MIT School of Computing

Department of Computer Science & Engineering

Third Year Engineering

21BTCS501-Operating System

Class - T.Y.
PLD(SEM-I)

Unit - V
● STORAGE MANAGEMENT

AY 2024-2025 SEM-I

1
 MIT School of Computing
Department of Computer Science & Engineering

Unit-III Syllabus

1. File-System Interface, 9. Directory Implementation,

2. File Concept, 10. Allocation Methods,
3. Access Methods, 11. Free-Space Management,
PLD
4. Directory Structure, 12. Efficiency and Performance,
5. File-System Mounting, 13. Recovery,
6. File Sharing, Protection, 14. Mass-Storage Structure,
7. File-System Implementation, 15. Disk Structure,
8. File-System Structure, 16. Disk Scheduling,
9. File-System Implementation, 17. Swap-Space Management

2
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
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
Directory Structure
• A collection of nodes containing information about all files

• Both the directory structure and the files reside on disk

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
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
File Types – Name, Extension
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
Access Methods
• A file is fixed length logical records
• Sequential Access
• Direct Access
• Other Access Methods
Sequential Access
• Operations
• read next
• write next
• Reset
• no read after last write (rewrite)

• Figure
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 file should be placed
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)
Example of Index and Relative Files
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
A Typical File-system Organization
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
Directory Structure
• A collection of nodes containing information about all files

• Both the directory structure and the files reside on disk

Operations Performed on Directory
• Search for a file

• Create a file

• Delete a file

• List a directory

• Rename a file

• Traverse the file system

Directory Organization
• 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,
…)
Single-Level Directory
• A single directory for all users

• Naming problem
• Grouping problem
Two-Level Directory
• Separate directory for each user

▪ Path name
▪ Can have the same file name for different user
▪ Efficient searching
▪ No grouping capability
Tree-Structured Directories
Acyclic-Graph Directories
• Have shared subdirectories and files

• Example
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
General Graph Directory
 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
 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:
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
File Systems and Mounting

(a) Unix-like file

system directory
tree
(b) Unmounted file
system

After mounting (b) into

the existing directory tree
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
Protection
• File owner/creator should be able to control:
• What can be done
• By whom
• Types of access
• Read
• Write
• Execute
• Append
• Delete
• List
Access Lists and Groups in Unix
• Mode of access: read, write, execute
• Three classes of users on Unix / Linux
RWX
a) owner access 7 ⇒ 111
RWX
b) group access 6 ⇒ 110
RWX
c) public access 1 ⇒ 001

• Ask manager to create a group (unique name), say G, and add some users
to the group.
• For a file (say game) or subdirectory, define an appropriate access.

• Attach a group to a file

chgrp G game
A Sample UNIX Directory Listing
•
File-System
File structure
Structure
• Logical storage unit
• Collection of related information
• File system resides on secondary storage (disks)
• Provided user interface to storage, mapping logical to physical
• Provides efficient and convenient access to disk by allowing data to be
stored, located retrieved easily
• Disk provides in-place rewrite and random access
• I/O transfers performed in blocks of sectors (usually 512 bytes)
• File control block (FCB) – storage structure consisting of
information about a file
• Device driver controls the physical device
• File system organized into layers
Layered File System
File System Layers
• Device drivers manage I/O devices at the I/O control layer
• Given commands like
• read drive1, cylinder 72, track 2, sector 10, into memory location 1060
• Outputs low-level hardware specific commands to hardware controller
• Basic file system given command like “retrieve block 123” translates
to device driver
• Also manages memory buffers and caches (allocation, freeing,
replacement)
• Buffers hold data in transit
• Caches hold frequently used data
• File organization module understands files, logical address, and
physical blocks
• Translates logical block # to physical block #
• Manages free space, disk allocation
File System Layers (Cont.)
• Logical file system manages metadata information
• Translates file name into file number, file handle,
location by maintaining file control blocks (inodes in
UNIX)
• Directory management
• Protection
• Layering useful for reducing complexity and
redundancy, but adds overhead and can decrease
performance
• Logical layers can be implemented by any coding
method according to OS designer
File System Layers (Cont.)
• Many file systems, sometimes many within an
operating system
• Each with its own format:
• CD-ROM is ISO 9660;
• Unix has UFS, FFS;
• Windows has FAT, FAT32, NTFS as well as floppy, CD,
DVD Blu-ray,
• Linux has more than 130 types, with extended file
system ext3 and ext4 leading; plus distributed file
systems, etc.)
• New ones still arriving – ZFS, GoogleFS, Oracle ASM,
FUSE
File-System Operations
• We have system calls at the API level, but how do we
implement their functions?
• On-disk and in-memory structures
• Boot control block contains info needed by system to
boot OS from that volume
• Needed if volume contains OS, usually first block of volume
• Volume control block (superblock, master file table)
contains volume details
• Total # of blocks, # of free blocks, block size, free block
pointers or array
• Directory structure organizes the files
• Names and inode numbers, master file table
File Control Block (FCB)
• OS maintains FCB per file, which contains many
details about the file
• Typically, inode number, permissions, size, dates
• Example
In-Memory File System Structures
• Mount table storing file system mounts, mount
points, file system types
• System-wide open-file table contains a copy of
the FCB of each file and other info
• Per-process open-file table contains pointers to
appropriate entries in system-wide open-file table
as well as other info
In-Memory File System Structures (Cont.)

• Figure (a) refers to opening a file

• Figure (b) refers to reading a file
Directory Implementation
• Linear list of file names with pointer to the data
blocks
• Simple to program
• Time-consuming to execute
• Linear search time
• Could keep ordered alphabetically via linked list or use B+ tree
• Hash Table – linear list with hash data structure
• Decreases directory search time
• Collisions – situations where two file names hash to the
same location
• Only good if entries are fixed size, or use chained-
overflow method
Allocation Method
• An allocation method refers to how disk blocks
are allocated for files:
• Contiguous
• Linked
• File Allocation Table (FAT)
Contiguous Allocation Method
• An allocation method refers to how disk blocks
are allocated for files:
• Each file occupies set of contiguous blocks
• Best performance in most cases
• Simple – only starting location (block #) and length
(number of blocks) are required
• Problems include:
• Finding space on the disk for a file,
• Knowing file size,
• External fragmentation, need for compaction off-line
(downtime) or on-line
Contiguous Allocation (Cont.)
• Mapping from logical to
physical (block size =512 bytes)

• Block to be accessed = starting

address + Q
• Displacement into block = R
Linked Allocation
• Each file is a linked list of blocks
• File ends at nil pointer
• No external fragmentation
• Each block contains pointer to next block
• No compaction, external fragmentation
• Free space management system called when new block
needed
• Improve efficiency by clustering blocks into groups but
increases internal fragmentation
• Reliability can be a problem
• Locating a block can take many I/Os and disk seeks
 Linked Allocation (Cont.)
Q

• Mapping
LA/511

• Block to be accessed is the Qth block in the linked

chain of blocks representing the file.
• Displacement into block = R + 1
File-Allocation Table
Indexed Allocation Method
• Each file has its own index block(s) of pointers to
its data blocks
• Logical view
Example of Indexed Allocation
Performance
• Best method depends on file access type
• Contiguous great for sequential and random
• Linked good for sequential, not random
• Declare access type at creation
• Select either contiguous or linked
• Indexed more complex
• Single block access could require 2 index block reads then data block
read
• Clustering can help improve throughput, reduce CPU overhead
• For NVM, no disk head so different algorithms and optimizations
needed
• Using old algorithm uses many CPU cycles trying to avoid non-existent
head movement
• Goal is to reduce CPU cycles and overall path needed for I/O
Free-Space Management
• File system maintains free-space list to track
available blocks/clusters
• (Using term “block” for simplicity)
n
• Bit vector or bit map (n blocks) 0 1 2 -
1
…
1 ⇒ block[i]
bit[ free


i]
= 0 ⇒ block[i]
occupied
Block number calculation

(number of bits per word) *

(number of 0-value words) +
offset of first 1 bit
CPUs have instructions to return offset within word of first “1” bit
Free-Space Management
• File system maintains free-space list to track available blocks
• Bit vector or bit map (n blocks) n
01 2 -
…
1 ⇒ block[i]
1
bit free


[i]


= 0 ⇒ block[i]
occupied

• Bit map requires extra space

• Example:
• block size = 4KB = 212 bytes
• disk size = 240 bytes (1 terabyte)
• n = 240/212 = 228 bits (or 32MB)
• if clusters of 4 blocks -> 8MB of memory

• Easy to get contiguous files

Linked Free Space List on Disk
▪ Linked list (free list)
• Cannot get contiguous
space easily
• No waste. Linked Free
Space List on Disk of
space
• No need to traverse the
entire list (if # free
blocks recorded)
Free-Space Management (Cont.)
• Grouping
• Modify linked list to store address of next n-1 free blocks
in first free block, plus a pointer to next block that
contains free-block-pointers (like this one)

• Counting
• Because space is frequently contiguously used and freed,
with contiguous-allocation allocation, extents, or
clustering
• Keep address of first free block and count of following free
blocks
• Free space list then has entries containing addresses and counts
Free-Space Management (Cont.)
• Space Maps
• Used in ZFS
• Consider meta-data I/O on very large file systems
• Full data structures like bit maps cannot fit in memory 🡺 thousands of I/Os
• Divides device space into metaslab units and manages metaslabs
• Given volume can contain hundreds of metaslabs
• Each metaslab has associated space map
• Uses counting algorithm
• But records to log file rather than file system
• Log of all block activity, in time order, in counting format
• Metaslab activity 🡺 load space map into memory in balanced-tree
structure, indexed by offset
• Replay log into that structure
• Combine contiguous free blocks into single entry
Efficiency and Performance
• Efficiency dependent on:
• Disk allocation and directory algorithms
• Types of data kept in file’s directory entry
• Pre-allocation or as-needed allocation of metadata
structures
• Fixed-size or varying-size data structures
Efficiency and Performance (Cont.)
• Performance
• Keeping data and metadata close together
• Buffer cache – separate section of main memory for
frequently used blocks
• Synchronous writes sometimes requested by apps or needed
by OS
• No buffering / caching – writes must hit disk before
acknowledgement
• Asynchronous writes more common, buffer-able, faster
• Free-behind and read-ahead – techniques to optimize
sequential access
• Reads frequently slower than writes
Page Cache
• A page cache caches pages rather than disk blocks
using virtual memory techniques and addresses
• 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 to avoid double caching
• But which caches get priority, and what replacement
algorithms to use?
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
• Can be slow and sometimes fails
• Use system programs to back up data from disk to
another storage device (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 metadata
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
(sequentially)
• Sometimes to a separate device or section of disk
• However, the file system may not yet be updated
• The transactions in the log are asynchronously written to the file
system structures
• When the file system structures are modified, the transaction is removed
from the log
• If the file system crashes, all remaining transactions in the log must
still be performed
• Faster recovery from crash, removes chance of inconsistency of
metadata
Overview of Mass Storage Structure
• Bulk of secondary storage for modern computers is hard
disk drives (HDDs) and nonvolatile memory (NVM)
devices
• HDDs spin platters of magnetically-coated material
under moving read-write heads
• Drives rotate at 60 to 250 times per second
• Transfer rate is rate at which data flow between drive and
computer
• Positioning time (random-access time) is time to move
disk arm to desired cylinder (seek time) and time for desired
sector to rotate under the disk head (rotational latency)
• Head crash results from disk head making contact with the
disk surface -- That’s bad
• Disks can be removable
Moving-head Disk Mechanism
Hard Disk Drives
• Platters range from .85” to 14”
(historically)
• Commonly 3.5”, 2.5”, and 1.8”
• Range from 30GB to 3TB per drive
• Performance
• Transfer Rate – theoretical – 6
Gb/sec
• Effective Transfer Rate – real –
1Gb/sec
• Seek time from 3ms to 12ms –
9ms common for desktop drives
• Average seek time measured or
calculated based on 1/3 of tracks
• Latency based on spindle speed
• 1 / (RPM / 60) = 60 / RPM
• Average latency = ½ latency
Hard Disk Performance
• Access Latency = Average access time = average
seek time + average latency
• For fastest disk 3ms + 2ms = 5ms
• For slow disk 9ms + 5.56ms = 14.56ms
• Average I/O time = average access time + (amount to
transfer / transfer rate) + controller overhead
• For example to transfer a 4KB block on a 7200 RPM disk
with a 5ms average seek time, 1Gb/sec transfer rate
with a .1ms controller overhead =
• 5ms + 4.17ms + 0.1ms + transfer time =
• Transfer time = 4KB / 1Gb/s * 8Gb / GB * 1GB / 1024 2KB =
32 / (10242) = 0.031 ms
• Average I/O time for 4KB block = 9.27ms + .031ms = 9.301ms
The First Commercial Disk Drive
1956
IBM RAMDAC computer included the
IBM Model 350 disk storage system

5M (7 bit) characters
50 x 24” platters
Access time = < 1 second
Nonvolatile Memory Devices
• If disk-drive like, then called solid-state disks (SSDs)
• Other forms include USB drives (thumb drive, flash drive),
DRAM disk replacements, surface-mounted on
motherboards, and main storage in devices like smartphones
• Can be more reliable than HDDs
• More expensive per MB
• Maybe have shorter life span – need careful management
• Less capacity
• But much faster
• Busses can be too slow -> connect directly to PCI for example
• No moving parts, so no seek time or rotational latency
Nonvolatile Memory Devices
• Have characteristics that present
challenges
• Read and written in “page”
increments (think sector) but
can’t overwrite in place
• Must first be erased, and erases
happen in larger ”block” increments
• Can only be erased a limited
number of times before worn out –
~ 100,000
• Life span measured in drive writes
per day (DWPD)
• A 1TB NAND drive with rating of
5DWPD is expected to have 5TB per
day written within warrantee period
without failing
NAND Flash Controller Algorithms
• With no overwrite, pages end up with mix of valid
and invalid data
• To track which logical blocks are valid, controller
maintains flash translation layer (FTL) table
• Also implements garbage collection to free
invalid page space
• Allocates overprovisioning to provide working
space for GC
• Each cell has lifespan, so wear leveling needed
NAND block with valid and invalid pages
to write equally to all cells
Volatile Memory
• DRAM frequently used as mass-storage device
• Not technically secondary storage because volatile, but can have file
systems, be used like very fast secondary storage
• RAM drives (with many names, including RAM disks) present as
raw block devices, commonly file system formatted
• Computers have buffering, caching via RAM, so why RAM drives?
• Caches / buffers allocated / managed by programmer, operating system,
hardware
• RAM drives under user control
• Found in all major operating systems
• Linux /dev/ram, macOS diskutil to create them, Linux /tmp of file system
type tmpfs
• Used as high speed temporary storage
• Programs could share bulk date, quickly, by reading/writing to RAM drive
Magnetic Tape
Disk Attachment
• Host-attached storage accessed through I/O ports talking to I/O
busses
• Several busses available, including advanced technology
attachment (ATA), serial ATA (SATA), eSATA, serial attached
SCSI (SAS), universal serial bus (USB), and fibre channel
(FC).
• Most common is SATA
• Because NVM much faster than HDD, new fast interface for NVM
called NVM express (NVMe), connecting directly to PCI bus
• Data transfers on a bus carried out by special electronic processors
called controllers (or host-bus adapters, HBAs)
• Host controller on the computer end of the bus, device controller on device
end
• Computer places command on host controller, using memory-mapped I/O
ports
• Host controller sends messages to device controller
• Data transferred via DMA between device and computer DRAM
Address Mapping
• Disk drives are addressed as large 1-dimensional arrays of
logical blocks, where the logical block is the smallest
unit of transfer
• Low-level formatting creates logical blocks on physical media
• The 1-dimensional array of logical blocks is mapped into
the sectors of the disk sequentially
• Sector 0 is the first sector of the first track on the outermost
cylinder
• Mapping proceeds in order through that track, then the rest of
the tracks in that cylinder, and then through the rest of the
cylinders from outermost to innermost
• Logical to physical address should be easy
• Except for bad sectors
• Non-constant # of sectors per track via constant angular velocity
HDD Scheduling
• The operating system is responsible for using
hardware efficiently — for the disk drives, this
means having a fast access time and disk
bandwidth
• Minimize seek time
• Seek time ≈ seek distance
• Disk bandwidth is the total number of bytes
transferred, divided by the total time between
the first request for service and the completion
of the last transfer
Disk Scheduling (Cont.)
• There are many sources of disk I/O request
• OS
• System processes
• Users processes
• I/O request includes input or output mode, disk address,
memory address, number of sectors to transfer
• OS maintains queue of requests, per disk or device
• Idle disk can immediately work on I/O request, busy disk
means work must queue
• Optimization algorithms only make sense when a queue exists
• In the past, operating system responsible for queue
management, disk drive head scheduling
• Now, built into the storage devices, controllers
• Just provide LBAs, handle sorting of requests
• Some of the algorithms they use described next
Disk Scheduling (Cont.)
• Note that drive controllers have small buffers and can
manage a queue of I/O requests (of varying “depth”)
• Several algorithms exist to schedule the servicing of disk
I/O requests
• The analysis is true for one or many platters
• We illustrate scheduling algorithms with a request
queue (0-199)
98, 183, 37, 122, 14, 124, 65, 67
Head pointer 53
FCFS Illustration shows total head movement of 640 cylinders
SCAN
• The disk arm starts at one end of the disk, and
moves toward the other end, servicing requests until
it gets to the other end of the disk, where the head
movement is reversed and servicing continues.
• SCAN algorithm Sometimes called the elevator
algorithm
• Illustration shows total head movement of 208
cylinders
• But note that if requests are uniformly dense, largest
density at other end of disk and those wait the
longest
SCAN (Cont.)
SSTF
• Selects the request with the minimum seek time
from the current head position.
• SSTF scheduling is a form of SJF scheduling; may
cause starvation of some requests.
• Illustration shows total head movement of 236
cylinders.

87
SSTF (Cont.)

88
C-SCAN
• Provides a more uniform wait time than SCAN
• The head moves from one end of the disk to the
other, servicing requests as it goes
• When it reaches the other end, however, it
immediately returns to the beginning of the disk,
without servicing any requests on the return trip
• Treats the cylinders as a circular list that wraps
around from the last cylinder to the first one
• Total number of cylinders?
C-SCAN (Cont.)
Selecting a Disk-Scheduling Algorithm
• SSTF is common and has a natural appeal
• SCAN and C-SCAN perform better for systems that place a heavy load on the disk
• Less starvation, but still possible
• To avoid starvation Linux implements deadline scheduler
• Maintains separate read and write queues, gives read priority
• Because processes more likely to block on read than write
• Implements four queues: 2 x read and 2 x write
• 1 read and 1 write queue sorted in LBA order, essentially implementing C-SCAN
• 1 read and 1 write queue sorted in FCFS order
• All I/O requests sent in batch sorted in that queue’s order
• After each batch, checks if any requests in FCFS older than configured age (default
500ms)
• If so, LBA queue containing that request is selected for next batch of I/O
• In RHEL 7 also NOOP and completely fair queueing scheduler
( CFQ) also available, defaults vary by storage device
NVM Scheduling
• No disk heads or rotational latency but still room
for optimization
• In RHEL 7 NOOP (no scheduling) is used but
adjacent LBA requests are combined
• NVM best at random I/O, HDD at sequential
• Throughput can be similar
• Input/Output operations per second (IOPS)
much higher with NVM (hundreds of thousands vs
hundreds)
• But write amplification (one write, causing
garbage collection and many read/writes) can
decrease the performance advantage
Swap-Space Management
• Used for moving entire processes (swapping), or pages (paging), from DRAM to
secondary storage when DRAM not large enough for all processes
• Operating system provides swap space management
• Secondary storage slower than DRAM, so important to optimize
performance
• Usually multiple swap spaces possible – decreasing I/O load on any given
device
• Best to have dedicated devices
• Can be in raw partition or a file within a file system (for convenience of
adding)
• Data structures for swapping on Linux systems: