Operating Systems

6.1.4: File access

There are basically two possibilities, sequential access and random access (a.k.a. direct access). Previously, files were declared to be sequential or random. Modern systems do not do this. Instead all files are random and optimizations are applied when the system dynamically determines that a file is (probably) being accessed sequentially.

1. With Sequential access the bytes (or records) are accessed in order (i.e., n-1, n, n+1, ...). Sequential access is the most common and gives the highest performance. For some devices (e.g. tapes) access “must” be sequential.
2. With random access, the bytes are accessed in any order. Thus each access must specify which bytes are desired.

6.1.5: File attributes

A laundry list of properties that can be specified for a file For example:

• hidden
• do not dump
• owner
• key length (for keyed files)

6.1.6: File operations

• Create: Essential if a system is to add files. Need not be a separate system call (can be merged with open).
• Delete: Essential if a system is to delete files.
• Open: Not essential. An optimization in which the translation from file name to disk locations is perform only once per file rather than once per access.
• Close: Not essential. Free resources.
• Read: Essential. Must specify filename, file location, number of bytes, and a buffer into which the data is to be placed. Several of these parameters can be set by other system calls and in many OS's they are.
• Write: Essential if updates are to be supported. See read for parameters.
• Seek: Not essential (could be in read/write). Specify the offset of the next (read or write) access to this file.
• Get attributes: Essential if attributes are to be used.
• Set attributes: Essential if attributes are to be user settable.
• Rename: Tanenbaum has strange words. Copy and delete is not acceptable for big files. Moreover copy-delete is not atomic. Indeed link-delete is not atomic so even if link (discussed below) is provided, renaming a file adds functionality.

Homework: 6, 7.

6.1.7: An Example Program Using File System Calls

Homework: Read and understand “copyfile”.

Notes on copyfile

• Normally in unix one wouldn't call read and write directly.
• Indeed, for copyfile, getchar() and putchar() would be nice since they take care of the buffering (standard I/O, stdio).
• If you compare copyfile from the 1st to 2nd edition, you can see the addition of error checks.

6.1.8: Memory mapped files (Unofficial)

Conceptually simple and elegant. Associate a segment with each file and then normal memory operations take the place of I/O.

Thus copyfile does not have fgetc/fputc (or read/write). Instead it is just like memcopy

while ( *(dest++) = *(src++) );

The implementation is via segmentation with demand paging but the backing store for the pages is the file itself. This all sounds great but ...

1. How do you tell the length of a newly created file? You know which pages were written but not what words in those pages. So a file with one byte or 10, looks like a page.
2. What if same file is accessed by both I/O and memory mapping.
3. What if the file is bigger than the size of virtual memory (will not be a problem for systems built 3 years from now as all will have enormous virtual memory sizes).

6.2: Directories

Unit of organization.

6.2.1-6.2.3: Single-level, Two-level, and Hierarchical directory systems

Possibilities

• One directory in the system (Single-level)
• One per user and a root above these (Two-level)
• One tree
• One tree per user
• One forest
• One forest per user

These are not as wildly different as they sound.

• If the system only has one directory, but allows the character / in a file name. Then one could fake a tree by having a file named
  /allan/gottlieb/courses/arch/class-notes.html
  rather than a directory allan, a subdirectory gottlieb, ..., a file class-notes.html.
  
  
• Dos (windows) is a forest, unix a tree. In dos there is no common parent of a:\ and c:\.
  
  
• But windows explorer makes the dos forest look quite a bit like a tree.
  
  
• You can get an effect similar to (but not the same as) one X per user by having just one X in the system and having permissions that permits each user to visit only a subset. Of course if the system doesn't have permissions, this is not possible.
  
  
• Today's systems have a tree per system or a forest per system.

6.2.4: Path Names

You can specify the location of a file in the file hierarchy by using either an absolute or a Relative path to the file

• An absolute path starts at the (or “one of the”, if we have a forest) root(s).
• A relative path starts at the current (a.k.a working) directory.
• The special directories . and .. represent the current directory and the parent of the current directory respectively.

Homework: 1, 9.

6.2.5: Directory operations

1. Create: Produces an “empty” directory. Normally the directory created actually contains . and .., so is not really empty
   
   
2. Delete: Requires the directory to be empty (i.e., to just contain . and ..). Commands are normally written that will first empty the directory (except for . and ..) and then delete it. These commands make use of file and directory delete system calls.
   
   
3. Opendir: Same as for files (creates a “handle”)
   
   
4. Closedir: Same as for files
   
   
5. Readdir: In the old days (of unix) one could read directories as files so there was no special readdir (or opendir/closedir). It was believed that the uniform treatment would make programming (or at least system understanding) easier as there was less to learn.
   
   However, experience has taught that this was not a good idea since the structure of directories then becomes exposed. Early unix had a simple structure (and there was only one type of structure for all implementations). Modern systems have more sophisticated structures and more importantly they are not fixed across implementations. So if programs just used read() to read directories, the programs would have to be changed whenever the structure of a directory changed. Now we have a readdir() system call that knows the structure of directories. Therefore if the structure is changed only readdir() need be changed. changed.
   
   
6. Rename: As with files.
   
   
7. Link: Add a second name for a file; discussed below.
   
   
8. Unlink: Remove a directory entry. This is how a file is deleted. But if there are many links and just one is unlinked, the file remains. Discussed in more detail below.

6.3: File System Implementation

6.3.1: File System Layout

• One disk starts with a Master Boot Record (MBR).
• Each disk has a partition table.
• Each partition holds one file system.
• Each partition typically contains some parameters (e.g., size), free blocks, and blocks in use. The details vary.
• In unix some of the in use blocks contains I-nodes each of which describes a file or directory and is described below.
• During boot the MBR is read and executed. It transfers control to the boot block of the active partition.

6.3.2: Implementing Files

• A disk cannot read or write a single word. Instead it can read or write a sector, which is often 512 bytes.
• Disks are written in blocks whose size is a multiple of the sector size.

Contiguous allocation

• This is like OS/MVT.
• The entire file is stored as one piece.
• Simple and fast for access, but ...
• Problem with growing files
  • Must either evict the file itself or the file it is bumping into.
  • Same problem with an OS/MVT kind of system if jobs grow.
• Problem with external fragmentation.
• No longer used for general purpose rewritable file systems.
• Ideal for file systems where files do not change size.
• Used for CD-ROM file systems.

Homework: 12.

Linked allocation

• The directory entry contains a pointer to the first block of the file.
• Each block contains a pointer to the next.
• Horrible for random access.
• Not used.

FAT (file allocation table)

• Used by dos and windows (but NT/2000/XP also support the superior NTFS).
• Directory entry points to first block (i.e. specifies the block number).
• A FAT is maintained in memory having one (word) entry for each disk block. The entry for block N contains the block number of the next block in the same file as N.
• This is linked but the links are stored separately.
• Time to access a random block is still is linear in size of file but now all the references are to this one table which is in memory. So it is bad for random accesses, but not nearly as horrible as plain linked allocation.
• Size of table is one word per disk block. If blocks are of size 4K and the FAT uses 4-byte words, the table is one megabyte for each disk gigabyte. Large but perhaps not prohibitive.
• If blocks are of size 512 bytes (the sector size of most disks) then the table is 8 megs per gig, which is probably prohibitive.

Why don't we mimic the idea of paging and have a table giving for each block of the file, where on the disk that file block is stored? In other words a ``file block table'' mapping its file block to its corresponding disk block. This is the idea of (the first part of) the unix inode solution, which we study next.

I-Nodes

• Used by unix/linux.
  
  
• Directory entry points to i-node (index-node).
  
  
• I-Node points to first few data blocks, often called direct blocks.
  
  
• I-Node also points to an indirect block, which points to disk blocks.
  
  
• I-Node also points to a double indirect, which points an indirect ...
  
  
• For some implementations there are triple indirect as well.
  
  
• The i-node is in memory for open files. So references to direct blocks take just one I/O.
  
  
• For big files most references require two I/Os (indirect + data).
  
  
• For huge files most references require three I/Os (double indirect, indirect, and data).

Algorithm to retrieve a block

Let's say that you want to find block N
(N=0 is the "first" block) and that
  There are D direct pointers in the inode numbered 0..(D-1)
  There are K pointers in each indirect block numbered 0..K-1

If N < D            // This is a direct block in the i-node
   use direct pointer N in the i-node
else if N < D + K   // This is one of the K blocks pointed to by indirect blk
   use pointer D in the inode to get the indirect block
   use pointer N-D in the indirect block to get block N
else   // This is one of the K*K blocks obtained via the double indirect block
   use pointer D+1 in the inode to get the double indirect block
   let P = (N-(D+K)) DIV K      // Which single indirect block to use
   use pointer P to get the indirect block B
   let Q = (N-(D+K)) MOD K      // Which pointer in B to use
   use pointer Q in B to get block N