Re: OFF TOPIC: OS/400 V4Rx command ref

As I understand it:

QSYS: Native file system.  Can hold any number of libraries.  Libraries 
are basically sub-directories.  Libraries cannot contain another library 
(i.e. not a heirarchal file system).  Libraries contain any number of 
objects.  Objects can be database files, exectables, source files, etc.  
Files can contain any number of members.  Members are are like books in 
an encyclopedia - they all belong to the same file (encyclopedia) but may 
contain different information.  All members in a file are of the same 
type (i.e. database members, source members).  I personally really don't 
like this filesystem.  Since it is not heirarchal you can't group 
different branches (stable, development) of a project together.  It has a 
plus that you can add new software packages by just adding a new library, 
but then you have to add that library to everyone's library list (search 
path).

QDLS: DOS type filesystem.  It is the PC DOCUMENT and PC FOLDER 
filesystem.  It is basically too much of a pain to even mess with.  If 
you have IFS (integrated file system) I wouldn't bother with QDLS.

IFS: Intergrated File System.  This supports MS-Windows long names and 
UNIX filesystems.  it includes a /etc and /home and can be exported with 
NFS.  It is also what you see when you use the network neighborhood with 
client access.  Fairly versatile but *slow*.  Our P200 linux box with 32M 
ram running samba 2.0 runs circles around our AS/400 V4R1 with 96 M ram 
and some speedy CPU (I don't remember what).  IBM means to use the AS/400 
for file serving to PCs but it doesn't keep up with samba and linux (or 
whatever your favorite decent UNIX os is).

On Fri, 3 Dec 1999 stevefx@us.ibm.com wrote:

> I'm no expert but here's a quick overview on how I see the OS/400 file
> system. NOTE: This is all my own information, nothing official from IBM.
> I'm just a dork who works on a LPP.
> 
> The normal library file system is commonly referred to as a single-level
> store. You can basically think of it as a file system which only allows
> directories, but no subdirectories. Someone once told me that part of the
> design was supposed to make it easy so that you never need to know where
> the data is physically stored, whether on disk or in memory...I'm sure it
> gets much more technical than this ;0). There is also a "magic" root
> library, QSYS, which all the others are stored within. I suppose you could
> call this the QSYS file system or something.
> 
> There is also a folder-style file system which is not frequently used. I'm
> not sure the technical name, but in it you store Document Library Objects
> (DLOs). It acts like a DOS filesystem. Many people use it for backing up
> their PC files to. This is the QDLS file system. It can be traversed using
> the WRKFLR command, but you have to be enrolled in some directory services
> thing first.
> 
> Now the cool one is IFS (Integrated File System). It's a *NIX-style file
> system which programs like Domino use. You can traverse it by using the
> WRKLNK command. The QSYS and QDLS file systems are available from IFS in
> the /QSYS and /QDLS directories, respectively.

James Rich                      For Linux help and information
                                please visit:
reply to:                       http://www.linuxrx.com/

james.rich@m.cc.utah.edu        Linux and AS/400 admin.
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