10.4 File System Mounting

10.
4 File System Mounting

 A file system must be mounted before it can be accessed
 A unmounted file system (i.e. Fig. 10-11(b)) is mounted at
a mount point
existing unmounted volume mount point

Operating System Principles 10.1 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2005
Mount Point
1. The OS is first given the name of the device and the mount point
2. The OS verifies that the device contains a valid file system
 Read the device directory and verify the directory format
3. The OS notes in the directory structure that a file system is
mounted at the specified mount point
4. If the volume is unmounted, the file system is restored to the
situation before mounting
 OS may impose semantics to clarify functionality

 May disallow a mount over a directory containing files; or may
obscure the directory’s existing files until the file system is unmounted
 May allow the same file system to be mounted repeatedly, at different
mount points; or it may allow only one mount per file system

Mount Examples
 Macintosh searches for a file system on a disk first
encountered. If found, the file system is auto-mounted at
the root level
 Windows OS maintains an extended two-level directory
structure, with devices and volumes assigned drive letters.
 Recent Windows allow a file system to be mounted anywhere in
the directory tree
 Windows auto-discover all devices and mount all located file
systems at boot time
 Unix has explicit mount commands

10.5 File Sharing
 Sharing of files on multi-user systems is desirable
 Sharing may be done through a protection

scheme
 On distributed systems, files may be shared

across a network
 Network File System (NFS) is a common

distributed file-sharing method

File Sharing – Multiple Users
 File sharing, file naming, and file protection are important in
multiple-user systems
 The system may allow a user to access other user’s files by
default or it may require specific access grant
 Most systems use the concept of file owner and group, as file
attributes, to implement file sharing and protection
 User IDs identify users, allowing permissions and
protections to be per-user
 Group IDs allow users to be in groups, permitting group
access rights

File Sharing – Remote File Systems
 Uses networking to allow file system access between

systems
 Manually via programs like FTP
 Both anonymous and authenticated access
 Automatically, seamlessly using distributed file
systems, in which remote directories are visible from a
local machine
 Semi automatically via the world wide web, where a
browser is needed to access remote files, and separate
operations (a wrapper for ftp) are used to transfer files

The Client-Server Model
 Client-server model allows clients to mount remote
file systems from servers
 Server can serve multiple clients
 Client, specified by a network name or IP address, and
user-on-client identification is insecure or complicated (by
encryption)
 NFS is standard UNIX client-server file sharing protocol
 User’s ID on the client and server must match
 Once the remote file system is mounted, file operation
requests are sent on behalf of the user across the network
to the server via the DFS protocol
 Standard operating system file calls are translated into
remote calls

Distributed Information Systems
 Also known as distributed naming services
 LDAP, DNS, NIS (network information service, yellow
pages), Active Directory implement unified access to
information needed for remote computing
 In Windows CIFS (common internet file system),
network information is used with user authentication to
create a network login. A newer version is called
active directory.
 One distributed LDAP (lightweight directory-access
protocol) could be used by an organization to store all
user and resource information for all organization’s
computers. The result is secure single sign-on for
users.
Skip 10.5.2.3, 10.5.3

10.6 Protection
 Reliability is to keep the computer system from physical damage.
(Chapter 12)
 Protection is to keep it from improper access.
 File owner/creator should be able to control:
 what can be done
 by whom
 Basic types of controlled access
 Read
 Write
 Execute
 Append
 Delete
Other high-level functions, like copying and
 List
editing files may be implemented by making
lower-level system calls

Access Control Lists
 Mode of access: read, write, execute
 Three classes of users
rwx
a) owner access 7  111
rwx
b) group access 6  110
rwx
c) public access 1  001
 Ask manager to create a group (unique name), say G, and add some users to
the group.
 For a particular file (say game) or subdirectory, define an appropriate access.
owner group public
chmod 761 game
Attach a group to a file

chgrp G game
Windows XP Access-control List Management

A Sample UNIX Directory Listing

Other Protection Approaches
 Associate a password with each file
 Disadvantages
 The number of passwords that a user needs to remember
 If only one password is used for all the files, then
protection is on an all-or-none basis
– Some system allow the user to associate a password with a
directory
 Adding protection mechanisms to single-user OS is
difficult
 Directory protection
 Control the creation and deletion of files in a directory
 Control whether a user could check the existence of a
file in a directory. (Listing the contents of a directory)

10.4 File System Mounting

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10.

4 File System Mounting

existing unmounted volume mount point

 OS may impose semantics to clarify functionality

Operating System Principles 10.2 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2005

Operating System Principles 10.3 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2005

 Sharing of files on multi-user systems is desirable

 Sharing may be done through a protection

 On distributed systems, files may be shared

 Network File System (NFS) is a common

Operating System Principles 10.4 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2005

Operating System Principles 10.5 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2005

 Uses networking to allow file system access between

Operating System Principles 10.6 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2005

Operating System Principles 10.7 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2005

Skip 10.5.2.3, 10.5.3

Operating System Principles 10.9 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2005

owner group public

chmod 761 game

Attach a group to a file

Operating System Principles 10.11 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2005

Operating System Principles 10.12 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2005

Operating System Principles 10.13 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2005

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