@item filesys.h
@itemx filesys.c
-Top-level interface to the file system.
+Top-level interface to the file system. Please read the long comment
+near the top of @file{filesys.c}, which introduces some details of the
+file system code as provided.
@item directory.h
@itemx directory.c
While most of your work will be in @file{filesys}, you should be
prepared for interactions with all previous parts (as usual).
+@node File System Synchronization
+@section Synchronization
+
+The file system as provided requires external synchronization, that is,
+callers must ensure that only one thread can be running in the file
+system code at once. Your submission should use a more finely granular
+synchronization strategy. You will need to consider synchronization for
+each type of file system object. The provided code uses the following
+strategies:
+
+@itemize @bullet
+@item
+The free map and root directory are read each time they are needed for
+an operation, and if they are modified, they are written back before the
+operation completes. Thus, the free map is always consistent from an
+external viewpoint.
+
+@item
+Inodes are immutable in the provided file system, that is, their content
+never changes between creation and deletion, and furthermore only one
+copy of an inode's data is maintained in memory at once, even if the
+file is open in multiple contexts.
+
+@item
+File data doesn't have to be consistent because it's just not part of
+the model. In Unix and many other operating systems, a read of a file
+by one process when the file is being written by another process can
+show inconsistent results: it can show that none, all, or part of the
+write has completed. (However, after the write system call returns to
+its caller, all subsequent readers must see the change.) Similarly,
+when two threads write to the same part of a file at the same time,
+their data may be arbitrarily interleaved.
+
+External synchronization of the provided file system ensures that reads
+and writes are fully serialized, but your file system doesn't have to
+maintain full serialization as long as it follows the rules above.
+@end itemize
+
@node Problem 4-1 Large Files
@section Problem 4-1: Large Files
Make sure that concurrent accesses to the inode remain properly
synchronized.
+The user is allowed to seek beyond the current end-of-file (EOF). The
+seek itself does not extend the file. Writing at a position past EOF
+extends the file to the position being written, and any gap between the
+previous EOF and the start of the write must be filled with zeros. A
+read past EOF returns zero bytes.
+
+Writing far beyond EOF can cause many blocks to be entirely zero. Some
+file systems allocate and write real data blocks for these implicitly
+zeroed blocks. Other file systems do not allocate these blocks at all
+until they are explicitly written. The latter file systems are said to
+support ``sparse files.'' You may adopt either allocation strategy in
+your file system.
+
@node Problem 4-3 Subdirectories
@section Problem 4-3: Subdirectories
sure to cover the following points:
@itemize @bullet
+@item
+How did you choose to synchronize file system operations?
+
@item
How did you structure your inodes? How many blocks did you access
directly, via single-indirection, and/or via double-indirection? Why?
@enumerate 1
@item
@b{We're limited to a 64-block cache, but can we also keep an
-@struct{inode_disk} inside @struct{file}, the way the provided code
+@struct{inode_disk} inside @struct{inode}, the way the provided code
does?}
The goal of the 64-block limit is to bound the amount of cached file
-system data. If you keep a block of disk data anywhere in kernel
-memory, whether it's file data or metadata, then you have to count it
-against the 64-block limit. The same rule applies to anything that's
+system data. If you keep a block of disk data---whether file data or
+metadata---anywhere in kernel memory then you have to count it against
+the 64-block limit. The same rule applies to anything that's
``similar'' to a block of disk data, such as a @struct{inode_disk}
without the @code{length} or @code{sector_cnt} members.
-That means you'll have to change the way the file implementation
-accesses its corresponding inode right now, since it currently just
-creates a new @struct{inode} containing an @struct{inode_disk} in
-@func{inode_open} and reads the corresponding sector in from disk when
-it's created.
-
-There are two reasons for not storing inode data in @struct{inode}.
-First, keeping extra copies of inodes would be cheating the 64-block
-limitation that we place on your cache. Second, if two processes have
-the same file open, you will create a huge synchronization headache for
-yourself if each @struct{inode} has its own copy of the on-disk inode.
-
-You can store pointers to inode data in @struct{inode_disk}, if you
-want, and you can store some other small amount of information to help
-you find the inode when you need it. Similarly, if you want to store
-one block of data plus some small amount of metadata for each of your 64
-cache entries, that's fine.
-
-If you look at @func{file_read_at}, it uses the inode directly without
-having first read in that sector from wherever it was in the storage
-hierarchy. This will no longer work. You will need to change
-@code{file_read_at} (and similar functions) so that it reads the inode
-from the storage hierarchy before using it.
+That means you'll have to change the way the inode implementation
+accesses its corresponding on-disk inode right now, since it currently
+just embeds a @struct{inode_disk} in @struct{inode} and reads the
+corresponding sector in from disk when it's created. Keeping extra
+copies of inodes would be cheating the 64-block limitation that we place
+on your cache.
+
+You can store pointers to inode data in @struct{inode}, if you want, and
+you can store some other small amount of information to help you find
+the inode when you need it. Similarly, if you want to store one block
+of data plus some small amount of metadata for each of your 64 cache
+entries, that's fine.
+
+If you look at @func{inode_byte_to_sector}, it uses the
+@struct{inode_disk} directly without having first read in that sector
+from wherever it was in the storage hierarchy. This will no longer
+work. You will need to change @func{inode_byte_to_sector} so that it
+reads the @struct{inode_disk} from the storage hierarchy before using
+it.
@end enumerate