Notes/Operating Systems/File Systems Management.md

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---
type: theoretical
backlinks:
- "[[Memory Management]]"
---
A file system consists of two parts
- Collection of files
- A directory structure -> provides information about all files in the system
## File
- Logical view -> the unit of storing data
Files are mapped by the OS onto physical nonvolatile devices
**Types:**
- Data
- Numeric
- Character
- Binary
- Program
**Attributes**:
- Name
- Identifier (unique number)
- Type[^2]
- Location -> pointer
- Size
- Protection (permissions)
- Datetime and user id
All of these are stored in **i-nodes**.
### INodes
- Size in biytes
- Access permissions
- Type
- Creation and last access datetime
- Owner ID
- Group ID
- Hard link count
### Logical Definition
- Named collection of related information
- Files may have free form (text files) or can be rigidly formatted[^1]
### Operations
- Create
- Write
- Read
- Seek (reposition within file)
- Delete
- Truncate - shorten or cut off by removing data from the end
- Open (load to memory)
- Close (unload)
### Open files
Tracked by an **open-file table**, counted by **file-open count**.
In order to [avoid race conditions](Inter-Process%20Communication.md#Avoiding%20race%20conditions), we need to lock the files somehow.
- **Shared lock** -> several processes can acquire concurrently, used for reads
- **Exclusive lock** -> writer lock
- Mandatory vs. advisory -> access is denied depending on locks held and requested vs. processes can find status of locks and decide what to do
### Structure
Could be many:
- None
- Simple record
- Lines
- Fixed length
- Variable length
- Complex
- Formatted document
- Relocatable load file [^3]
## Directories
Collection of nodes containing information about all files. Also resides on disk.
**Operations**:
- Search for a file
- Create a file
- Delete a file
- List a directory
- Rename a file
- Traverse file system
### Single level directory
A single directory for all users.
Clearly, we need unique names, which can become a problem real fast. That shit is gonna grow super big.
### Two-level directory
Users have different directories. In Linux -> `/home/user` is separate, allowing for the same file names. Linux, however, uses a multi-level:
### Tree-Structured Directories
- Efficient searching
- Grouping
- Absolute v. relative path
### Acyclic-Graph
Have shared subdirectories and files. Symlinks achieve this.
### Structure
In Linux, it is a table (a file) which stores:
- File name
- Inode
## Symlinks
**Hard** vs **Soft**. Hard is a literal copy of the file but keep the same inode info, while soft is just a pointer.
>[!IMPORTANT]
>We only allow links to files to avoid cycles Every time a new link is added we also use a cycle detection algorithm to determine whether it is OK
## Disk
Can be subdivided into **partitions**.
Disk/partition can be used **raw** (no file system) or can be **formatted**. The entity containing the file system is known as a volume.
> [!NOTE]- Typical fs organization
> ![](Pasted%20image%2020250505144352.png)
### Layout
![](Pasted%20image%2020250505155546.png)
- **Boot block**
- Contains initial bootstrap program to load the OS
- Typically the first sector reads another program from the next few sectors
- **Super block** - state of the file system
- Type -> ext3,ext4,FAT, etc.
- Size -> Number of blocks
- Block size
- Block group information -> number of block groups in file system
- Free block count
- Free inode count
- Inode size
- FS mount info
- Journal info
### Free space management
Unix uses a bitmap to show free disk blocks. Zero=free, one=in use
## Access lists and groups
Read, write and execute.
Three classes of users on Linux
1. Owner -> 7 (Read Write Execute)
2. Group -> 6 (RW)
3. Public -> 1 (X)
## Blocks
The IDs of data blocks are stored in [INodes](File%20Systems%20Management.md#INodes), the IDs of the first 12 blocks are stored in direct reference fields.
![](Pasted%20image%2020250505154746.png)
### Allocation
- Contiguous -> Stored in a single block
- Linked Allocation -> blocks contain a pointer to the next one (slower access)
- Indexed -> Each file has an index block that stores pointers to all its data blocks
### Groups
Subdivision of the entire disk or partition
Has:
- A block bitmap
- An inode bitmap
- An inode table holding the actual inodes
> [!INFO]
> Default block group size in ext4 is 128MB
## Journaling
Ensure the integrity of the file system by keeping track of changes before they are actually applied to the main file system
Phases:
- Write-ahead logging -> before any changes are made to the file system
- Commit -> shit actually happens
- Crash recovery -> we can replay the journal to apply any uncommitted changes
Types:
- Write-Ahead Logging (WAL) -> logs changes before they are applied to the file system
- Metadata journaling -> only metadata is logged. Metadata is restored to a consistent state if crash.
- Full journaling -> both
## Example: EXT4
- Journaling
- Larger file and volume sizes
- Extents -> range of contiguous blocks, reduces fragmentation
- Multiblock allocator -> multiple blocks at once
- `fsck`, optimized file system check
- Pre-allocation
- Checksums -> ensure integrity
## Example: Windows FS
### FAT(32)
File allocation table.
No hard links :C. Directory contains:
- File name -> can be up to 8 characters and extension up to 3
- Attributes (one byte)
![](Pasted%20image%2020250505160518.png)
- File size -> four byte field for filesize in bytes. Max. 4GB
- ID of first block (4 byte)
- File size
Obviously this is trash since it cannot be used with disk of very large capacities. Windows introduced clustering 4,8,16 blocks together.
The table itself is a list of blocks where many links are created and stored. Each entry is 4 bytes. List of empty blocks is also stored.
![](Pasted%20image%2020250505161031.png)
Note the reserved blocks. They contain:
- Boot sector (VBR)
- Bios parameter block
- Bootloader code
- Sector, cluster size, FAT count, root directory location
- FS information Sector (only for FAT32)
- Last allocated cluster for speed
- Backup boot sector
- In case of corruption
#### Free blocks list
Stores a value for each cluster which can indicate:
- `0x00000000` -> Free cluster
- Next cluster number -> Cluster is allocated and points to the next one
- `0xFFFFFFF8` - `0xFFFFFFFF` -> EOF
- `0xFFFFFFF7` -> bad cluster
To find a free block we just need to search for the first available cluster. We keep the last allocated cluster, optimizing search time.
### NTFS
New Technologies File System.
- Everything is a cluster
- Size is a multiple of disk block size
- Journaling
- File data compression
![](Pasted%20image%2020250505161542.png)
- Boot sector (VBR)
- NTFS signature and other boot info
- Location of Master File Table (MFT)
- Sector 0 of partition
- MFT
- Stores metadata for every file and directory
- MFT entry that stores attributes
- name
- size
- timestamps
- security
- MFT itself is described in the MFT lmfao
- File system metadata
- $MFT, $Bitmap , $LogFile, $Secure, etc. store metadata
- System files are treated like regular files
- Data
- Actual file content, either stored in MFT for small entries or in separate clusters (large files)
- Uses extents[^4] and B+ trees[^5]
- Supports encryption
#### MFT entry
Each file or directory is represented by a 1KB entry:
- File name
- Info (timestamps, perms)
- Data location (resident[^6] or not)
- Index
- Attributes
![](Pasted%20image%2020250505162331.png)
##### `$DATA`
- Mft Entry
- If the file contains regular data, the `$DATA` attribute stores the file content or the location
- For files that fit in a single MFT record (1KB usually)
- In-place storage of data (resident)
- For larger files, the `$DATA` attribute contains data runs, which are pointers that tell NTFS where the file's data is located on the disk. Typically a sequence of three values
- offset/ length byte
- Cluster count
- Cluster offset
##### Bitmaps
- Map of logical clusters in use and not. Same as FAT.
##### Compression
Compresses data in 16-cluster chunks.
Size of a compression unit (chunk) depends on cluster size:
- 4 KB cluster size -> 64 KB compression unit (most common on modern volumes)
- 8 KB cluster size -> 128 KB compression unit
If a chunk is not compressible to at least 50%, NTFS stores it uncompressed.
Uses LZNT1, a variation of (LZ77)
##### Journaling
Logs all file system changes in the `$LOGFILE` before applying them.
- It can detect bad sectors and mark them in `$BadClus`
- NTFS can recover a corrupted MFT using `$MFTMirr`
- NTFS uses ACLs to manage permissions
- Each file stores a `$SECURITY_DESCRIPTOR`
### Security descriptors
```
Owner: S-1-5-21-3623811015-3361044348-30300820-1001 (User: Alice)
Group: S-1-5-32-544 (Administrators)
DACL:
Allow: S-1-5-21-3623811015-3361044348-30300820-1001 (Alice) - Full Control
Deny: S-1-5-21-3623811015-3361044348-30300820-1002 (Bob) - Read Access
Allow: S-1-5-18 (Local System) - Full Control
SACL:
Audit: S-1-5-21-3623811015-3361044348-30300820-1003 (Eve) - Log Failed
Access
```
Where DACL = **Discretionary Access Control List** and SACL = **System Access Control List**
---
[^1]: **Columnar**, fixed-format ASCII Files have fixed field lengths, as opposed to **delimited**, i.e. fields can be as large as we want them to
[^2]: Extension (.pdf, .txt) as opposed to format, which specifies the [grammar](Regular%20languages.md) of the file
[^3]: contains information about where to place different parts of the program in memory.
[^4]: contiguous area of storage reserved for a file in a file system, represented as a range of block numbers, or tracks on count key data devices
[^5]: Balanced based on height tree. Nodes can contain multiple keys and pointers. Leaf nodes are the data records, upper nodes only store ketys. Ordered (BST).
[^6]: In the MFT entry straight up.