The UNIX File System
Harry Chen
Department of CSEE
University of MD Baltimore County
Introduction
• What is File System?
– The abstraction used by kernel to represent and
organize the storage resources.
• UNIX File System in general
– File system is organized in tree structure.
– File tree can be arbitrarily deep.
– File name must NOT LONGER than 256 chars.
– Single path name must NOT LONGER than
1023 chars.
Creating File System
• Mounting File System
– File tree is composed of File System
– Use mount command to map a directory within
the existing file tree (mount point) to the root of
the new file system.
• mount /dev/hda2 /usr
– Use umount command to detach the file system.
• Detaching will fail if the file system is busy.
Organizing of The File System
• “The UNIX file system has never been very
well organized.” -- Page 58
– incompatible naming convention
• e.g. ATT & BSD startup script naming
• e.g. log file naming
Organizing of The File System
(cont.)
/ The root directory
/bin or /sbin Commands for basic
system operation
/dev Device entries
/etc Critical startup and
configuration files.
/lib Library for the C
compiler
/tmp Temporary files
/var/adm or /var/log Accounting file, log
files
Types of Files
• Regular Files
– binary
• GIF, JPEG, Executable etc.
– text
• scripts, program source code, documentation
– Supports sequential and random access
Types of Files (cont.)
• Directory
– Can contain ANY kind of files
– what is “.” and “..”??
• Device File
– Allows programs to communicate with
hardware.
– Kernel modules handles device management.
Types of Files (cont.)
• Device Files (cont.)
– Character Device
• Accepts a stream of characters, without regard to
any block structure.
• It is not addressable, therefore no seek operation
– Block Device
• Information stored in fixed-sized block
• It is addressable, therefore seek operation is
possible.
Types of Files (cont.)
• UNIX Domain Sockets (BSD)
– sockets that are local to a particular host and are
referenced through a file system object rather
than a network port.
– X windows
• Named Pipe
– Allow processes to communicate with each
other.
Types of Files (cont.)
• Hard links
– Linking files by reference
– System maintains a count of the number of
links
– Does not work across file systems.
• Soft links
– Linking files by name
– No counter is maintained
– Work across file system
File Permissions
• The Setuid and Setgid bits
– Setuid with octal value 4000
– Setgid with octal value 2000
– These bits allow programs to access files that
processes that would otherwise off limits to the
user that runs them.
Types of Files (cont.)
• Sticky Bit
– Not very popular in today’s system
– If a directory has sticky bit set, then only the
owner can remove file from the directory.
– /tmp is a good example.
Types of Files (cont.)
• The Permission Bit
– 9 permission bits used to determine 3 types of
accesses, READ, WRITE, EXECUTE.
– Permission can be set based on GROUP,
OWNER, ANYONE ELSE.
– Use chmod command to change permission
• Binary 001 for EXECUTE
• Binary 010 for WRITE
• Binary 100 for READ
Types of Files (cont.)
• INODES
– Kernel maintains file information in a structure
called inode.
• Creation, modification time stamps
• Ownership, file size etc.
– Commonly used INODE information can be
found by using ls command
– Group information and be modified by using
chgrp command.
Summary
• All UNIX file system are very similar.
• All file system have this concept of file tree.
– Transparent to user even mount point is
mapped to a remote file system.
• To communicate with devices, special
device files are used.
• More information check out the man pages.
