- A file system is a logical means for an operating system to store and retrieve data on the computer’s storage.
- A file system implements a basic operations such as create, delete, read, write operations
- The task of organizing the millions of files is insulated from the kernel by the file system. VFS provides basic hooks into which each file can attach itself to provide the creation and management functions by creating appropriate intermediate control structures.
- This abstraction allows for a common interface for userspace to interact with kernel via system calls for all file related operations. This very mechanism also allows for abstracting the underlying details such as storage device, location, size etc.
- It is used to store information describing the specific filesystem. It is stored in a special sector on the disk. Super block object is represented by
struct super_block
defined in <linux/fs.h>
/* Definition of struct super_block */
struct super_block {
struct list_head s_list; /* Keep this first */
dev_t s_dev; /* search index; _not_ kdev_t */
unsigned char s_blocksize_bits;
unsigned long s_blocksize;
loff_t s_maxbytes; /* Max file size */
struct file_system_type *s_type;
const struct super_operations *s_op;
const struct dquot_operations *dq_op;
const struct quotactl_ops *s_qcop;
const struct export_operations *s_export_op;
unsigned long s_flags;
unsigned long s_iflags; /* internal SB_I_* flags */
unsigned long s_magic;
struct dentry *s_root;
struct rw_semaphore s_umount;
int s_count;
atomic_t s_active;
#ifdef CONFIG_SECURITY
void *s_security;
#endif
const struct xattr_handler **s_xattr;
const struct fscrypt_operations *s_cop;
struct hlist_bl_head s_anon; /* anonymous dentries for (nfs) exporting */
struct list_head s_mounts; /* list of mounts; _not_ for fs use */
struct block_device *s_bdev;
struct backing_dev_info *s_bdi;
struct mtd_info *s_mtd;
struct hlist_node s_instances;
unsigned int s_quota_types; /* Bitmask of supported quota types */
struct quota_info s_dquot; /* Diskquota specific options */
struct sb_writers s_writers;
char s_id[32]; /* Informational name */
u8 s_uuid[16]; /* UUID */
void *s_fs_info; /* Filesystem private info */
unsigned int s_max_links;
fmode_t s_mode;
/* Granularity of c/m/atime in ns.
Cannot be worse than a second */
u32 s_time_gran;
/*
* The next field is for VFS *only*. No filesystems have any business
* even looking at it. You had been warned.
*/
struct mutex s_vfs_rename_mutex; /* Kludge */
/*
* Filesystem subtype. If non-empty the filesystem type field
* in /proc/mounts will be "type.subtype"
*/
char *s_subtype;
/*
* Saved mount options for lazy filesystems using
* generic_show_options()
*/
char __rcu *s_options;
const struct dentry_operations *s_d_op; /* default d_op for dentries */
/*
* Saved pool identifier for cleancache (-1 means none)
*/
int cleancache_poolid;
struct shrinker s_shrink; /* per-sb shrinker handle */
/* Number of inodes with nlink == 0 but still referenced */
atomic_long_t s_remove_count;
/* Being remounted read-only */
int s_readonly_remount;
/* AIO completions deferred from interrupt context */
struct workqueue_struct *s_dio_done_wq;
struct hlist_head s_pins;
/*
* Keep the lru lists last in the structure so they always sit on their
* own individual cachelines.
*/
struct list_lru s_dentry_lru ____cacheline_aligned_in_smp;
struct list_lru s_inode_lru ____cacheline_aligned_in_smp;
struct rcu_head rcu;
struct work_struct destroy_work;
struct mutex s_sync_lock; /* sync serialisation lock */
/*
* Indicates how deep in a filesystem stack this SB is
*/
int s_stack_depth;
/* s_inode_list_lock protects s_inodes */
spinlock_t s_inode_list_lock ____cacheline_aligned_in_smp;
struct list_head s_inodes; /* all inodes */
};
- The most important member in the super block structure is:
const struct super_operations *s_op;
which is a pointer to a table of operations that are supported on the super block.
- The Inode object contains all the information needed by the kernel to manipulate a file or directory. For most filesystems, this is simply reading or writing from the on-disk inode structures.
strace of hdparm for obtaining the fibmap of a file threw up the following system calls made in the process.
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