CH 12

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
Operating System Concepts 12.1 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne 2002

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.

Layered File System

A Typical File Control Block

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.

In-Memory File System Structures

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.

Schematic View of Virtual File System

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

Allocation Methods
 An allocation method refers to how disk blocks are

allocated for files:
 Contiguous allocation
 Linked allocation
 Indexed allocation

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.

Contiguous Allocation of Disk Space

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.

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

scattered anywhere on the disk.
block = pointer

Linked Allocation (Cont.)
 Simple – need only starting address

 Free-space management system – no waste of space
 No random access
 Mapping
Q
LA/511
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.

Linked Allocation

File-Allocation Table

Indexed Allocation
 Brings all pointers together into the index block.

 Logical view.
index table

Example of Indexed Allocation

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.
Q
LA/512
R
Q = displacement into index table
R = displacement into block

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)
R1
Q1 = block of index table
R1 is used as follows: Q2
R1 / 512
R2
Q2 = displacement into block of index table

R2 displacement into block of file:

 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 2
R1 / 512
R2
Q2 = displacement into block of index table

R2 displacement into block of file:

outer-index
index table file

Combined Scheme: UNIX (4K bytes per block)

Free-Space Management
 Bit vector (n blocks)

0 1 2 n-1
…
0  block[i] free

bit[i] =
1  block[i] occupied
Block number calculation

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

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

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

Linked Free Space List on Disk

Efficiency and Performance
 Efficiency dependent on:

 disk allocation and directory algorithms
 types of data kept in file’s 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.

Various Disk-Caching Locations

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.

I/O Without a Unified Buffer Cache

Unified Buffer Cache
 A unified buffer cache uses the same page cache to

cache both memory-mapped pages and ordinary file
system I/O.

I/O Using a Unified Buffer Cache

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 implementation-
independent interfaces.
 The NFS specification distinguishes between the services
provided by a mount mechanism and the actual remote-
file-access services.

Three Independent File Systems

Mounting in NFS
Mounts Cascading mounts

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 handle—a 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 user’s view and does
not affect the server side.

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 server’s disk before
results are returned to the client (lose advantages of caching).
 The NFS protocol does not provide concurrency-control
mechanisms.

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.

Schematic View of NFS Architecture

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 client’s side holds the vnodes for remote directory
names.

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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Chapter 12: File System Implementation

 File System Structure

Operating System Concepts 12.1 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne 2002

Operating System Concepts 12.2 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne 2002

Operating System Concepts 12.3 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne 2002

Operating System Concepts 12.4 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne 2002

 The following figure illustrates the necessary file system

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

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

Operating System Concepts 12.5 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne 2002

Operating System Concepts 12.6 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne 2002

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

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

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

Operating System Concepts 12.7 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne 2002

Operating System Concepts 12.8 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne 2002

 Linear list of file names with pointer to the data blocks.

 Hash Table – linear list with hash data structure.

Operating System Concepts 12.9 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne 2002

 An allocation method refers to how disk blocks are

Operating System Concepts 12.10 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne 2002

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

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

 Wasteful of space (dynamic storage-allocation problem).

 Files cannot grow.

Operating System Concepts 12.11 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne 2002

Operating System Concepts 12.12 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne 2002

 Many newer file systems (I.e. Veritas File System) use a

 Extent-based file systems allocate disk blocks in extents.

 An extent is a contiguous block of disks. Extents are

Operating System Concepts 12.13 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne 2002

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

Operating System Concepts 12.14 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne 2002

 Simple – need only starting address

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

Operating System Concepts 12.15 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne 2002

Operating System Concepts 12.16 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne 2002

Operating System Concepts 12.17 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne 2002

 Brings all pointers together into the index block.

Operating System Concepts 12.18 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne 2002

Operating System Concepts 12.19 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne 2002

 Need index table

Operating System Concepts 12.20 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne 2002

 Mapping from logical to physical in a file of unbounded length

Q2 = displacement into block of index table

Operating System Concepts 12.21 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne 2002

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

Q1 = displacement into outer-index

Q2 = displacement into block of index table

Operating System Concepts 12.22 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne 2002

index table file

Operating System Concepts 12.23 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne 2002

Operating System Concepts 12.24 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne 2002

 Bit vector (n blocks)

Block number calculation

Operating System Concepts 12.25 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne 2002

 Bit map requires extra space. Example:

Operating System Concepts 12.26 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne 2002

Operating System Concepts 12.27 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne 2002