LOOPFS File-System Proposed For Linux
LOOPFS isn't a traditional Linux file-system for competing with the likes of EXT4, F2FS, Btrfs, and XFS but is a loop device file-system inspired by Android's BinderFS.
Longtime Linux kernel developer Christian Brauner has been developing LOOPFS. He explained as one of the use-cases for this loop device file-system, "to dynamically allocate loop devices in sandboxed workloads without exposing /dev or /dev/loop-control to the workload in question and without having to implement a complex and also racy protocol to send around file descriptors for loop devices. With loopfs each mount is a new instance, i.e. loop devices created in one loopfs instance are independent of any loop devices created in another loopfs instance. This allows sufficiently privileged tools to have their own private stash of loop device instances."
LOOPFS can also be mounted by the user namespace root for container usage. "Combined with syscall interception this makes it possible to securely delegate mounting of images on loop devices."
More details on the proposed LOOPFS via this kernel mailing list thread.
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