{"slug": "gefs", "name": "GEFS", "category": "files", "category_name": "Files, sync and backup", "description": "", "recommenders": 5, "commenters": 5, "warners": 0, "score": 4.643, "rising": 2.35, "first": "2026-01-29", "latest": "2026-10-20", "why": "it's good enough to compete with ZFS while being way smaller and permissively licensed", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 6, "neutral": 0, "compare": 0, "warn": 0}, "spark": [0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 2, 2], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "it's good enough to compete with ZFS while being way smaller and permissively licensed", "kind": "", "icon": false, "domain": "orib.dev", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://orib.dev", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["GEFS", "GeFS", "gefs"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 802757600, "item_id": 50172350, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50172350", "by": "throwaway270925", "date": "2026-10-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I also love the title for this talk about it:", "excerpt": "Thats great to hear! I also love the title for this talk about it: GEFS: The File Shredder of the Future. https://events.eurobsdcon.org/2026/talk/NVMSCJ/", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "OpenBSD 8.0"}, {"id": 802617712, "item_id": 50163607, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50163607", "by": "tylerius", "date": "2026-10-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "GeFS is in the works. I hope it gets into the tree some day", "excerpt": "GeFS is in the works. I hope it gets into the tree some day: https://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article;sid=20260918115729", "context": "", "use_case": "Filesystem for OpenBSD", "switched_from": "", "story": "OpenBSD 8.0"}, {"id": 796374528, "item_id": 49773408, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49773408", "by": "tylerius", "date": "2026-09-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Corruption Detection and Crash Safety will be more than welcomed here.", "excerpt": "What a nice surprise! It would be great if it finally gets integrated into OpenBSD tree. Corruption Detection and Crash Safety will be more than welcomed here. I can't complain about FFS since it has been fully reliable for me. I have been directly powering off my obsd router for years and never had a problem... in the worst case if I use a very old and semi broken USB drive I have to access console and manually fsck", "context": "runs an OpenBSD router", "use_case": "OpenBSD filesystem", "switched_from": "", "story": "GEFS on OpenBSD: A Early Preview"}, {"id": 795461264, "item_id": 49716329, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49716329", "by": "yjftsjthsd-h", "date": "2026-09-15", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it's good enough to compete with ZFS while being way smaller and permissively licensed", "excerpt": "From https://orib.dev/gefs.pdf - > While snapshot consistency is useful to keep data consistent, disks often fail over time. In order to detect corruption, block pointers contain a hash of the data that they point at. If corrupted data is returned by the underlying storage medium, this is detected via block hashes. And if a programmer error causes the file system to write garbage to disk, this can often be caught ear", "context": "", "use_case": "copy-on-write filesystem", "switched_from": "", "story": "GEFS on OpenBSD: A Early Preview"}, {"id": 750755457, "item_id": 46922216, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46922216", "by": "anthk", "date": "2026-02-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "tons of weird 9front new tools such as the GeFS filesystem", "excerpt": "Indeed; music wise for actual hacking (old meaning) it would be some 9front setup (either themeless defaults or something bland with yellow background for terminal windows, as if they were mundane sticky notes) and Muzak; for cracking either industrial metal or some progresive Jazz which would still sound cool and elegant in some parts. For really odd hacks and cracks the music from Twin Peaks wuold be ideal. For the", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Hackers (1995) Animated Experience"}]}], "caveats": [], "who": [{"by": "tylerius", "context": "runs an OpenBSD router", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49773408", "date": "2026-09-20"}], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["filesystem for openbsd", "openbsd filesystem", "copy-on-write filesystem"], "compared": [{"slug": "9front", "name": "9front", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "zfs", "name": "ZFS", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [{"id": 795537296, "item_id": 49721081, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49721081", "by": "throw0101a", "date": "2026-09-16", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "", "excerpt": "> [\u2026] but I also want to explore what adding trim-style feedback to a generic RAID layer may look like [\u2026] TRIM commands sent to the block layer would probably help with SSD/NVMe wear leveling, as well as thin-provisioning in virtualized environments. And the lack of RAID is not a critique: if you're mostly interested in the file system layer that's fine, and a useful area to solve problems in. My comment was more to", "context": "", "use_case": "file system", "switched_from": "", "story": "GEFS on OpenBSD: A Early Preview"}], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49715590", "title": "GEFS on OpenBSD: A Early Preview", "mentions": 3}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50160494", "title": "OpenBSD 8.0", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46912800", "title": "Hackers (1995) Animated Experience", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46819000", "title": "9front OS", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-02": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {}, "2026-07": {}, "2026-08": {}, "2026-09": {"recommend": 2}, "2026-10": {"recommend": 2}}, "quotes": [{"id": 802757600, "item_id": 50172350, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50172350", "by": "throwaway270925", "date": "2026-10-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I also love the title for this talk about it:", "excerpt": "Thats great to hear! I also love the title for this talk about it: GEFS: The File Shredder of the Future. https://events.eurobsdcon.org/2026/talk/NVMSCJ/", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "OpenBSD 8.0"}, {"id": 802617712, "item_id": 50163607, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50163607", "by": "tylerius", "date": "2026-10-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "GeFS is in the works. I hope it gets into the tree some day", "excerpt": "GeFS is in the works. I hope it gets into the tree some day: https://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article;sid=20260918115729", "context": "", "use_case": "Filesystem for OpenBSD", "switched_from": "", "story": "OpenBSD 8.0"}, {"id": 796374528, "item_id": 49773408, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49773408", "by": "tylerius", "date": "2026-09-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Corruption Detection and Crash Safety will be more than welcomed here.", "excerpt": "What a nice surprise! It would be great if it finally gets integrated into OpenBSD tree. Corruption Detection and Crash Safety will be more than welcomed here. I can't complain about FFS since it has been fully reliable for me. I have been directly powering off my obsd router for years and never had a problem... in the worst case if I use a very old and semi broken USB drive I have to access console and manually fsck", "context": "runs an OpenBSD router", "use_case": "OpenBSD filesystem", "switched_from": "", "story": "GEFS on OpenBSD: A Early Preview"}, {"id": 795461264, "item_id": 49716329, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49716329", "by": "yjftsjthsd-h", "date": "2026-09-15", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it's good enough to compete with ZFS while being way smaller and permissively licensed", "excerpt": "From https://orib.dev/gefs.pdf - > While snapshot consistency is useful to keep data consistent, disks often fail over time. In order to detect corruption, block pointers contain a hash of the data that they point at. If corrupted data is returned by the underlying storage medium, this is detected via block hashes. And if a programmer error causes the file system to write garbage to disk, this can often be caught ear", "context": "", "use_case": "copy-on-write filesystem", "switched_from": "", "story": "GEFS on OpenBSD: A Early Preview"}, {"id": 750755457, "item_id": 46922216, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46922216", "by": "anthk", "date": "2026-02-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "tons of weird 9front new tools such as the GeFS filesystem", "excerpt": "Indeed; music wise for actual hacking (old meaning) it would be some 9front setup (either themeless defaults or something bland with yellow background for terminal windows, as if they were mundane sticky notes) and Muzak; for cracking either industrial metal or some progresive Jazz which would still sound cool and elegant in some parts. For really odd hacks and cracks the music from Twin Peaks wuold be ideal. For the", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "Hackers (1995) Animated Experience"}, {"id": 749124225, "item_id": 46820264, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46820264", "by": "xelxebar", "date": "2026-01-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The snapshot system in gefs is really quite nice.", "excerpt": "The snapshot system in gefs is really quite nice. By default, you get snapshots every minute for the last hour, every hour for the last day, and every day into perpetuity. This is configurable. You can set as many cadences as you wish, with the ability to configure their frequency and lifetimes. Actually, snapshots are like btrfs volumes in many ways, meaning they can be mounted, read from, and written to as desired.", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "9front OS"}]}