Câu Hỏi Về File Systems

1. Filesystems can support sparse files, what does this mean? Give an example of an
application's file organisation that might benefit from a file system's sparse file
support
2. Give an example of a scenario that might benefit from a file system supporting an
append-only access write
3. Give a scenario where choosing a large filesystem block size might be a benefit;
give an example where it might be a hinderance.
4. Give an example where contiguous allocation of file blocks on disks can be used in
practice.
5. What file access pattern is particularly suited to chained file allocation on disk?
6. What file allocation strategy is most appropriate for random access files?
7. Compare bitmap-based allocation of blocks on disk with a free block list.
8. How can the block count in an inode differ from the (file size / block size) rounded
up to the nearest integer. Can the block count be greater, smaller, or both.
9. Why might the direct blocks be stored in the inode itself?
10. Given that the maximum file size of combination of direct, single indirection,
double indirection, and triple indirection in an inode-based filesystem is
approximately the same as a filesystem soley using triple indirection, why not
simply use only triple indirection to locate all file blocks?
11. What is the maximum file size supported by a file system with 16 direct blocks,
single, double, and triple indirection? The block size is 512 bytes. Disk block
numbers can be stored in 4 bytes.
12. The berkely fast filesystem (and Linux Ext2fs) use the idea of block groups.
Describe what this idea is and what improvements block groups have over the
simple filesystem layout of the System V file system (s5fs).
13. What is the reference count field in the inode? You should consider its
relationship to directory entries in you answer.
14. The filesystem buffer cache does both buffering and caching. Describe why
buffering is needed. Describe how buffering can improve performance (potentially
to the detriment of file system robustness). Describe how the caching component
of the buffer cache improves performance.
15. What does flushd do on a UNIX system?
16. Why might filesystems managing external storage devices do write-through
caching (avoid buffering writes) even though there is a detrimental affect on
performance.
17. What permissions would you have on the following files:
om:[/tmp]% ls -ld t* .
drwxrwxrwt 6 root root 4096 May 21 12:19 .
-rw-rw---- 1 nash stud 216 May 18 18:59 t1
-rw--w---- 1 nash stud 260 May 18 18:59 t2
-rw------- 1 nash stud 458 May 18 18:59 t3
-rwsrwsr-x 1 nash stud 138 May 21 12:19 t4
-rwsrwxr-x 1 nash stud 285 May 21 12:19 t5
18. Consider a file currently consisting of 100 records of 400 bytes. The filesystem
uses fixed blocking, i.e. one 400 byte record is stored per 512 byte block. Assume that
the file control block (and the index block, in the case of indexed allocation) is already
in memory. Calculate how many disk I/O operations are required for contiguous,
 linked, and indexed (single-level) allocation strategies, if, for one record, the following
conditions hold. In the contiguous-allocation case, assume that there is no room to
grow at the beginning, but there is room to grow at the end of the file. Assume that
the record information to be added is stored in memory.

a. The record is added at the beginning.

b. The record is added in the middle.
c. The record is added at the end.
d. The record is removed from the beginning.
e. The record is removed from the middle.
f. The record is removed from the end.

19. Why is there VFS Layer in Unix?

20. How does choice of block size affect file system performance. You should consider
both sequential and random access.
21. Why does Linux pre-allocate up to 8 blocks on a write to a file.
22. Linux uses a buffer cache to improve performance. What is the drawback of such a
cache? In what scenario is it problematic? What alternative would be more
appropriate where a buffer cache is inappropriate?
23. What is the structure of the contents of a directory? Does it contain attributes such as
creation times of files? If not, where might this information be stored?
24. The Unix inode structure contains a reference count. What is the reference count for?
Why can't we just remove the inode without checking the reference count when a file
is deleted?
25. Inode-based filesystems typically divide a file system partition into block groups. Each
block group consists of a number of contiguous physical disk blocks. Inodes for a given
block group are stored in the same physical location as the block groups. What are the
advantages of this scheme? Are they any disadvantages?
26. Assume an inode with 10 direct blocks, as well as single, double and triple indirect
block pointers. Taking into account creation and accounting of the indirect blocks
themselves, what is the largest possible number of block reads and writes in order to:

a. Read 1 byte
b. Write 1 byte

27. Assume you have an inode-based filesystem. The filesystem has 512 byte blocks. Each
inode has 10 direct, 1 single indirect, 1 double indirect, and 1 triple indirect block
pointer. Block pointers are 4 bytes each. Assume the inode and any block free list is
always in memory. Blocks are not cached.

a. What is the maximum file size that can be stored before

1. the single indirect pointer is needed?
2. the double indirect pointer is needed?
3. the triple indirect pointer is needed?
b. What is the maximum file size supported?
c. What is the number of disk block reads required to read 1 byte from a file
 1. in the best case?
2. in the worst case?
d. What is the number of disk block reads and writes required to write 1 byte to a file
1. in the best case?
2. in the worst case?

28. A typical UNIX inode stores both the file's size and the number of blocks currently
used to store the file. Why store both? Should not blocks = size / block size?
29. How can deleting a file leave a inode-based file system (like ext2fs in Linux)
inconsistent in the presence of a power failure.
30. How does adding journalling to a file system avoid corruption in the presence of
unexpected power failures.