Single Instance Storage

[Dave Stubbs]

Hello all,

Has anyone noticed any Linux software or a filesystem out there that
implements Single-Instance-Storage the way M$ Windows Server does?

It's one of the last things that I can't find an alternative for, in my
efforts to completely move to Linux in the back room.

M$ SIS is a filter and a service that runs on top of the NTFS
filesystem.  It allows you to copy many redundant copies of the same
stuff onto a drive, and then during the night the "groveler" service
walks the filesystem and finds any duplicate files, moving them to a SIS
repository and replacing them in the user directory with something like
a hard link.  It is different than the Posix concept of a link though -
if you go and modify one of these multiple copies of the same file, it
doesn't change all the others.  Instead it detaches the modified copy
from the Single Instance Store, and makes it unique.

I have a very nice use for this type of thing - maintaining multiple
ready-to-go images of computers all loaded with lots of software.  Gigs
and gigs on each one - mostly ready-to-play games.  The groveler moves a
high percentage of these files into the SIS store and I don't waste all
that space.

However I'd like to do this on LInux, if it's possible.

Dave...
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