COS - Week 11

Chapter 11:
Implementing File Systems
Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition, Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
Chapter 11: Implementing File Systems
 File-System Structure
 File-System Implementation
 Directory Implementation
 Allocation Methods
 Free-Space Management
 Efficiency and Performance
 Recovery
 Log-Structured File Systems
 NFS
 Example: WAFL File System
Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 11.2 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
Objectives
 To describe the details of implementing local file systems and directory
structures
 To describe the implementation of remote file systems
 To discuss block allocation and free-block algorithms and trade-offs
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.
opening a file
Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 11.7

reading a file. Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
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
 External Fragmentation
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
 Of the 512-byte blocks, 4 bytes are used for the pointer and 508
bytes are used for the data. This means a loss of 0.78% for each
block. To solve this problem, blocks can be combined and clusters
can be created. This can increase data usage, but it also increases
internal fragmentation.
 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.
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).
 An index block is usually a disk block. Therefore, it can be read and

written directly.
 For large files, several index blocks can be linked together.
 Two-level index
 It is the method by which the first-level index block shows the second-level
index blocks.
 To access the block, the operating system first accesses the second-level
index blocks using the first-level indices and uses them to access the desired
data block.
 This approach can also be used for the third or fourth level.
 For 4,096-byte blocks, 1,024 4-byte marks can be saved. Two-level indices
allow 1,048,576 data blocks and a file size of 4 GB.
 Two-level index (maximum file size is 5123)
Q1
LA / (512 x 512)
R1
Q1 = displacement into outer-index

R1 is used as follows:
Q2
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
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
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
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, other magnetic disk, optical)
 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
(NFS V4 is just coming available – very different, stateful)
 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
End of Chapter 11
Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition, Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009

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Chapter 11:

Implementing File Systems

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 11.7

 Hash Table – linear list with hash data structure.

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

 Wasteful of space (dynamic storage-allocation problem)

 Files cannot grow

 Extent-based file systems allocate disk blocks in extents

 An extent is a contiguous block of disks

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

 An index block is usually a disk block. Therefore, it can be read and

Q1 = displacement into outer-index

Q2 = displacement into block of index table

index table file

Block number calculation

(number of bits per word) *

 Memory-mapped I/O uses a page cache

 This leads to the following figure

 Recover lost file or disk by restoring data from backup

 Log structured (or journaling) file systems record each update to

 All transactions are written to a log

 The transactions in the log are asynchronously written to the file

 The implementation is part of the Solaris and SunOS operating systems

 This independence is achieved through the use of RPC primitives built on

 The NFS specification distinguishes between the services provided by a

Mounts Cascading mounts

 Establishes initial logical connection between server and client

 NFS service layer – bottom layer of the architecture

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