Chapter 12: File System Implementation

File System Structure

File System Implementation
Directory Implementation
Allocation Methods
Free-Space Management
Efficiency and Performance
Recovery
Log-Structured File Systems
NFS

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File-System Structure
File structure
Logical storage unit
Collection of related information
File system resides on secondary storage (disks).
File system organized into layers.
File control block storage structure consisting of

information about a file.

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Layered File System

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A Typical File Control Block

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In-Memory File System Structures

The following figure illustrates the necessary file system

structures provided by the operating systems.

Figure 12-3(a) refers to opening a file.

Figure 12-3(b) refers to reading a file.

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In-Memory File System Structures

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Virtual File Systems

Virtual File Systems (VFS) provide an object-oriented way

of implementing file systems.

VFS allows the same system call interface (the API) to be

used for different types of file systems.

The API is to the VFS interface, rather than any specific

type of file system.

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Schematic View of Virtual File System

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Directory Implementation
Linear list of file names with pointer to the data blocks.
simple to program
time-consuming to execute
Hash Table linear list with hash data structure.
decreases directory search time
collisions situations where two file names hash to the
same location
fixed size

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Allocation Methods
An allocation method refers to how disk blocks are

allocated for files:

Contiguous allocation
Linked allocation
Indexed allocation

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Contiguous Allocation

Each file occupies a set of contiguous blocks on the disk.

Simple only starting location (block #) and length (number of

blocks) are required.

Random access.
Wasteful of space (dynamic storage-allocation problem).
Files cannot grow.

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Contiguous Allocation of Disk Space

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Extent-Based Systems
Many newer file systems (I.e. Veritas File System) use a

modified contiguous allocation scheme.

Extent-based file systems allocate disk blocks in extents.

An extent is a contiguous block of disks. Extents are

allocated for file allocation. A file consists of one or more

extents.

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Linked Allocation
Each file is a linked list of disk blocks: blocks may be

scattered anywhere on the disk.

block

pointer

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Linked Allocation (Cont.)

Simple need only starting address

Free-space management system no waste of space
No random access
Mapping
LA/511

Q
R

Block to be accessed is the Qth block in the linked chain

of blocks representing the file.
Displacement into block = R + 1
File-allocation table (FAT) disk-space allocation used by
MS-DOS and OS/2.
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Linked Allocation

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File-Allocation Table

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Indexed Allocation
Brings all pointers together into the index block.
Logical view.

index table

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Example of Indexed Allocation

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Indexed Allocation (Cont.)

Need index table
Random access
Dynamic access without external fragmentation, but have

overhead of index block.

Mapping from logical to physical in a file of maximum size
of 256K words and block size of 512 words. We need
only 1 block for index table.
LA/512

Q
R

Q = displacement into index table

R = displacement into block

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Indexed Allocation Mapping (Cont.)

Mapping from logical to physical in a file of unbounded length

(block size of 512 words).

Linked scheme Link blocks of index table (no limit on size).
Q1

LA / (512 x 511)

Q1 = block of index table

R1 is used as follows:
R1 / 512

R1

Q2
R2

Q2 = displacement into block of index table

R2 displacement into block of file:

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Indexed Allocation Mapping (Cont.)

Two-level index (maximum file size is 5123)
Q1

LA / (512 x 512)

R1

Q1 = displacement into outer-index

R1 is used as follows:
Q
R1 / 512

R2

Q2 = displacement into block of index table

R2 displacement into block of file:

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Indexed Allocation Mapping (Cont.)

outer-index
index table

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file

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Combined Scheme: UNIX (4K bytes per block)

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Free-Space Management
Bit vector (n blocks)
0 1 2

n-1

bit[i] =

0 block[i] free
1 block[i] occupied

Block number calculation

(number of bits per word) *
(number of 0-value words) +
offset of first 1 bit

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Free-Space Management (Cont.)

Bit map requires extra space. Example:

block size = 212 bytes

disk size = 230 bytes (1 gigabyte)
n = 230/212 = 218 bits (or 32K bytes)
Easy to get contiguous files
Linked list (free list)
Cannot get contiguous space easily
No waste of space

Grouping
Counting

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Free-Space Management (Cont.)

Need to protect:
Pointer to free list
Bit map
Must be kept on disk
Copy in memory and disk may differ.
Cannot allow for block[i] to have a situation where bit[i] =
1 in memory and bit[i] = 0 on disk.
Solution:
Set bit[i] = 1 in disk.
Allocate block[i]
Set bit[i] = 1 in memory

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Linked Free Space List on Disk

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Efficiency and Performance

Efficiency dependent on:
disk allocation and directory algorithms
types of data kept in files directory entry
Performance
disk cache separate section of main memory for frequently
used blocks
free-behind and read-ahead techniques to optimize
sequential access
improve PC performance by dedicating section of memory
as virtual disk, or RAM disk.

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Various Disk-Caching Locations

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Page Cache
A page cache caches pages rather than disk blocks

using virtual memory techniques.

Memory-mapped I/O uses a page cache.

Routine I/O through the file system uses the buffer (disk)

cache.

This leads to the following figure.

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I/O Without a Unified Buffer Cache

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Unified Buffer Cache

A unified buffer cache uses the same page cache to

cache both memory-mapped pages and ordinary file

system I/O.

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I/O Using a Unified Buffer Cache

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Recovery
Consistency checking compares data in directory

structure with data blocks on disk, and tries to fix

inconsistencies.

Use system programs to back up data from disk to

another storage device (floppy disk, magnetic tape).

Recover lost file or disk by restoring data from backup.

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Log Structured File Systems

Log structured (or journaling) file systems record each

update to the file system as a transaction.

All transactions are written to a log. A transaction is

considered committed once it is written to the log.

However, the file system may not yet be updated.

The transactions in the log are asynchronously written to

the file system. When the file system is modified, the

transaction is removed from the log.

If the file system crashes, all remaining transactions in the

log must still be performed.

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The Sun Network File System (NFS)

An implementation and a specification of a software

system for accessing remote files across LANs (or

WANs).

The implementation is part of the Solaris and SunOS

operating systems running on Sun workstations using an

unreliable datagram protocol (UDP/IP protocol and
Ethernet.

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NFS (Cont.)
Interconnected workstations viewed as a set of

independent machines with independent file systems,

which allows sharing among these file systems in a
transparent manner.
A remote directory is mounted over a local file system

directory. The mounted directory looks like an integral

subtree of the local file system, replacing the subtree
descending from the local directory.
Specification of the remote directory for the mount operation
is nontransparent; the host name of the remote directory has
to be provided. Files in the remote directory can then be
accessed in a transparent manner.
Subject to access-rights accreditation, potentially any file
system (or directory within a file system), can be mounted
remotely on top of any local directory.

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NFS (Cont.)
NFS is designed to operate in a heterogeneous

environment of different machines, operating systems,

and network architectures; the NFS specifications
independent of these media.
This independence is achieved through the use of RPC
primitives built on top of an External Data Representation
(XDR) protocol used between two implementationindependent interfaces.
The NFS specification distinguishes between the services
provided by a mount mechanism and the actual remotefile-access services.

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Three Independent File Systems

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Mounting in NFS

Mounts

Cascading mounts
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NFS Mount Protocol

Establishes initial logical connection between server and

client.
Mount operation includes name of remote directory to be
mounted and name of server machine storing it.

Mount request is mapped to corresponding RPC and forwarded

to mount server running on server machine.

Export list specifies local file systems that server exports for
mounting, along with names of machines that are permitted to
mount them.

Following a mount request that conforms to its export list, the

server returns a file handlea key for further accesses.

File handle a file-system identifier, and an inode number to
identify the mounted directory within the exported file system.
The mount operation changes only the users view and does
not affect the server side.

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NFS Protocol
Provides a set of remote procedure calls for remote file

operations. The procedures support the following operations:

searching for a file within a directory
reading a set of directory entries
manipulating links and directories
accessing file attributes
reading and writing files

NFS servers are stateless; each request has to provide a full set

of arguments.
Modified data must be committed to the servers disk before
results are returned to the client (lose advantages of caching).
The NFS protocol does not provide concurrency-control
mechanisms.

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Three Major Layers of NFS Architecture

UNIX file-system interface (based on the open, read,

write, and close calls, and file descriptors).

Virtual File System (VFS) layer distinguishes local files

from remote ones, and local files are further distinguished

according to their file-system types.
The VFS activates file-system-specific operations to handle

local requests according to their file-system types.

Calls the NFS protocol procedures for remote requests.
NFS service layer bottom layer of the architecture;

implements the NFS protocol.

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Schematic View of NFS Architecture

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NFS Path-Name Translation

Performed by breaking the path into component names

and performing a separate NFS lookup call for every pair

of component name and directory vnode.

To make lookup faster, a directory name lookup cache on

the clients side holds the vnodes for remote directory

names.

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NFS Remote Operations

Nearly one-to-one correspondence between regular UNIX

system calls and the NFS protocol RPCs (except opening and
closing files).
NFS adheres to the remote-service paradigm, but employs
buffering and caching techniques for the sake of performance.
File-blocks cache when a file is opened, the kernel checks
with the remote server whether to fetch or revalidate the cached
attributes. Cached file blocks are used only if the corresponding
cached attributes are up to date.
File-attribute cache the attribute cache is updated whenever
new attributes arrive from the server.
Clients do not free delayed-write blocks until the server confirms
that the data have been written to disk.

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