Chapter 13:

File-System Interface

Operating System Concepts – 10h Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Outline
 File Concept
 Access Methods
 Disk and Directory Structure
 File-System Mounting
 File Sharing
 Protection

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.2 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Objectives
 To explain the function of file systems
 To describe the interfaces to file systems
 To discuss file-system design tradeoffs, including access
methods, file sharing, file locking, and directory structures
 To explore file-system protection

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.3 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 File Concept
 Contiguous logical address space
 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 13.4 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 13.5 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 13.6 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 File Operations
 Create
 Write – at write pointer location
 Read – at read pointer location
 Reposition within file - seek
 Delete
 Truncate
 Open (Fi) – search the directory structure on disk for entry Fi, and
move the content of entry to memory
 Close (Fi) – move the content of entry Fi in memory to directory
structure on disk

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.7 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 13.8 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 File Locking
 Provided by some operating systems and file systems
• Similar to reader-writer locks
• Shared lock similar to reader lock – several processes can
acquire concurrently
• Exclusive lock similar to writer lock
 Mediates access to a file
 Mandatory or advisory:
• Mandatory – access is denied depending on locks held and
requested
• Advisory – processes can find status of locks and decide what to
do

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.9 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 File Types – Name, Extension

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.10 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 File Structure
 None - sequence of words, bytes
 Simple record structure
• Lines
• Fixed length
• Variable length
 Complex Structures
• Formatted document
• Relocatable load file
 Can simulate last two with first method by inserting appropriate
control characters
 Who decides:
• Operating system
• Program

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.11 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Access Methods
 A file is fixed length logical records
 Sequential Access
 Direct Access
 Other Access Methods

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.12 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Sequential Access
 Operations
• read next
• write next
• Reset
• no read after last write (rewrite)

 Figure

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.13 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Direct Access
 Operations
• read n
• write n
• position to n
read next
 write next
 rewrite n

n = relative block number

 Relative block numbers allow OS to decide where

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.14 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Simulation of Sequential Access on Direct-access File

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 Other Access Methods
 Can be other access methods built on top of base methods
 General involve creation of an index for the file
 Keep index in memory for fast determination of location of
data to be operated on (consider Universal Produce Code
(UPC code) plus record of data about that item)
 If the index is too large, create an in-memory index, which
an index of a disk index
 IBM indexed sequential-access method (ISAM)
• Small master index, points to disk blocks of secondary
index
• File kept sorted on a defined key
• All done by the OS
 VMS operating system provides index and relative files as
another example (see next slide)

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.16 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Example of Index and Relative Files

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.17 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 13.18 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 A Typical File-system Organization

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.19 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Types of File Systems
 We mostly talk of general-purpose file systems
 But systems frequently have may file systems, some general- and some
special- purpose
 Consider Solaris has
• tmpfs – memory-based volatile FS for fast, temporary I/O
• objfs – interface into kernel memory to get kernel symbols for
debugging
• ctfs – contract file system for managing daemons
• lofs – loopback file system allows one FS to be accessed in place of
another
• procfs – kernel interface to process structures
• ufs, zfs – general purpose file systems

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.20 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 13.21 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Operations Performed on Directory
 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 13.22 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Directory Organization
The directory is organized logically to obtain
 Efficiency – locating a file quickly
 Naming – convenient to users
• Two users can have same name for different files
• The same file can have several different names
 Grouping – logical grouping of files by properties, (e.g., all
Java programs, all games, …)

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 Single-Level Directory
 A single directory for all users

 Naming problem
 Grouping problem

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 Two-Level Directory
 Separate directory for each user

 Path name
 Can have the same file name for different user
 Efficient searching
 No grouping capability

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.25 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Tree-Structured Directories

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 Acyclic-Graph Directories
 Have shared subdirectories and files
 Example

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.27 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Acyclic-Graph Directories (Cont.)
 Two different names (aliasing)
 If dict deletes w/list  dangling pointer
Solutions:
• Backpointers, so we can delete all pointers.
 Variable size records a problem
• Backpointers using a daisy chain organization
• Entry-hold-count solution
 New directory entry type
• Link – another name (pointer) to an existing file
• Resolve the link – follow pointer to locate the file

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.28 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 General Graph Directory

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 13.29 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 13.30 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 13.31 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 End of Chapter 13

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