CS162

Operating Systems and

Systems Programming
Lecture 19

File Systems continued

Distributed Systems

April 5, 2006
Prof. Anthony D. Joseph
http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs162
 Review: Disk Scheduling
• Disk can do only one request at a time; What order do
you choose to do queued requests?
User

3,10
Head

2,2
5,2
7,2

2,1
2,3
Requests
• FIFO Order
– Fair among requesters, but order of arrival may be to
random spots on the disk ⇒ Very long seeks
• SSTF: Shortest seek time first

Disk Head
– Pick the request that’s closest on the disk 3
– Although called SSTF, today must include
rotational delay in calculation, since 2
1
rotation can be as long as seek
– Con: SSTF good at reducing seeks, but 4
may lead to starvation
• SCAN: Implements an Elevator Algorithm: take the
closest request in the direction of travel
– No starvation, but retains flavor of SSTF
• C-SCAN: Circular-Scan: only goes in one direction
– Skips any requests on the way back
– Fairer than SCAN, not biased towards pages in middle
4/5/06 Joseph CS162 ©UCB Spring 2006 Lec 19.2
 Review: Access and Usage Patterns
• Access Pattern
– Sequential Access: bytes read in order (“give me the
next X bytes, then give me next, etc”)
» Almost all file access are of this flavor
– Random Access: read/write element out of middle of
array (“give me bytes i—j”)
» Less frequent, but still important. For example, virtual
memory backing file: page of memory stored in file
» Want this to be fast – don’t want to have to read all
bytes to get to the middle of the file
• Usage Pattern
– 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
4/5/06 Joseph CS162 ©UCB Spring 2006 Lec 19.3
 Review: Building File Systems
• 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
• 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
• File System Design Goals:
– Maximize sequential performance
– Easy random access to file
– Easy management of file (growth, truncation, etc)

4/5/06 Joseph CS162 ©UCB Spring 2006 Lec 19.4

 Review: 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)
4/5/06 Joseph CS162 ©UCB Spring 2006 Lec 19.5
 Review: File Allocation for Cray-1 DEMOS
disk group base size base size disk group
basesize 1,3,2
1,3,2
1,3,3 1,3,3
1,3,4 1,3,4
1,3,5 1,3,5
1,3,6 1,3,6
1,3,7 1,3,7
1,3,8 indirect 1,3,8
file header 1,3,9 file header block group 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
• 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
• 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

4/5/06 Joseph CS162 ©UCB Spring 2006 Lec 19.6

 Review: UNIX BSD 4.2

• Same as BSD 4.2 (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

4/5/06 Joseph CS162 ©UCB Spring 2006 Lec 19.7

 Goals for Today

• Finish Discussion of File Systems

– Structure, Naming, Directories
• File Caching
• Data Durability
• Beginning of Distributed Systems Discussion

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.
4/5/06 Joseph CS162 ©UCB Spring 2006 Lec 19.8
 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
4/5/06 Joseph CS162 ©UCB Spring 2006 Lec 19.9
 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

4/5/06 Joseph CS162 ©UCB Spring 2006 Lec 19.10

 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)

4/5/06 Joseph CS162 ©UCB Spring 2006 Lec 19.11

 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
4/5/06 Joseph CS162 ©UCB Spring 2006 Lec 19.12
 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”)

4/5/06 Joseph CS162 ©UCB Spring 2006 Lec 19.13

 Administrivia
• Project zero-sum game:
– In the end, we will evaluate how to distribute project
points to partners
» Normally, we are pretty even about this
» However, under extreme circumstances, can give many of
points to working members and take them away from non-
working members
– This is a zero-sum game!
• Make sure to do your project evaluations
– This is supposed to be an individual evaluation, not done
together as a group
– This is part of the information that we use to decide
how to distributed points
• Midterm II
– April 26th
• Final Exam
– May 18th, 12:30 pm – 3:30 pm

4/5/06 Joseph CS162 ©UCB Spring 2006 Lec 19.14

 Where are inodes stored?

• In early UNIX and DOS/Windows’ FAT file

system, headers stored in special array in
outermost cylinders
– Header not stored near the data blocks. To read a
small file, seek to get header, seek 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”)

4/5/06 Joseph CS162 ©UCB Spring 2006 Lec 19.15

 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:
» 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
» Reliability: whatever happens to the disk, you can
find many of the files (even if directories
disconnected)

4/5/06 Joseph CS162 ©UCB Spring 2006 Lec 19.16

 In-Memory File System Structures

• Open system call:

– Resolves file name, finds file control block (inode)
– Makes entries in per-process and system-wide tables
– Returns index (called “file handle”) in open-file table

• Read/write system calls:

– Use file handle to locate inode
– Perform appropriate reads or writes
4/5/06 Joseph CS162 ©UCB Spring 2006 Lec 19.17
 File System Caching
• Key Idea: Exploit locality by caching data in memory
– Name translations: Mapping from paths→inodes
– Disk blocks: Mapping from block address→disk content
• Buffer Cache: Memory used to cache kernel resources,
including disk blocks and name translations
– Can contain “dirty” blocks (blocks yet on disk)
• Replacement policy? LRU
– Can afford overhead of timestamps for each disk block
– Advantages:
» Works very well for name translation
» Works well in general as long as memory is big enough to
accommodate a host’s working set of files.
– Disadvantages:
» Fails when some application scans through file system,
thereby flushing the cache with data used only once
» Example: find . –exec grep foo {} \;
• Other Replacement Policies?
– Some systems allow applications to request other policies
– Example, ‘Use Once’:
» File system can discard blocks as soon as they are used
4/5/06 Joseph CS162 ©UCB Spring 2006 Lec 19.18
 File System Caching (con’t)
• Cache Size: How much memory should the OS allocate
to the buffer cache vs virtual memory?
– Too much memory to the file system cache ⇒ won’t be
able to run many applications at once
– Too little memory to file system cache ⇒ many
applications may run slowly (disk caching not effective)
– Solution: adjust boundary dynamically so that the disk
access rates for paging and file access are balanced
• Read Ahead Prefetching: fetch sequential blocks early
– Key Idea: exploit fact that most common file access is
sequential by prefetching subsequent disk blocks ahead of
current read request (if they are not already in memory)
– Elevator algorithm can efficiently interleave groups of
prefetches from concurrent applications
– How much to prefetch?
» Too many imposes delays on requests by other applications
» Too few causes many seeks (and rotational delays) among
concurrent file requests
4/5/06 Joseph CS162 ©UCB Spring 2006 Lec 19.19
 File System Caching (con’t)
• Delayed Writes: Writes to files not immediately sent
out to disk
– Instead, write() copies data from user space buffer
to kernel buffer (in cache)
» Enabled by presence of buffer cache: can leave written
file blocks in cache for a while
» If some other application tries to read data before
written to disk, file system will read from cache
– Flushed to disk periodically (e.g. in UNIX, every 30 sec)
– Advantages:
» Disk scheduler can efficiently order lots of requests
» Disk allocation algorithm can be run with correct size
value for a file
» Some files need never get written to disk! (e..g temporary
scratch files written /tmp often don’t exist for 30 sec)
– Disadvantages
» What if system crashes before file has been written out?
» Worse yet, what if system crashes before a directory file
has been written out? (lose pointer to inode!)
4/5/06 Joseph CS162 ©UCB Spring 2006 Lec 19.20
 Important “ilities”
• Availability: the probability that the system can
accept and process requests
– Often measured in “nines” of probability. So, a 99.9%
probability is considered “3-nines of availability”
– Key idea here is independence of failures
• Durability: the ability of a system to recover data
despite faults
– This idea is fault tolerance applied to data
– Doesn’t necessarily imply availability: information on
pyramids was very durable, but could not be accessed
until discovery of Rosetta Stone
• Reliability: the ability of a system or component to
perform its required functions under stated conditions
for a specified period of time (IEEE definition)
– Usually stronger than simply availability: means that the
system is not only “up”, but also working correctly
– Includes availability, security, fault tolerance/durability
– Must make sure data survives system crashes, disk
crashes, other problems
4/5/06 Joseph CS162 ©UCB Spring 2006 Lec 19.21
BREAK
 How to make file system durable?
• Disk blocks contain Reed-Solomon error correcting
codes (ECC) to deal with small defects in disk drive
– Can allow recovery of data from small media defects
• Make sure writes survive in short term
– Either abandon delayed writes or
– use special, battery-backed RAM (called non-volatile RAM
or NVRAM) for dirty blocks in buffer cache.
• Make sure that data survives in long term
– Need to replicate! More than one copy of data!
– Important element: independence of failure
» Could put copies on one disk, but if disk head fails…
» Could put copies on different disks, but if server fails…
» Could put copies on different servers, but if building is
struck by lightning….
» Could put copies on servers in different continents…
• RAID: Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks
– Data stored on multiple disks (redundancy)
– Either in software or hardware
» In hardware case, done by disk controller; file system may
not even know that there is more than one disk in use
4/5/06 Joseph CS162 ©UCB Spring 2006 Lec 19.23
 Hardware RAID: Subsystem Organization

single board
host array disk
CPU
adapter controller controller

manages interface single board

to host, DMA disk
controller
control, buffering,
parity logic
single board
disk
physical device controller
control

single board
disk
• Some systems duplicate controller
all hardware, namely
controllers, busses, etc. often piggy-backed
in small format devices

4/5/06 Joseph CS162 ©UCB Spring 2006 Lec 19.24

 RAID 1: Disk Mirroring/Shadowing

recovery
group
• Each disk is fully duplicated onto its "shadow“
– For high I/O rate, high availability environments
– Most expensive solution: 100% capacity overhead
• Bandwidth sacrificed on write:
– Logical write = two physical writes
– Highest bandwidth when disk heads and rotation fully
synchronized (hard to do exactly)
• Reads may be optimized
– Can have two independent reads to same data
• Recovery:
– Disk failure ⇒ replace disk and copy data to new disk
– Hot Spare: idle disk already attached to system to be
used for immediate replacement
4/5/06 Joseph CS162 ©UCB Spring 2006 Lec 19.25
 RAID 5+: High I/O Rate Parity
Stripe
• Data stripped across Unit
multiple disks
D0 D1 D2 D3 P0
– Successive blocks
stored on successive Increasing
(non-parity) disks D4 D5 D6 P1 D7 Logical
Disk
– Increased bandwidth Addresses
over single disk D8 D9 P2 D10 D11
• Parity block (in green)
constructed by XORing D12 P3 D13 D14 D15
data bocks in stripe
– P0=D0⊕D1⊕D2⊕D3 P4 D16 D17 D18 D19
– Can destroy any one
disk and still
reconstruct data D20 D21 D22 D23 P5
– Suppose D3 fails, Disk 1 Disk 2 Disk 3 Disk 4 Disk 5
then can reconstruct:
D3=D0⊕D1⊕D2⊕P0
• Later in term: talk about spreading information widely
across internet for durability.
4/5/06 Joseph CS162 ©UCB Spring 2006 Lec 19.26
 Remote File Systems: Virtual File System (VFS)

• VFS: Virtual abstraction similar to local file system

– Instead of “inodes” has “vnodes”
– Compatible with a variety of local and remote file systems
» provides 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
– The API is to the VFS interface, rather than any specific
type of file system
4/5/06 Joseph CS162 ©UCB Spring 2006 Lec 19.27
 Network File System (NFS)
• Three Layers for NFS system
– UNIX file-system interface: open, read, write, close
calls + file descriptors
– VFS layer: distinguishes local from remote files
» Calls the NFS protocol procedures for remote requests
– NFS service layer: bottom layer of the architecture
» Implements the NFS protocol
• NFS Protocol: remote procedure calls (RPC) for file
operations on server
– Reading/searching a directory
– manipulating links and directories
– accessing file attributes/reading and writing files
• NFS servers are stateless; each request provides all
arguments require for execution
• Modified data must be committed to the server’s disk
before results are returned to the client
– lose some of the advantages of caching
– Can lead to weird results: write file on one client, read
on other, get old data
4/5/06 Joseph CS162 ©UCB Spring 2006 Lec 19.28
 Schematic View of NFS Architecture

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 Conclusion
• Cray DEMOS: optimization for sequential access
– Inode holds set of disk ranges, similar to segmentation
• 4.2 BSD Multilevel index files
– Inode contains pointers to actual blocks, indirect blocks,
double indirect blocks, etc
– Optimizations for sequential access: start new files in
open ranges of free blocks
– Rotational Optimization
• Naming: act of translating from user-visible names to
actual system resources
– Directories used for naming for local file systems
• Important system properties
– Availability: how often is the resource available?
– Durability: how well is data preserved against faults?
– Reliability: how often is resource performing correctly?
• RAID: Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks
– RAID1: mirroring, RAID5: Parity block
• VFS: Virtual File System layer
– NFS: An example use of the VFS layer
4/5/06 Joseph CS162 ©UCB Spring 2006 Lec 19.30