File models and file accessing

models

Prepared By:
Mehta Ishani
1300407010030
 Contents
File models
Unstructured and structured files
Mutable and immutable files
File accessing models
Accessing remote files
Unit of data transfer

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 Unstructured files
Simplest model
File – unstructured sequence of data
No substructure
Contents – un interpreted sequence of bytes
Unix, MS-Dos
Modern OS used this model because sharing of files is easier
in compared with structured file model
Since file has no structure then different applications can
interpret the contents of files in many different ways.

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 Structured files
Rarely used
File – ordered sequence of records
Files – different types, different size and different properties
Record – smallest unit of data that can be accessed
Two categories
Files with non indexed records
Files with indexed records

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 Structured files
Files with non indexed records
File records is accessed by specifying it’s position within file
For ex. Fifth record from beginning, second record from end

Files with indexed records

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 File attributes
Information describing that files
Has name and value
Contains information such has owner, size, access
permission, date of creation, date of last modification and
date of last access
User can read the value of any attribute but can’t change
modify it
Maintained and used by directory service because they are
subject to different access control

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 Mutable files
Used by most existing os
Update performed on files overwrites on old contents to
produce new contents
File is represented as a single stored sequence and that is
altered by each update operation

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 Immutable files
Cedar files system
File can not be modified once it has been created except to
be deleted
 file versioning approach is used, a new version of file is
created when change is made rather than updating same file
In practice storage space may be reduced by keeping only
differences rather than created whole file again
Sharing is much easier because it supports caching and
replication which eliminates the problem of keeping multiple
consistent copies

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 Immutable files
Suffering from two issues
Increased use of disk space
Increased disk allocation activity

CFS uses keep parameter as the no. of most current version

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 Accessing remote files
One of the following model is used when request to access
remote file
Remote service model
Data catching model

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 Remote service model
Processing of client request is performed at server’s node
Client request is delivered to server and server machine
performs on it and returns replies to client
Request and replies transferred across network as message
File server interface and communication protocol must be
designed carefully so as to minimize the overhead of
generating the messages
Every remote file access results in traffic

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 Data catching model
Reduced the amount of network traffic by taking advantage
of locality feature
If requested data is not present locally then copied it from
server’s node to client node and catching there
LRU is used to keep the cache size bounded
Cache Consistency problem

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 Unit of data transfer
Refers to fraction of file data that is transferred to and from
client as a result of single read write operation
Four data transfer models
File level transfer model
Block level transfer model
Byte level transfer model
Record level transfer model

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 File level transfer model
When the operation required file data, the whole file is
moved
Advantages are
Efficient because network protocol overhead is required only
once
Better scalability because it requires fewer access to file server
and reduce server load and network traffic
Disk access routines on server can be better optimized
Offers degree of resiliency to server and network failure
Drawbacks is it requires sufficient storage space
Ex are amoeba, CFS, Andrew file system

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 Block level transfer model
file data transfer take place in units of data blocks
A file block is contiguous portion of file and fixed in length
Advantage is does not required large storage space
Drawback is more network traffic and more network
protocol overhead
Poor performance
Ex are Sun microsystem’s NFS, Apollo domain file system

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 Byte level transfer model
File data transfer take place in units of bytes
Provides maximum flexibility
Difficulty in cache management

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 Record level transfer model
Suitable with structured files
File data transfer take place in unit of records
Ex. RSS(research storage system)

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