Chapter 4: File System Management & I/O System

4.3. File System Internals

GV: Nguyễn Thị Thanh Vân

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

Outline
 File Systems
 File-System Mounting
 Partitions and Mounting
 File Sharing
 Virtual File Systems
 Remote File Systems
 Consistency Semantics
 NFS

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 Objectives
 Delve into the details of file systems and their implementation
 Explore booting and file sharing
 Describe remote file systems, using NFS as an example

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File System
 General-purpose computers can have multiple storage devices
• Devices can be sliced into partitions, which hold volumes
• Volumes can span multiple partitions
• Each volume usually formatted into a file system
• # of file systems varies, typically dozens available to choose from

Typical storage device organization:

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 Example Mount Points and File Systems - Solaris

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Partitions and Mounting

 Partition can be a volume containing a file system (“cooked”) or
raw – just a sequence of blocks with no file system
 Boot block can point to boot volume or boot loader set of blocks that
contain enough code to know how to load the kernel from the file
system
• Or a boot management program for multi-os booting
 Root partition contains the OS, other partitions can hold other
OSes, other file systems, or be raw
• Mounted at boot time
• Other partitions can mount automatically or manually on mount
points – location at which they can be accessed
 At mount time, file system consistency checked
• Is all metadata correct?
 If not, fix it, try again
 If yes, add to mount table, allow access

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 File Systems and Mounting
(a)Unix-like file system
directory tree
(b) Unmounted file system

(c) After mounting (b) into

the existing directory
tree

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File Sharing
 Allows multiple users / systems access to the same files
 Permissions / protection must be implemented and accurate
• Most systems provide concepts of owner, group member
• Must have a way to apply these between systems

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 Virtual File Systems
 Virtual File Systems (VFS) on Unix 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
• Separates file-system generic operations from implementation
details
• Implementation can be one of many file systems types, or
network file system
 Implements vnodes which hold inodes or network file details
• Then dispatches operation to appropriate file system
implementation routines

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Virtual File Systems (Cont.)

 The API is to the VFS interface, rather than any specific type of file
system

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 Virtual File System Implementation
 For example, Linux has four object types:
• inode, file, superblock, dentry
 VFS defines set of operations on the objects that must be implemented
• Every object has a pointer to a function table
 Function table has addresses of routines to implement that
function on that object
 For example:
 • int open(. . .)—Open a file
 • int close(. . .)—Close an already-open file
 • ssize t read(. . .)—Read from a file
 • ssize t write(. . .)—Write to a file
 • int mmap(. . .)—Memory-map a file

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Remote File Systems

 Sharing of files across a network
 First method involved manually sharing each file – programs like ftp
 Second method uses a distributed file system (DFS)
• Remote directories visible from local machine
 Third method – World Wide Web
• A bit of a revision to first method
• Use browser to locate file/files and download /upload
• Anonymous access doesn’t require authentication

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 Client-Server Model

 Sharing between a server (providing access to a file system via a

network protocol) and a client (using the protocol to access the remote
file system)
 Identifying each other via network ID can be spoofed, encryption can
be performance expensive
 NFS an example
• User auth info on clients and servers must match (UserIDs for
example)
• Remote file system mounted, file operations sent on behalf of user
across network to server
• Server checks permissions, file handle returned
• Handle used for reads and writes until file closed

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Distributed Information Systems

 Aka distributed naming services, provide unified access to info

needed for remote computing
 Domain name system (DNS) provides host-name-to-network-address
translations for the Internet
 Others like network information service (NIS) provide user-name,
password, userID, group information
 Microsoft’s common Internet file system (CIFS) network info used
with user auth to create network logins that server uses to allow to
deny access
• Active directory distributed naming service
• Kerberos-derived network authentication protocol
 Industry moving toward lightweight directory-access protocol
(LDAP) as secure distributed naming mechanism

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 Consistency Semantics
 Important criteria for evaluating file sharing-file systems
 Specify how multiple users are to access shared file simultaneously
• When modifications of data will be observed by other users
• Directly related to process synchronization algorithms, but atomicity
across a network has high overhead (see Andrew File System)
 The series of accesses between file open and closed called file session
 UNIX semantics
• Writes to open file immediately visible to others with file open
• One mode of sharing allows users to share pointer to current I/O
location in file
• Single physical image, accessed exclusively, contention causes
process delays
 Session semantics (Andrew file system (OpenAFS))
• Writes to open file not visible during session, only at close
• Can be several copies, each changed independently

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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 originally part of SunOS operating system, now

industry standard / very common
 Can use unreliable datagram protocol (UDP/IP) or TCP/IP, over
Ethernet or other network

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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 implementation-independent interfaces

 The NFS specification distinguishes between the services provided

by a mount mechanism and the actual remote-file-access services

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 File Systems

Three Independent
File Systems

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 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

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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 (NFS V4 is newer, less used – 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

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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 client’s

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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End of Chapter 4.3

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