CS162

Operating Systems and

Systems Programming
Lecture 18

File Systems, Naming, and Directories

April 3, 2006
Prof. Anthony D. Joseph
[Link]
 Track
Review: Magnetic Disk Sector
Characteristic
• Cylinder: all the tracks under the
head at a given point on all surface Head
• Read/write data is a three-stage Cylinder
process: Platter
– Seek time: position the head/arm over the proper track
(into proper cylinder)
– Rotational latency: wait for the desired sector
to rotate under the read/write head
– Transfer time: transfer a block of bits (sector)
under the read-write head
• Disk Latency = Queueing Time + Controller time +
Seek Time + Rotation Time + Xfer Time
Controller
Hardware
Request

Software

Result
Media Time
Queue
(Seek+Rot+Xfer)
(Device Driver)

• Highest Bandwidth:
– transfer large group of blocks sequentially from one track
4/3/06 Joseph CS162 ©UCB Spring 2006 Lec 18.2
 Review: Building a File System
• File System: Layer of OS that transforms block
interface of disks (or other block devices) into Files,
Directories, etc.
• File System Components
– Disk Management: collecting disk blocks into files
– Naming: Interface to find files by name, not by blocks
– Protection: Layers to keep data secure
– Reliability/Durability: Keeping of files durable despite
crashes, media failures, attacks, etc
• User vs. System View of a File
– User’s view:
» Durable Data Structures
– System’s view (system call interface):
» Collection of Bytes (UNIX)
– System’s view (inside OS):
» Everything inside File System is in whole size blocks
» File is a collection of blocks (a block is a logical transfer
unit, while a sector is the physical transfer unit)
» Block size ≥ sector size; in UNIX, block size is 4KB

4/3/06 Joseph CS162 ©UCB Spring 2006 Lec 18.3

 Review: Disk Management Policies
• Basic entities on a disk:
– File: user-visible group of blocks arranged sequentially in
logical space
– Directory: user-visible index mapping names to files
(next lecture)
• Access disk as linear array of sectors. Two Options:
– Identify sectors as vectors [cylinder, surface, sector].
Sort in cylinder-major order. Not used much anymore.
– Logical Block Addressing (LBA). Every sector has integer
address from zero up to max number of sector.
– Controller translates from address ⇒ physical position
» First case: OS/BIOS must deal with bad sectors
» Second case: hardware shields OS from structure of disk
• Need way to track free disk blocks
– Link free blocks together ⇒ too slow today
– Use bitmap to represent free space on disk
• Need way to structure files: File Header
– Track which blocks belong at which offsets within the
logical file structure
– Optimize placement of files disk blocks to match access
and usage patterns
4/3/06 Joseph CS162 ©UCB Spring 2006 Lec 18.4
 Review: File System Patterns
• How do users access files?
– Sequential Access: bytes read in order (“give me
the next X bytes, then give me next, etc”)
– Random Access: read/write element out of middle
of array (“give me bytes i—j”)
– Content-based Access: (“find me 100 bytes
starting with JOSEPH”)
• What are file sizes?
– Most files are small (for example, .login, .c files)
» A few files are big – nachos, core files, etc.
– However, most files are small – .class’s, .o’s,
.c’s, etc.
– Large files use up most of the disk space and
bandwidth to/from disk
» May seem contradictory, but a few enormous files
are equivalent to an immense # of small files

4/3/06 Joseph CS162 ©UCB Spring 2006 Lec 18.5

 Goals for Today

• File Systems
– Structure, Naming, Directories

Note: Some slides and/or pictures in the following are

adapted from slides ©2005 Silberschatz, Galvin, and Gagne.
Gagne
Many slides generated from my lecture notes by Kubiatowicz.
4/3/06 Joseph CS162 ©UCB Spring 2006 Lec 18.6
 How to organize files on disk
• Goals:
– Maximize sequential performance
– Easy random access to file
– Easy management of file (growth, truncation, etc)
• First Technique: Continuous Allocation
– Use continuous range of blocks in logical block space
» Analogous to base+bounds in virtual memory
» User says in advance how big file will be (disadvantage)
– Search bit-map for space using best fit/first fit
» What if not enough contiguous space for new file?
– File Header Contains:
» First block/LBA in file
» File size (# of blocks)
– Pros: Fast Sequential Access, Easy Random access
– Cons: External Fragmentation/Hard to grow files
» Free holes get smaller and smaller
» Could compact space, but that would be really expensive
• Continuous Allocation used by IBM 360
– Result of allocation and management cost: People would
create a big file, put their file in the middle
4/3/06 Joseph CS162 ©UCB Spring 2006 Lec 18.7
 Linked List Allocation
• Second Technique: Linked List Approach
– Each block, pointer to next on disk

File Header

Null
– Pros: Can grow files dynamically, Free list same as file
– Cons: Bad Sequential Access (seek between each block),
Unreliable (lose block, lose rest of file)
– Serious Con: Bad random access!!!!
– Technique originally from Alto (First PC, built at Xerox)
» No attempt to allocate contiguous blocks

4/3/06 Joseph CS162 ©UCB Spring 2006 Lec 18.8

 Linked Allocation: File-Allocation Table (FAT)

• MSDOS links pages together to create a file

– Links not in pages, but in the File Allocation Table (FAT)
» FAT contains an entry for each block on the disk
» FAT Entries corresponding to blocks of file linked together
– Access properties:
» Sequential access expensive unless FAT cached in memory
» Random access expensive always, but really expensive if
FAT not cached in memory
4/3/06 Joseph CS162 ©UCB Spring 2006 Lec 18.9
 Indexed Allocation

• Third Technique: Indexed Files (Nachos, VMS)

– System Allocates file header block to hold array of
pointers big enough to point to all blocks
» User pre-declares max file size;
– Pros: Can easily grow up to space allocated for index
Random access is fast
– Cons: Clumsy to grow file bigger than table size
Still lots of seeks: blocks may be spread over disk
4/3/06 Joseph CS162 ©UCB Spring 2006 Lec 18.10
 Multilevel Indexed Files (UNIX 4.1)
• Multilevel Indexed Files:
Like multilevel address
translation
(from UNIX 4.1 BSD)
– Key idea: efficient for small
files, but still allow big files

• File hdr contains 13 pointers

– Fixed size table, pointers not all equivalent
– This header is called an “inode” in UNIX
• File Header format:
– First 10 pointers are to data blocks
– Ptr 11 points to “indirect block” containing 256 block ptrs
– Pointer 12 points to “doubly indirect block” containing 256
indirect block ptrs for total of 64K blocks
– Pointer 13 points to a triply indirect block (16M blocks)
4/3/06 Joseph CS162 ©UCB Spring 2006 Lec 18.11
 Multilevel Indexed Files (UNIX 4.1): Discussion

• Basic technique places an upper limit on file size

that is approximately 16Gbytes
– Designers thought this was bigger than anything
anyone would need. Much bigger than a disk at
the time…
– Fallacy: today, EOS producing 2TB of data per
day

• Pointers get filled in dynamically: need to

allocate indirect block only when file grows > 10
blocks
– On small files, no indirection needed

4/3/06 Joseph CS162 ©UCB Spring 2006 Lec 18.12

 Example of Multilevel Indexed Files
• Sample file in multilevel
indexed format:
– How many accesses for
block #23? (assume file
header accessed on open)?
» Two: One for indirect block,
one for data
– How about block #5?
» One: One for data
– Block #340?
» Three: double indirect block,
indirect block, and data
• UNIX 4.1 Pros and cons
– Pros: Simple (more or less)
Files can easily expand (up to a point)
Small files particularly cheap and easy
– Cons: Lots of seeks
Very large files must read many indirect block (four
I/Os per block!)
4/3/06 Joseph CS162 ©UCB Spring 2006 Lec 18.13
 Administrivia

• Thanks for the feedback!

• Feel free to ask questions in lectures and

sections

• Visit my office hours

– M 2-3, Tu 1-2, and by appt

• Plan Ahead: this month will be difficult!!

– Project or exam deadlines every week

4/3/06 Joseph CS162 ©UCB Spring 2006 Lec 18.14

 File Allocation for Cray-1 DEMOS
disk group
basesize
1,3,2
1,3,3
1,3,4 Basic Segmentation Structure:
1,3,5 Each segment contiguous on disk
1,3,6
1,3,7
1,3,8
file header 1,3,9
• DEMOS: File system structure similar to segmentation
– Idea: reduce disk seeks by
» using contiguous allocation in normal case
» but allow flexibility to have non-contiguous allocation
– Cray-1 had 12ns cycle time, so CPU:disk speed ratio about
the same as today (a few million instructions per seek)
• Header: table of base & size (10 “block group” pointers)
– Each block chunk is a contiguous group of disk blocks
– Sequential reads within a block chunk can proceed at high
speed – similar to continuous allocation
• How do you find an available block group?
– Use freelist bitmap to find block of 0’s.
4/3/06 Joseph CS162 ©UCB Spring 2006 Lec 18.16
 Large File Version of DEMOS
base size base size disk group
1,3,2
1,3,3
1,3,4
1,3,5
1,3,6
1,3,7
indirect 1,3,8
file header block group 1,3,9
• What if need much bigger files?
– If need more than 10 groups, set flag in header: BIGFILE
» Each table entry now points to an indirect block group
– Suppose 1000 blocks in a block group ⇒ 80GB max file
» Assuming 8KB blocks, 8byte entries⇒
(10 ptrs×1024 groups/ptr×1000 blocks/group)*8K =80GB
• Discussion of DEMOS scheme
– Pros: Fast sequential access, Free areas merge simply
Easy to find free block groups (when disk not full)
– Cons: Disk full ⇒ No long runs of blocks (fragmentation),
so high overhead allocation/access
– Full disk ⇒ worst of 4.1BSD (lots of seeks) with worst of
continuous allocation (lots of recompaction needed)
4/3/06 Joseph CS162 ©UCB Spring 2006 Lec 18.17
 How to keep DEMOS performing well?
• In many systems, disks are always full
– CS department growth: 300 GB to 1TB in a year
» That’s 2GB/day! (Now at 3—4 TB!)
– How to fix? Announce that disk space is getting low, so
please delete files?
» Don’t really work: people try to store their data faster
– Sidebar: Perhaps we are getting out of this mode with
new disks… However, let’s assume disks full for now
• Solution:
– Don’t let disks get completely full: reserve portion
» Free count = # blocks free in bitmap
» Scheme: Don’t allocate data if count < reserve
– How much reserve do you need?
» In practice, 10% seems like enough
– Tradeoff: pay for more disk, get contiguous allocation
» Since seeks so expensive for performance, this is a very
good tradeoff
4/3/06 Joseph CS162 ©UCB Spring 2006 Lec 18.18
 UNIX BSD 4.2
• Same as BSD 4.1 (same file header and triply indirect
blocks), except incorporated ideas from DEMOS:
– Uses bitmap allocation in place of freelist
– Attempt to allocate files contiguously
– 10% reserved disk space
– Skip-sector positioning (mentioned next slide)
• Problem: When create a file, don’t know how big it
will become (in UNIX, most writes are by appending)
– How much contiguous space do you allocate for a file?
– In Demos, power of 2 growth: once it grows past 1MB,
allocate 2MB, etc
– In BSD 4.2, just find some range of free blocks
» Put each new file at the front of different range
» To expand a file, you first try successive blocks in
bitmap, then choose new range of blocks
– Also in BSD 4.2: store files from same directory near
each other

4/3/06 Joseph CS162 ©UCB Spring 2006 Lec 18.19

 Attack of the Rotational Delay
• Problem 2: Missing blocks due to rotational delay
– Issue: Read one block, do processing, and read next
block. In meantime, disk has continued turning: missed
next block! Need 1 revolution/block!
Skip Sector

Track Buffer
(Holds complete track)
– Solution1: Skip sector positioning (“interleaving”)
» Place the blocks from one file on every other block of a
track: give time for processing to overlap rotation
– Solution2: Read ahead: read next block right after first,
even if application hasn’t asked for it yet.
» This can be done either by OS (read ahead)
» By disk itself (track buffers). Many disk controllers have
internal RAM that allows them to read a complete track
• Important Aside: Modern disks+controllers do many
complex things “under the covers”
– Track buffers, elevator algorithms, bad block filtering
4/3/06 Joseph CS162 ©UCB Spring 2006 Lec 18.20
BREAK
 How do we actually access files?
• All information about a file contained in its file header
– UNIX calls this an “inode”
» Inodes are global resources identified by index (“inumber”)
– Once you load the header structure, all the other blocks
of the file are locatable
• Question: how does the user ask for a particular file?
– One option: user specifies an inode by a number (index).
» Imagine: open(“14553344”)
– Better option: specify by textual name
» Have to map name→inumber
– Another option: Icon
» This is how Apple made its money. Graphical user
interfaces. Point to a file and click.
• Naming: The process by which a system translates from
user-visible names to system resources
– In the case of files, need to translate from strings
(textual names) or icons to inumbers/inodes
– For global file systems, data may be spread over globe⇒
need to translate from strings or icons to some
combination of physical server location and inumber
4/3/06 Joseph CS162 ©UCB Spring 2006 Lec 18.22
 Directories
• Directory: a relation used for naming
– Just a table of (file name, inumber) pairs

• How are directories constructed?

– Directories often stored in files
» Reuse of existing mechanism
» Directory named by inode/inumber like other files
– Needs to be quickly searchable
» Options: Simple list or Hashtable
» Can be cached into memory in easier form to search

• How are directories modified?

– Originally, direct read/write of special file
– System calls for manipulation: mkdir, rmdir
– Ties to file creation/destruction
» On creating a file by name, new inode grabbed and
associated with new file in particular directory

4/3/06 Joseph CS162 ©UCB Spring 2006 Lec 18.23

 Directory Organization

• Directories organized into a hierarchical structure

– Seems standard, but in early 70’s it wasn’t
– Permits much easier organization of data structures

• Entries in directory can be either files or

directories

• Files named by ordered set (e.g., /programs/p/list)

4/3/06 Joseph CS162 ©UCB Spring 2006 Lec 18.24

 Directory Structure

• Not really a hierarchy!

– Many systems allow directory structure to be organized as
an acyclic graph or even a (potentially) cyclic graph
– Hard Links: different names for the same file
» Multiple directory entries point at the same file
– Soft Links: “shortcut” pointers to other files
» Implemented by storing the logical name of actual file
• Name Resolution: The process of converting a logical
name into a physical resource (like a file)
– Traverse succession of directories until reach target file
– Global file system: May be spread across the network
4/3/06 Joseph CS162 ©UCB Spring 2006 Lec 18.25
 Directory Structure (Con’t)
• How many disk accesses to resolve “/my/book/count”?
– Read in file header for root (fixed spot on disk)
– Read in first data bock for root
» Table of file name/index pairs. Search linearly – ok since
directories typically very small
– Read in file header for “my”
– Read in first data block for “my”; search for “book”
– Read in file header for “book”
– Read in first data block for “book”; search for “count”
– Read in file header for “count”

• Current working directory: Per-address-space pointer

to a directory (inode) used for resolving file names
– Allows user to specify relative filename instead of
absolute path (say CWD=“/my/book” can resolve “count”)

4/3/06 Joseph CS162 ©UCB Spring 2006 Lec 18.26

 Where are inodes stored?

• In early UNIX and DOS/Windows’ FAT file

system, headers stored in special array in
outermost cylinders
– Header not stored anywhere near the data blocks.
To read a small file, seek to get header, see
back to data.
– Fixed size, set when disk is formatted. At
formatting time, a fixed number of inodes were
created (They were each given a unique number,
called an “inumber”)

4/3/06 Joseph CS162 ©UCB Spring 2006 Lec 18.27

 Where are inodes stored?

• Later versions of UNIX moved the header

information to be closer to the data blocks
– Often, inode for file stored in same “cylinder
group” as parent directory of the file (makes an ls
of that directory run fast).
– Pros:
» Reliability: whatever happens to the disk, you can
find all of the files (even if directories might be
disconnected)
» UNIX BSD 4.2 puts a portion of the file header
array on each cylinder. For small directories, can
fit all data, file headers, etc in same cylinder⇒no
seeks!
» File headers much smaller than whole block (a few
hundred bytes), so multiple headers fetched from
disk at same time

4/3/06 Joseph CS162 ©UCB Spring 2006 Lec 18.28

 Summary
• File System:
– Transforms blocks into Files and Directories
– Optimize for access and usage patterns
– Maximize sequential access, allow efficient random access
• File (and directory) defined by header
– Called “inode” with index called “inumber”
• Multilevel Indexed Scheme
– Inode contains file info, direct pointers to blocks,
– indirect blocks, doubly indirect, etc..
• DEMOS:
– CRAY-1 scheme like segmentation
– Emphsized contiguous allocation of blocks, but allowed to
use non-contiguous allocation when necessary
• Naming: the process of turning user-visible names into
resources (such as files)

4/3/06 Joseph CS162 ©UCB Spring 2006 Lec 18.29