System Programming - II

Chapter 11

File-System Interface

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 File-System Interface

• File Concept
• Access Methods
• Directory Structure
• File-System Mounting
• File Sharing
• Protection

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 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

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 File Concept
• File system consist of two distinct parts:
– Collection of files: each storing related data.
– Directory structure: organizes and provides
information about all the files in the system.

• Information stored on different storage media.

– Magnetic disk, magnetic tape, and optical disks

• Files are mapped by OS, onto physical devices.

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 File Concept (cont…)

• File is a named collection of related information that is

recorded on secondary storage.

• File is a smallest allotment of logical secondary storage.

• Data cannot be written to secondary storage unless they

are within a file.

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 File Concept (cont…)
• Types:
– Data files may be
• Numeric
• Alphabetic
• Character
• Binary

• Contiguous logical address space

• File is a sequence of bits, bytes, lines, or records whose

meaning is defined by the file’s creator and user.

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 File Structure
• Certain defined structures according to its types.

• Text file: Sequence of characters organized into lines.

• Executable: Series of code sections that the loader can bring

into memory and execute.

• Simple record structure

– Lines
– Fixed length
– Variable length

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 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.
• Required 16 to 1000 bytes to record this information.
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 File Operations
• Operating system provides system calls to;

• Create: two steps are necessary;

– Space in the file system must be found.
– Entry for the new file must be made in the directory.
• Directory entry records the name of the file and the
location in the file system.

• Write: make a system call specifying both the name of

the file and the information to be written to the file.
• System must keep a write pointer to the location in the file
where the next write is to take place.
• Write pointer must be updated whenever a write occurs.
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 File Operations (cont…)
• Read:
– system call that specifies the name of the file and
where (in memory) the next block of the file should
be put.

• Once the read has taken place, the read pointer is

updated.

• Most systems keep only one current-file-position pointer.

• Read and write operation use the same pointer, saving

space and reducing the system complexity.
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 File Operations (cont…)
• Reposition within file (file seek):
• Directory is searched for the appropriate entry, and the
current file position is set to given value.
• Does not involve any actual I/O.
• This file operation is also known as a file seek.

• Delete: search the directory for the named file.

• Truncate: user wants the attributes of a file to remain the

same, but wants to erase the contents of file, rather than
delete the file
• Attributes remain unchanged, but file length is zero.
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 File Operations (cont…)
• Other common operations include appending new
information and renaming an existing file.

• Open file table – operating system keeps a small table

containing information about all open files.

• There are several pieces of information associated with an

open file.
– File pointer.
– File open count.
– Disk location of the file.

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 File Operations (cont…)
• File pointer.
– System must track the last read/write location as a
current file position pointer.
– Pointer is unique to each process operating on the file.
– Must be kept separate from the on-disk file attributes.

• File open count.

– As files are closed, OS must reuse its open file table
entries or it could run out of space in the table.
– System must wait for the last file to close before
removing the open file table entry.
– This counter tracks the number of opens and closes, and
reaches zero on the last close.
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 File Operations (cont…)

• Disk location of the file.

– Information needed to locate the file on disk is kept in
memory to avoid having to read it from disk for each
operation.

• Memory mapping.
– Allows a part of the virtual address space to be logically
associated with a section of file.

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 Open Files

• Several pieces of data are needed to manage

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

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 Open File Locking

• Provided by some operating systems and file

systems
• 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

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 File Locking Example – Java API
import java.io.*;
import java.nio.channels.*;
public class LockingExample {
public static final boolean EXCLUSIVE = false;
public static final boolean SHARED = true;
public static void main(String arsg[]) throws IOException {
FileLock sharedLock = null;
FileLock exclusiveLock = null;
try {
RandomAccessFile raf = new
RandomAccessFile("file.txt", "rw");
// get the channel for the file
FileChannel ch = raf.getChannel();
// this locks the first half of the file - exclusive
exclusiveLock = ch.lock(0, raf.length()/2, EXCLUSIVE);
/** Now modify the data . . . */
// release the lock
exclusiveLock.release(); 17
File Locking Example – Java API (cont.)
// this locks the second half of the file - shared
sharedLock = ch.lock(raf.length()/2+1,
raf.length(), SHARED);
/** Now read the data . . . */
// release the lock
sharedLock.release();
} catch (java.io.IOException ioe) {
System.err.println(ioe);
}finally {
if (exclusiveLock != null)
exclusiveLock.release();
if (sharedLock != null)
sharedLock.release();
}
}
} 18
File Types – Name, Extension

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 Access Methods
• Sequential Access:
– Simple access method.
– Information in the file is processed in order, one record
after the other.
– Editors and compliers usually access files in this
fashion.
read next
write next
reset
no read after last write
(rewrite)

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 Access Methods
• Direct Access (relative access)
– Allows arbitrary blocks to be read or written.
– We may read block 14, then 53, and then 7.
– No restrictions.

read n
write n
position to n
read next
write next
rewrite n
n = relative block number
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 Access Methods
• Direct Access (relative access) (Contd).

• Relative block number: is an index relative to the begging

of the file.

– The first relative block of the file is 0, the next is 1 and

so on, even though the actual absolute disk address of
block may be 14703 for the first block, and 3192 for the
second.

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Sequential-access File

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Simulation of Sequential Access on a Direct-
Access File

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 Other Access Methods

• Other access methods can be built on top of a direct-

access method.

• Involve in the construction of an index for the file.

• Index, like an index in the back of the book, contains

pointers to various blocks.

• To find an entry in the file, we first search the index, and

then use the pointer to access the file directly and to find
the desired entry.

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 Other Access Methods (cont…)

• Index file itself may become too large to be kept in main

memory.

• Solution:
– Create an index for the index file.
– Primary index file would contain pointers to secondary
index files, which would point to the actual data items.

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Example of Index and Relative Files

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 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.

• Backups of these two structures are kept on tapes.
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 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 known as a volume
• Each volume containing file system also tracks that file
system’s info in device directory or volume table of
contents
• As well as general-purpose file systems there are many
special-purpose file systems, frequently all within the
same operating system or computer
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A Typical File-system Organization

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 Information in a Device Directory
• Name
• Type
• Address
• Current length
• Maximum length
• Date last accessed
• Date last updated
• Owner ID
• Protection information

• Note: directory can be viewed as a symbol table that

translates file names into their directory entries.
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 Operations Performed on Directory

• Search for a file

• Create a file
• Delete a file
• List a directory
• Rename a file
• Traverse the file system

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Organize the Directory (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
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Tree-Structured Directories

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 Tree-Structured Directories (Cont…)

• Efficient searching

• Grouping Capability

• Current directory (working directory)

– cd /spell/mail/prog
– type list

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 Tree-Structured Directories (Cont…)
• Absolute or relative path name
• Creating a new file is done in current directory.
• Delete a file
rm <file-name>
• Creating a new subdirectory is done in current directory.
mkdir <dir-name>
Example: if in current directory /mail
mkdir count mail

prog copy prt exp count

Deleting “mail”  deleting the entire subtree rooted by

“mail”. 38
 Acyclic-Graph Directories
• Have shared subdirectories and files

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 Acyclic-Graph Directories (Cont…)
• 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

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General Graph Directory

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 General Graph Directory (Cont...)

• How do we guarantee no cycles?

– Allow only links to file not subdirectories
– Garbage collection
– Every time a new link is added use a cycle
detection
algorithm to determine whether it is OK

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 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

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(a) Existing. (b) Unmounted Partition

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Mount Point

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 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

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 File Sharing – Multiple Users

• User IDs identify users, allowing

permissions and protections to be per-user

• Group IDs allow users to be in groups,

permitting group access rights

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 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
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access to information needed for remote computing
 File Sharing – Failure Modes

• 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 include all
information in each request, allowing easy
recovery but less security

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 File Sharing – Consistency Semantics
• Consistency semantics specify how multiple users
are to access a shared file simultaneously
– Similar to Ch 7 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
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closed
 Protection
• File owner/creator should be able to control:
– what can be done
– by whom

• Types of access
– Read
– Write
– Execute
– Append
– Delete
– List
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 Access Lists and Groups
• Mode of access: read, write, execute
• Three classes of users
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.
owner group public

chmod 761 game

Attach a group to a file

chgrp G game
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Windows XP Access-control List Management

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A Sample UNIX Directory Listing

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