystems.
    2 Content versioning for the rest of us.
    3 Eliminating visible duplication.
    4 File Types
        4.1 .mm
        4.2 .db
    5 Applications
        5.1 Freemind
            per-node attributes
                date created
                date modified
        5.2 Freeplane
            node links
            custom-attribute tables
            reminder date
        5.3 Tufts VUE
            links independent of nodes
            multiple inheritance
        5.4 TreeSheets
    6 Leveraging file names
    7 Sidecar files
    8 Leveraging resource forks

Discussion

1 Identifying low-hanging fruit
2 Mid-range improvements
3 Long-term goals