Lecture 11 - File systems #

Scope of the lecture #

File, file control block, i-node, file, system, file system layers
Virtual file system (VFS): goals, implementation, extensibility. FUSE
Directory implementations: linear list, array, hash table, tree (e.g. B+tree)
Allocation methods: contiguous, linked, indexed. Modifications: extents, FAT, multiple-level indexes.
Free-space management: bit vector or bit map, linked list of free blocks,space maps (ZFS)
Efficiency and performance. Optimization of sequential access: free-behind, read-ahead.
Page caching and I/O buffering. Pros and cons of unified caching.
Log structured (journaling) file systems.