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Practical File System Design 1st Edition

4.9 4.9 out of 5 stars 10 ratings

This is the new guide to the design and implementation of file systems in general, and the Be File System (BFS) in particular. This book covers all topics related to file systems, going into considerable depth where traditional operating systems books often stop. Advanced topics are covered in detail such as journaling, attributes, indexing and query processing. Built from scratch as a modern 64 bit, journaled file system, BFS is the primary file system for the Be Operating System (BeOS), which was designed for high performance multimedia applications. You do not have to be a kernel architect or file system engineer to use Practical File System Design. Neither do you have to be a BeOS developer or user. Only basic knowledge of C is required. If you have ever wondered about how file systems work, how to implement one, or want to learn more about the Be File System, this book is all you will need.

* Review of other file systems, including Linux ext2, BSD FFS, Macintosh HFS, NTFS and SGI's XFS.* Allocation policies for placing data on disks and discussion of on-disk data structures used by BFS * How to implement journaling* How a disk cache works, including cache interactions with the file system journal* File system performance tuning and benchmarks comparing BFS, NTFS, XFS, and ext2* A file system construction kit that allows the user to experiment and create their own file systems


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Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

This is the new guide to the design and implementation of file systems in general, and the Be File System (BFS) in particular. This book covers all topics related to file systems, going into considerable depth where traditional operating systems books often stop. Advanced topics are covered in detail such as journaling, attributes, indexing and query processing. Built from scratch as a modern 64 bit, journaled file system, BFS is the primary file system for the Be Operating System (BeOS), which was designed for high performance multimedia applications. You do not have to be a kernel architect or file system engineer to use Practical File System Design. Neither do you have to be a BeOS developer or user. Only basic knowledge of C is required. If you have ever wondered about how file systems work, how to implement one, or want to learn more about the Be File System, this book is all you will need.

Features:

  • Review of other file systems, including Linux ext2, BSD FFS, Macintosh HFS, NTFS and SGI's XFS.
  • Allocation policies for placing data on disks and discussion of on-disk data structures used by BFS
  • How to implement journaling
  • How a disk cache works, including cache interactions with the file system journal
  • File system performance tuning and benchmarks comparing BFS, NTFS, XFS, and ext2
  • A file system construction kit that allows the user to experiment and create their own file systems

About the Author

Dominic Giampaolo has a Masters degree in Computer Science from Worchester Polytechnic and is one of the principal kernel engineers for Be Inc. His responsibilities include the file system and various other parts of the kernel. Dominic Giampolo joined Be as one of its principle engineers. He has had the primary responsibility for designing and implementing many of the low level features of the operating system, including the file system.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Morgan Kaufmann; 1st edition (November 23, 1998)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1558604979
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1558604971
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.06 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7 x 0.75 x 9 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.9 4.9 out of 5 stars 10 ratings

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Dominic Giampaolo
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Customer reviews

4.9 out of 5 stars
10 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Reviewed in the United States on October 25, 2013
I don't know what happened to the book but the first one got lost, waited like 5 month for it. It didn't reach me.
So, I requested for help and they sent an other copy of the book.
Although it would have been lot more appreciating if it got to me in the first place, still I appreciate their services. They were more than happy to help me with finding the package.
One person found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on May 27, 2016
Very informative book.
Reviewed in the United States on April 25, 2000
If you are worried that this will only talk about Be file system design, worry no more. It has overviews of several other major file systems and their pros and cons before wading into the Be decisions for a file system and how they are implimented. So, I thought it was nicely organized and broadly applicable.
One person found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on February 21, 2004
Great book for those who want to get into file system design, but don't know where to start. It's been out of print for a little while, but I contacted the author and he was happy to release a pdf of it on his website: [...] I would highly recommend it!
20 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on December 8, 1998
I found this book a useful insight into the mechanisms at work in modern file systems. I especially found the performance comparisons of popular file systems useful, giving the reader the ability to analyze the trade-offs of the differing implementations, and how those design decisions are based on the requirements of the file-system.
2 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on June 5, 2010
I'll keep this short and sweet - the 3-stars reviews (go read them) are correct about scope, but slightly off target. The subtitle of the book is "... with the Be File System." That subtitle more than explains the limited scope of the book.

If you're not familiar with the internals of a filesystem, this is an excellent way to learn. The Be file system is advanced enough to be useful in the real world (better than many in use today), but simple enough to be understood by the average programmer or the well-educated layman. It's not the be-all of filesystems (pun intended), but it's damned good and quite comprehensible. Recommended if you want to see a good example of a file system. If you want cutting edge, you need to start reading the journals and looking over the zfs, next-gen Linux filesystems, lustre, etc.

Finally, you can't beat the price for this book, as it's free at the authors home page. That's now at [...], where you can find both the free pdf version of the book and the File System construction toolkit mentioned in the appendix.
3 people found this helpful
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