Study of Techniques for Checking the Consistency in File System

Abstract

File Systems today have grown from a minimal software to a sophisticated system code that is much robust than it was a few years ago. However, still there are issues with the file system design that lead to system crashes and failures. Maintaining file system consistency, even in the face of these crashes remains a subject of study. Like any other information, the metadata information within a file system is a critical aspect that requires attention. In order to maintain file system consistency, it is necessary that the operations the file system carries out be without any bugs. Solutions such as the use of the fsck tool, along with techniques such as journaling and copy-on-write provide solutions only when the user is not using the system. This drawback can be overcome with the concept of runtime checking, but however, deciding the nature of parameter that need to be checked during runtime remains one of the major problems faced by file system experts. In this paper, a discussion is presented of what parameters are required to be checked at runtime describing a way to define those parameters. These parameters can be referred to as declarative consistency rules that can be checked at runtime.