Chapter 11:

File-System Interface

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Chapter 11: File-System Interface

 File Concept
 Access Methods
 Disk and Directory Structure
 File-System Mounting
 File Sharing
 Protection

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 11.2 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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 – 9th Edition 11.3 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 File Concept
 Contiguous logical address space
 Types:
 Audio
 Video
 Image
 Text
 Contents defined by file’s creator
 Many types
 Consider text file, source file, executable file

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 11.4 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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 – 9th Edition 11.5 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 File info Window /Linux/ Mac OS X

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 File Operations
 File is an abstract data type
 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 – 9th Edition 11.7 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 File Types – Name, Extension

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 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 – 9th Edition 11.13 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Access Methods
 Sequential Access
read next
write next
reset
no read after last write
(rewrite)

 Direct Access – file is fixed length logical records

read n
write n
position to n
read next
write next
rewrite n
n = relative block number

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 11.14 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Simulation of Sequential Access on Direct-access File

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 Other Access Methods

 Can be 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 UPC code plus record of
data about that item)
 If too large, index (in memory) of the index (on disk)
 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 – 9th Edition 11.16 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Example of Index and Relative Files

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 11.17 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Directory Structure

 A collection of nodes containing information about all files

Directory

Files
F1 F2 F4
F3
Fn

Both the directory structure and the files reside on disk

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 11.18 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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

Windows?? & Linux ??

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 11.21 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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 – 9th Edition 11.22 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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, …)

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 11.23 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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 – 9th Edition 11.25 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Tree-Structured Directories

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 11.26 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Tree-Structured Directories (Cont.)
 Efficient searching

 Grouping Capability

 Current directory (working directory)

 cd /spell/mail/prog
 type list

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 11.27 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Acyclic-Graph Directories
 Have shared subdirectories and files

 Two different names (aliasing)

 If dict deletes 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 – 9th Edition 11.29 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 General Graph Directory

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 11.30 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 File System Mounting
 A file system must be mounted before it can be accessed
 A unmounted file system (i.e., Fig. 11-11(b)) is mounted at a
mount point

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 11.31 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 File Sharing
 Sharing of files on multi-user systems is desirable
 Sharing may be done through a protection scheme
 On distributed systems, files may be shared across a network
 Network File System (NFS) is a common distributed file-sharing
method
 If multi-user system
 User IDs identify users, allowing permissions and
protections to be per-user
Group IDs allow users to be in groups, permitting group
access rights
 Owner of a file / directory
 Group of a file / directory

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 11.32 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 File Sharing – Remote File Systems
 Uses networking to allow file system access between systems
 Manually via programs like FTP
 Automatically, seamlessly using distributed file systems
 Semi automatically via the world wide web
 Client-server model allows clients to mount remote file systems from
servers
 Server can serve multiple clients
 Client and user-on-client identification is insecure or complicated
 NFS is standard UNIX client-server file sharing protocol
 CIFS is standard Windows protocol
 Standard operating system file calls are translated into remote calls
 Distributed Information Systems (distributed naming services) such
as LDAP, DNS, NIS, Active Directory implement unified access to
information needed for remote computing

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 11.33 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 File Sharing – Failure Modes

 All file systems have failure modes

 For example corruption of directory structures or other non-
user data, called metadata
 Remote file systems add new failure modes, due to network
failure, server failure
 Recovery from failure can involve state information about
status of each remote request
 Stateless protocols such as NFS v3 include all information in
each request, allowing easy recovery but less security

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 11.34 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 File Sharing – Consistency Semantics
 Specify how multiple users are to access a shared file
simultaneously
 Similar to Ch 5 process synchronization algorithms
 Tend to be less complex due to disk I/O and network
latency (for remote file systems
 Andrew File System (AFS) implemented complex remote file
sharing semantics
 Unix file system (UFS) implements:
 Writes to an open file visible immediately to other users of
the same open file
 Sharing file pointer to allow multiple users to read and write
concurrently
 AFS has session semantics
 Writes only visible to sessions starting after the file is
closed

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 11.35 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Protection
 File owner/creator should be able to control:
 what can be done
 by whom
 Types of access
 Read
 Write
 Execute
 Append
 Delete
 List

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 11.36 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Access Lists and Groups
 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 particular file (say game) or subdirectory, define an
appropriate access.

Attach a group to a file

chgrp G game

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 Windows Access-Control List Management

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 A Sample UNIX Directory Listing

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 11.39 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 End of Chapter 11

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013