Tmpfs Gains New Features With Linux 6.6

The tmpfs file-system that keeps all of its data within virtual memory has gained a few new features with Linux 6.6, including the long-awaited quota support to better protect against malicious users that could try to consume all of your system RAM.

The main new feature with Tmpfs on Linux 6.6 is finally adding quota support, which has been in the works for months and talked about for a long time. With quota support, Tmpfs can better protect against malicious users or problematic programs from consuming all of the system memory. A new user-space API with QFMT_SHMEM is exposed for handling the quota support on both a user and group basis. Project quotas are planned to be added later.

Tmpfs with Linux 6.6 also adds support for user xattrs, supporting a limited number of user xattrs.

Rounding out the Tmpfs feature work for this new kernel version is support for stable directory offsets. This should improve the Tmpfs integration with NFS.

Plus Tmpfs has seen various bug fixes as outlined in the pull request for the Linux 6.6 merge window. This code has already been merged to mainline.