Week 11

FAT32 Boot Sector,

Locating Files and Dirs

Classes COP4610 / CGS5765

Florida State University

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Outline

Recap of last week’s lecture

 Introduction to project 3
 Introduction to FAT32

Starting Project 3
 How to parse the boot sector
 More on serialization
 Finding the root directory and files
 Understanding open, close, read, write

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Recap – Intro to Project 3
and FAT32

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Project 3

You will create a user-space utility to

manipulate a FAT32 file system image
 No more kernel programming!

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FAT32 Manipulation Utility

Utility only recognizes the following built-in

commands:

open
cd

close
ls

create
mkdir

rm
rmdir

size
read

write
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File System Image

Manipulation utility will work on a pre-

configured FAT32 file system image
 Actually a file

File system image will have raw FAT32 data
structures inside
 Just like looking at the raw bytes inside of a disk
partition

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File System Image

Your FAT32 manipulation utility will have to

 Open the FAT32 file system image
 Read parts of the FAT32 file system image and
interpret the raw bytes inside to service your
utility’s file system commands…

…just like a file system!

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Terminology

Byte – 8 bits of data, the smallest

addressable unit in modern processors

Sector – Smallest addressable unit on a
storage device. Usually this is 512 bytes

Cluster – FAT32-specific term. A group of
sectors representing a chunk of data

FAT – Stands for file allocation table and is a
map of files to data

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FAT32 Disk Layout

3 main regions…

Reserved FAT Data

Region Region Region

Track Disk arm

Sector
Reserved Region

Reserved Region – Includes the boot

sector, the extended boot sector, the file
system information sector, and a few other
reserved sectors
Reserved FAT Data
Region Region Region

Additional
FS Information
Boot Sector Reserved Sectors
Sector
(Optional)
FAT Region

FAT Region – A map used to traverse the

data region. Contains mappings from cluster
locations to cluster locations

Reserved FAT Data

Region Region Region

Copy of File Allocation

File Allocation Table #1
Table #1
Data Region

Data Region – Using the addresses from

the FAT region, contains actual file/directory
data

Reserved FAT Data

Region Region Region

Data until end of partition

Where to begin?

1. Mount the file system image with the OS

FAT32 driver and take a look around
2. Find the FAT32 spec from Microsoft inside
the image, read it

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File System Image Mount Example

$> sudo mount -o loop fat32.img /mnt

$> cd /mnt

fat32.img is your image file

/mnt is your mounting directory

Once the file is mounted, you can go into the
/mnt directory and issue all your normal file
system commands like:
 ls, cat, cd, …

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Hint

As you work, it might make sense to first take

a look at the raw file system image

Hexedit to the rescue!

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Hexedit

$> hexedit [filename]

View files in hexadecimal or ASCII

Why wouldn’t you want to view the file
system image file in your regular editor?

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Hexedit

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 Line
Hexedit numbers in
hex

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Hexedit Content in
hex

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 Content in
Hexedit printable
ASCII

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Hexadecimal Hints

Hex is base 16 – one hexadecimal can

represent 0-15

It takes 4 binary bits to represent values 0-15
 0000 = 0
 1111 = 15

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Hexadecimal Hints

If it takes 4 bits to represent one

hexadecimal number, it takes 8 bits to
represent two hexadecimal numbers
 8 bits = 1 byte

Two hex numbers together symbolize one
byte
 That’s why hex numbers are in groups of two

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Endianness

FAT32 is represented in little endian byte

order
 Reading left to right, you encounter least-
significant byte first
 What 32-bit number is this? 0x0000040 or
0x40000000?

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Endianness

Why are characters in order (readable) if

some numbers are not?

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Endianness

You must account for little endianness

across bytes when reading in numbers of
size larger than one byte
 Characters are only one byte, no re-ordering
necessary

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Starting Project 3

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Parse the Boot Sector

We need to gather important information

about the file system in the boot sector

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Important Boot Sector Information

Size of each region

 BPB_BytesPerSec
 BPB_SecPerClus
 BPB_RsvdSecCnt
 BPB_NumFATS
 BPB_FATSz32

Root directory (first directory in tree)
 BPB_RootClus

Warning: this list is not exhaustive!
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Important Boot Sector Information

BPB_BytesPerSector
 Offset 11, size 2 bytes
 0x0200 = 512

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Next Steps

After you have parsed the boot sector and

saved key values, you may want to find the
root directory
 Everything starts here…

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Finding the Root Directory

1. Figure out the root directory cluster

number from the boot sector

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Finding the Root Directory

BPB_RootClus
 Offset 44, size 4 bytes
 0x00000002 = 2

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Finding the Root Directory

2. Figure out where the root directory starts in

the data region, where N=cluster number
 (We just found N=2)

FirstSectorofCluster = ((N – 2) * BPB_SecPerClus) +

FirstDataSector;

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Finding the Root Directory

3. Read in the root directory structure located

at the first sector of the root directory cluster

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Finding the Root Directory

4. Does the root directory span more than one

cluster? Look up the next cluster number
in the FAT.
 Find ThisFATSecNum and ThisFATEntOffset for
the current cluster number
 Go to ThisFATSecNum and read the 32-bit
unsigned value starting at offset
ThisFATEntOffset
 FAT will either give you the next cluster number in
the directory or the End of Cluster Chain value

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What exactly is the FAT?

Files and directories may span multiple

clusters

FAT is a database or array of pointers to the
next cluster number of the file or directory

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Finding the Root Directory

Next cluster number of root directory in FAT

 EoC=0x0FFFFFF8 – directory does not go on

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Finding the Root Directory

Next cluster number of root directory in FAT

 EoC=0x0FFFFFF8 – directory does not go on

…otherwise this
would be the
next cluster
number…

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Directory Structure

Each directory is made up of one or more

directory entries that contain
 File name (or sub-directory name)
 Attributes
 First cluster number

Cluster number where file or directory in question starts
 More…

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Finding Files and Directories

Files and sub-directory entries can be found

by going to their first cluster number
 Found in the directory entry

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Finding fatgen103.pdf

Suppose we have read in the root direcotry

and want to find the file ‘fatgen103.pdf’

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Finding fatgen103.pdf

Suppose we have read in the root direcotry

and want to find the file ‘fatgen103.pdf’

Directory entry for

fatgen103.pdf

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Finding fatgen103.pdf

Entry’s first cluster number

 0x000011 = 17

High word Low word

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Finding fatgen103.pdf

Plug N=17 into FirstSectorofCluster

equation, go to that sector…

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Finding fatgen103.pdf

Does the file continue after this cluster?

 Look up current cluster number 17 in FAT…
Continues to
cluster 0x12=18!

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Summary of Finding Files/Dirs

1. Find first cluster number in directory entry of

interesting file or directory
2. Figure out the sector to read using cluster number
and FirstSectorofCluster equation
3. Read that cluster
4. Figure out if file or directory continues past cluster
by looking up FAT[current cluster number]
 If EoC mark stop
 Else go to 3 with cluster=FAT[current cluster number]

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File System Utility
Operations

Open, Close, Read, Write

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Starting our Utility

$>./fat32_reader fat32.img
/]

Fat32_reader is name of our utility

Should return a different prompt (like “/]”) to
symbolize that user is inside utility

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Handling Open Files

An open file is a file we allow I/O operations

to be performed on
 read
 write

To handle open files, we must maintain a
table of files that are open
Opening Files

/] open “fatinfo.txt” rw

If “fatinfo.txt” is found in the current

directory, open “fatinfo.txt”
 In order to find fatinfo.txt, you must be able to
interpret the current directory and determine
whether fatinfo.txt is part of that directory

Once you open fatinfo.txt, store its name (at
least) in the open file table
I/O on Open Files

/] read “fatinfo.txt” 0 100

Only allow the read if fatinfo.txt is open

In order to read fatinfo.txt, you must look
into the open file table, look up the address
of fatinfo.txt (or store it with its name), and
read enough of the data clusters to satisfy
the read request
I/O on Open Files

/] write “fatinfo.txt” 0 “Hello”

If write stays within the cluster

 Just write data

If write goes beyond cluster
1. Find a free cluster, remember as
next_cluster_number
2. Change FAT[current_cluster] from EoC to
next_cluster_number
3. Change FAT[next_cluster_number] to EoC
4. Write the data in the cluster next_cluster_number

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Closing Files

/] close “fatinfo.txt”

Remove this file’s entry from the open file

table

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To Do

Write code to parse the boot directory

 Cannot go anywhere without this code

Write code to open and close files

Write code to read directories and files

Try writing to files and directories

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Next Time

Discussion of other file operations

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