Chapters 13 and 14:

File-System

Operating System Concepts – 10h Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 File Concept
 The operating system abstracts from the physical properties of its
storage devices to define a logical storage unit, the file.
 A file is a named collection of related information that is recorded on
secondary storage
 Types:
• Data
 Numeric
 Character
 Binary
• Program
 Contents defined by file’s creator
• Many types
 text file,
 source file,
 executable file

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.2 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 File Attributes
 Name – only information kept in human-readable form
 Identifier – unique tag (number) identifies file within file system
 Type – needed for systems that support different types
 Location – pointer to file location on device
 Size – current file size
 Protection – controls who can do reading, writing, executing
 Time, date, and user identification – data for protection, security, and
usage monitoring
 Information about files are kept in the directory structure, which is
maintained on the disk
 Many variations, including extended file attributes such as file checksum
 Information kept in the directory structure

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.3 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 File info Window on Mac OS X

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.4 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Directory Structure
 A collection of nodes containing information about all files

 Both the directory structure and the files reside on disk

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.5 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 File Operations
 File is an abstract data type
• Create
• Write – at write pointer location
• Read – at read pointer location
• Reposition within file - seek
• Delete
• Truncate

 To avoid searching the directory for the file entry, many systems require
to open the file first
• Open (Fi) – search the directory structure on disk for entry Fi, and move
the content of entry to memory (open file table)
• Close (Fi) – move the content of entry Fi in memory to directory structure
on disk

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.6 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Open Files
 Several pieces of data are needed to manage open files:
• Open-file table: tracks open files
• File pointer: pointer to last read/write location, per process that
has the file open
• File-open count: counter of number of times a file is open – to
allow removal of data from open-file table when last processes
closes it
• Disk location of the file: cache of data access information
• Access rights: per-process access mode information

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.7 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 File Types – Name, Extension

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.8 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Access Methods
 A file is fixed length logical records
 Sequential Access
 Direct Access

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.9 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Disk Structure
 Disk can be subdivided into partitions
 Disks or partitions can be RAID protected against failure
 Disk or partition can be used raw – without a file system, or formatted
with a file system
 Partitions also known as minidisks, slices
 Entity containing file system is known as a volume
 Each volume containing a file system also tracks that file system’s info in
device directory or volume table of contents
 In addition to general-purpose file systems there are many special-
purpose file systems, frequently all within the same operating system or
computer

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.10 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 A Typical File-system Organization

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.11 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Directory Structure
 A collection of nodes containing information about all files

 Both the directory structure and the files reside on disk

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.12 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Operations Performed on Directory
 The directory can be viewed as a symbol table that translates file
names into their directory entries
 Operations:
• Search for a file

• Create a file

• Delete a file

• List a directory

• Rename a file

• Traverse the file system

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.13 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Single-Level Directory
 A single directory for all users
 All files are contained in the same directory, which is easy to support and
understand

 Naming problem
• File names must be unique, even in multi-user environment

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.14 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Two-Level Directory
 Separate directory for each user

 Path name
 Can have the same file name for different user
 Efficient searching
 User File Directory (UFD) and Master File Directory (MFD)
 When a user refers to a particular file, only his own UFD is
searched
 Users can access other files (if permitted) using their path names.
 Example: /user1/test

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.15 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Tree-Structured Directories
 Two-level directory can be generalized to a tree of arbitrary height
• This allows users to create their own subdirectories and to organize
their files accordingly
 The tree has a root directory, and every file in the system has a unique
path name.
 A directory (or subdirectory) contains a set of files or subdirectories.
• A directory is simply another file, but it is treated in a special way

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.16 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Tree-Structured Directories

• Current Directory
• Absolute and Relative path name
• Example: spell/mail/prt/first

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.17 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Acyclic-Graph Directories
 Have shared subdirectories and files which exist in the file system in two
(or more) places at once
 Example

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.18 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Acyclic-Graph Directories (Cont.)
 Important: a shared file (or directory) is not the same as two copies of
the file
• With a shared file, only one actual file exists, so any changes
made by one person are immediately visible to the other
 Implementation
• Create a new directory entry called a link, i.e., a pointer to
another file or subdirectory
• Duplicate all information about shared file or directory in both
sharing directories
 Problem: maintaining consistency when a file is modified

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.19 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 General Graph Directory

• Problem: We want to avoid searching any component twice, for reasons

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.20 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 General Graph Directory (Cont.)
 How do we guarantee no cycles?
• Allow only links to files not subdirectories
• Garbage collection
• Every time a new link is added use a cycle detection algorithm to
determine whether it is OK

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.21 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Current Directory
 Can designate one of the directories as the current (working) directory
• cd /spell/mail/prog
• type list
 Creating and deleting a file is done in current directory
 Example of creating a new file
• If in current directory is /mail
• The command
mkdir <dir-name>
• Results in:

• Deleting “mail”  deleting the entire subtree rooted by “mail”

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.22 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Protection
 File owner/creator should be able to control:
• What can be done
• By whom
 Types of access
• Read
• Write
• Execute
• Append
• Delete
• List

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.23 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Access Lists and Groups in Unix
 Mode of access: read, write, execute
 Three classes of users on Unix / Linux
RWX
a) owner access 7  111
RWX
b) group access 6  110
RWX
c) public access 1  001
 Ask manager to create a group (unique name), say G, and add some
users to the group.
 For a file (say game) or subdirectory, define an appropriate access.

 Attach a group to a file

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.24 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 A Sample UNIX Directory Listing

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.25 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Windows 7 Access-Control List Management

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.26 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Chapter 14: File System
Implementation

Operating System Concepts – 10h Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 File-System Structure
 File structure
• Logical storage unit
• Collection of related information
 File system resides on secondary storage (disks)
• Provided user interface to storage, mapping logical to physical
• Provides efficient and convenient access to disk by allowing data to
be stored, located retrieved easily
 Disk provides in-place rewrite and random access
• I/O transfers performed in blocks of sectors (usually 512 bytes)
 File control block (FCB) – storage structure consisting of information
about a file
 Device driver controls the physical device
 File system organized into layers

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.28 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Layered File System

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.29 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 File-System Operations
 We have system calls at the API level, but how do we implement their
functions?
• On-disk and in-memory structures
 Boot control block contains info needed by system to boot OS from
that volume
• Needed if volume contains OS, usually first block of volume
 Volume control block (superblock, master file table) contains volume
details
• Total # of blocks, # of free blocks, block size, free block pointers or
array
 Directory structure organizes the files
• Names and inode numbers, master file table

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.30 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 File Control Block (FCB)
 OS maintains FCB per file, which contains many details about the file
• Typically, inode number, permissions, size, dates
• Example

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.31 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Directory Implementation
 Linear list of file names with pointer to the data blocks
• Simple to program
• Time-consuming to execute
 Linear search time
 Could keep ordered alphabetically via linked list or use B+ tree
 Hash Table – linear list with hash data structure
• Decreases directory search time
• Collisions – situations where two file names hash to the same
location
• Only good if entries are fixed size, or use chained-overflow method

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.32 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Allocation Method
 An allocation method refers to how disk blocks are allocated for files:
• Contiguous
• Linked
 File Allocation Table (FAT) – MS DOS and Windows
• Indexed - Unix

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.33 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Contiguous Allocation Method
 An allocation method refers to how disk blocks are allocated for files:
 Each file occupies set of contiguous blocks
• Best performance in most cases
• Simple – only starting location (block #) and length (number of blocks)
are required
• Problems include:
 Finding space on the disk for a file,
 Knowing file size,
 External fragmentation, need for compaction off-line (downtime)
or on-line

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.34 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Contiguous Allocation (Cont.)

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.35 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 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

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.36 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Linked Allocation
 Each file is a linked list of blocks
 File ends at nil pointer
 No external fragmentation
 Each block contains pointer to next block
 No compaction, external fragmentation
 Free space management system called when new block needed
 Improve efficiency by clustering blocks into groups but increases internal
fragmentation
 Reliability can be a problem
 Locating a block can take many I/Os and disk seeks

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.37 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Linked Allocation Example
 Each file is a linked list of disk blocks: blocks may be scattered anywhere on
the disk
 Scheme

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.38 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 FAT Allocation Method
 Beginning of volume has table, indexed by block number
 Much like a linked list, but faster on disk and cacheable
 New block allocation simple

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.39 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 File-Allocation Table

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.40 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Indexed Allocation Method
 Each file has its own index block(s) of pointers to its data blocks
 Logical view

index table

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.41 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Example of Indexed Allocation

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.42 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Indexed Allocation – Two-Level Scheme

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.43 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Combined Scheme : UNIX UFS
 4K bytes per block, 32-bit addresses

 More index blocks than can be addressed with 32-bit file pointer

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.44 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018