Ch11 file system implementation

OPERATING SYSTEM
Chapter 12: File System Implementation

Chapter 12: File System Implementation
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File-System Structure
File-System Implementation
Directory Implementation
Allocation Methods
Free-Space Management
Efficiency and Performance
Recovery
NFS
Example: WAFL File System

Objectives
• To describe the details of implementing local file systems
and directory structures
• To describe the implementation of remote file systems

• To discuss block allocation and free-block algorithms and
trade-offs

File-System Structure
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File structure
– Logical storage unit
– Collection of related information

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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

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Disk provides in-place rewrite and random access
– I/O transfers performed in blocks of sectors (usually 512 bytes)

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File control block – storage structure consisting of information about a file
Device driver controls the physical device
File system organized into layers

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
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Logical layers can be implemented by any coding method according to OS designer

 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 40 types, with extended
file system ext2 and ext3 leading; plus distributed file systems, etc)
 New ones still arriving – ZFS, GoogleFS, Oracle ASM, FUSE

File-System Implementation
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We have system calls at the API level, but how do we implement their functions?
– On-disk and in-memory structures

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Boot control block contains info needed by system to boot OS from that volume
– Needed if volume contains OS, usually first block of volume

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Volume control block (superblock, master file table) contains volume details
– Total # of blocks, # of free blocks, block size, free block pointers or array

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Directory structure organizes the files
– Names and inode numbers, master file table

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Per-file File Control Block (FCB) contains many details about the file
– Inode number, permissions, size, dates
– NFTS stores into in master file table using relational DB structures

In-Memory File System Structures
• Mount table storing file system mounts, mount points, file system types
• The following figure illustrates the necessary file system structures
provided by the operating systems
• Figure 12-3(a) refers to opening a file
• Figure 12-3(b) refers to reading a file
• Plus buffers hold data blocks from secondary storage
• Open returns a file handle for subsequent use
• Data from read eventually copied to specified user process memory
address

In-Memory File System Structures

Partitions and Mounting
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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

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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

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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

Virtual File Systems
• Virtual File Systems (VFS) on Unix provide an object-oriented way of
implementing file systems
• VFS allows the same system call interface (the API) to be used for different
types of file systems
– Separates file-system generic operations from implementation details
– Implementation can be one of many file systems types, or network file system
• Implements vnodes which hold inodes or network file details

– Then dispatches operation to appropriate file system implementation routines

• The API is to the VFS interface, rather than any specific type of file system

Schematic View of Virtual File System

Virtual File System Implementation
• For example, Linux has four object types:
– inode, file, superblock, dentry

• VFS defines set of operations on the objects that must be
implemented
– Every object has a pointer to a function table
• Function table has addresses of routines to implement that function on that
object

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 Methods - Contiguous
• An allocation method refers to how disk blocks are
allocated for files:
• Contiguous allocation – 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 for file, knowing file size, external
fragmentation, need for compaction off-line (downtime) or on-line

Contiguous Allocation
• Mapping from logical to physical

Q

LA/512
R
Block to be accessed = Q + starting address
Displacement into block = R

Contiguous Allocation of Disk Space

Extent-Based Systems
• Many newer file systems (i.e., Veritas File System) use a
modified contiguous allocation scheme
• Extent-based file systems allocate disk blocks in extents

• An extent is a contiguous block of disks
– Extents are allocated for file allocation
– A file consists of one or more extents

Allocation Methods - Linked
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Linked allocation – each file a linked list of blocks
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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

FAT (File Allocation Table) variation
– Beginning of volume has table, indexed by block number
– Much like a linked list, but faster on disk and cacheable
– New block allocation simple

Linked Allocation
• Each file is a linked list of disk blocks: blocks may be
scattered anywhere on the disk
block =

pointer

Linked Allocation
• Mapping
Q
LA/511
R
Block to be accessed is the Qth block in the linked chain of blocks
representing the file.
Displacement into block = R + 1

Allocation Methods - Indexed
• Indexed allocation
– Each file has its own index block(s) of pointers to its data blocks

• Logical view

index table

Combined Scheme: UNIX UFS
(4K bytes per block, 32-bit addresses)
Note: More index
blocks than can be
addressed with 32-bit
file pointer

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

Performance (Cont.)
• Adding instructions to the execution path to save one disk
I/O is reasonable
– Intel Core i7 Extreme Edition 990x (2011) at 3.46Ghz = 159,000
MIPS
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instructions_per_second

– Typical disk drive at 250 I/Os per second
• 159,000 MIPS / 250 = 630 million instructions during one disk I/O

– Fast SSD drives provide 60,000 IOPS
• 159,000 MIPS / 60,000 = 2.65 millions instructions during one disk I/O

Free-Space Management
• File system maintains free-space list to track available blocks/clusters
– (Using term “block” for simplicity)

• Bit vector or bit map (n blocks)
0

1

2

n-1

bit[i] =



…
1  block[i] free
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 (Cont.)
• Bit map requires extra space
– Example:

block size = 4KB = 212 bytes
disk size = 240 bytes (1 terabyte)
n = 240/212 = 228 bits (or 256 MB)
if clusters of 4 blocks -> 64MB of memory
• Easy to get contiguous files
• Linked list (free list)
– Cannot get contiguous space easily
– No waste of space
– No need to traverse the entire list (if # free blocks recorded)

Linked Free Space List on Disk

• 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-blockpointers (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

• Space Maps
– Used in ZFS
– Consider meta-data I/O on very large file systems
• Full data structures like bit maps couldn’t 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:
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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
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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

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The transactions in the log are asynchronously written to the file system structures
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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

The Sun Network File System (NFS)
• An implementation and a specification of a software system
for accessing remote files across LANs (or WANs)
• The implementation is part of the Solaris and SunOS
operating systems running on Sun workstations using an
unreliable datagram protocol (UDP/IP protocol and Ethernet

NFS (Cont.)
• Interconnected workstations viewed as a set of independent
machines with independent file systems, which allows sharing
among these file systems in a transparent manner
– A remote directory is mounted over a local file system directory
• The mounted directory looks like an integral subtree of the local file system,
replacing the subtree descending from the local directory

– Specification of the remote directory for the mount operation is
nontransparent; the host name of the remote directory has to be
provided
• Files in the remote directory can then be accessed in a transparent manner

– Subject to access-rights accreditation, potentially any file system (or
directory within a file system), can be mounted remotely on top of any
local directory

NFS (Cont.)
• NFS is designed to operate in a heterogeneous environment of different
machines, operating systems, and network architectures; the NFS
specifications independent of these media
• This independence is achieved through the use of RPC primitives built
on top of an External Data Representation (XDR) protocol used between
two implementation-independent interfaces
• The NFS specification distinguishes between the services provided by a
mount mechanism and the actual remote-file-access services

Three Independent File Systems

Mounting in NFS

Mounts

Cascading mounts

NFS Mount Protocol
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Establishes initial logical connection between server and client
Mount operation includes name of remote directory to be mounted and name of server
machine storing it
– Mount request is mapped to corresponding RPC and forwarded to mount server running on
server machine
– Export list – specifies local file systems that server exports for mounting, along with names of
machines that are permitted to mount them

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Following a mount request that conforms to its export list, the server returns a file
handle—a key for further accesses
File handle – a file-system identifier, and an inode number to identify the mounted
directory within the exported file system
The mount operation changes only the user’s view and does not affect the server side

NFS Protocol
• Provides a set of remote procedure calls for remote file operations. The
procedures support the following operations:
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searching for a file within a directory
reading a set of directory entries
manipulating links and directories
accessing file attributes
reading and writing files

• NFS servers are stateless; each request has to provide a full set of
arguments (NFS V4 is just coming available – very different, stateful)
• Modified data must be committed to the server’s disk before results are
returned to the client (lose advantages of caching)
• The NFS protocol does not provide concurrency-control mechanisms

Three Major Layers of NFS Architecture
• UNIX file-system interface (based on the open, read, write, and close
calls, and file descriptors)
• Virtual File System (VFS) layer – distinguishes local files from remote ones,
and local files are further distinguished according to their file-system types
– The VFS activates file-system-specific operations to handle local requests
according to their file-system types
– Calls the NFS protocol procedures for remote requests

• NFS service layer – bottom layer of the architecture
– Implements the NFS protocol

Schematic View of NFS Architecture

NFS Path-Name Translation
• Performed by breaking the path into component names and
performing a separate NFS lookup call for every pair of
component name and directory vnode
• To make lookup faster, a directory name lookup cache on
the client’s side holds the vnodes for remote directory
names

NFS Remote Operations
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Nearly one-to-one correspondence between regular UNIX system calls and the NFS
protocol RPCs (except opening and closing files)

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NFS adheres to the remote-service paradigm, but employs buffering and caching
techniques for the sake of performance

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File-blocks cache – when a file is opened, the kernel checks with the remote server
whether to fetch or revalidate the cached attributes
– Cached file blocks are used only if the corresponding cached attributes are up to date

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File-attribute cache – the attribute cache is updated whenever new attributes arrive
from the server

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Clients do not free delayed-write blocks until the server confirms that the data have
been written to disk

Example: WAFL File System
• Used on Network Appliance “Filers” – distributed file system
appliances
• “Write-anywhere file layout”
• Serves up NFS, CIFS, http, ftp
• Random I/O optimized, write optimized
– NVRAM for write caching

• Similar to Berkeley Fast File System, with extensive
modifications

Ch11 file system implementation

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