Solaris Internals, Second Edition: Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris Kernel Architecture, whose publications was reported in this newsletter [16373], now has a chapter that can be read online, Chapter 14, File System Framework. Authors Richard McDougall, Jim Mauro and Brendan Gregg discuss the implementation of files in the SolarisTM 10 Operating System (Solaris OS) and the framework for file systems.

The chapter explains the distinction between the earlier single file system implementations common to UNIXR (UFS) as opposed to the virtual file system framework developed for the Solaris OS. The authors note that this virtual file system framework allows the distributed computing file system (NFS) to coexist with the UFS file system. The chapter categorizes the Solaris file systems as follows:

• Storage-based, which are regular file systems that provide facilities for persistent storage and data management

• Network file systems, which provide files that are accessible in a local directory structure but are nevertheless stored on a remote network server

• Pseudo file systems, which present various abstractions as files in a file system

The framework, the authors explain, "provides a single set of well defined interfaces that are file-system independent." This makes it possible for the implementation details of each file system to be hidden behind these interfaces.

The chapter abounds with diagrams and code samples. In addition to the online version of Chapter 14, the authors have made a podcast available online as well. [...read more...]

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