Chapter 10: File-System

Interface
 Dr. Zeeshan Rafi
PhD MIS, MPhil IT,
• Former Software Engineer
• Department of Computing and
Information Systems
• Istanbul University, TR
• KHAS University, TR
Chapter 10: File-System Interface
• File Concept
• Access Methods
• Directory Structure
• File-System Mounting
• File Sharing
• Protection
 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
 File Concept
• Contiguous logical address space

• Types:
– Data
• numeric
• character
• binary
– Program
 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
 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
 File Operations
• File is an abstract data type
• Create
• Write
• Read
• Reposition within file
• 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:
– 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
 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
 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();
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();
}
}
}
File Types – Name, Extension
 Access Methods
• Sequential Access
read next
write next
reset
no read after last write
(rewrite)
• Direct Access
read n
write n
position to n
read next
write next
rewrite n
n = relative block number
Sequential-access File
Simulation of Sequential Access on a Direct-access File
Example of Index and Relative Files
 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
A Typical File-system Organization
Operations Performed on Directory
• Search for a file
• Create a file
• Delete a file
• List a directory
• Rename a file
• Traverse the file system
 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, …)
 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
 Tree-Structured Directories (Cont)
• Efficient searching

• Grouping Capability

• Current directory (working directory)

– cd /spell/mail/prog
– type list
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”

 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
(a) Existing. (b) Unmounted
Partition
Mount Point
 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

 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
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 DNS,
NIS, Active Directory implement unified 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
 Protection
• File owner/creator should be able to control:
– what can be done
– by whom

• Types of access
– Read
– Write
– Execute
– Append
– Delete
– List
Windows XP Access-control List Management
A Sample UNIX Directory Listing
End of Chapter 10