[cs33211] Exam questions

[Mikhail Nesterenko]

> Distributed file systems:
>
> Do we need to read about these in the supplementary materials? It's
> called Chapter 10 distributed file systems by Uresh Vahalia. I seem to
> recall being told to read it but I'm not sure as it's not in my notes.

No, distributed file systems are not on the exam.

> Fast File System:
>
>  "The default policy is to allocate one inode for each 2048 bytes of
> space in the cylinder group, expecting this to be far more than will
> ever be needed."
>
> Does this mean that a file can have more than one Inode in the Fast 
> file system?

No, each file has only a single inode. Large files are spread across
cylinder groups, small files are attempted to be contained in a single
cylinder groups. What this paragraph talks about is the number of
inodes. Unlike traditional unix file system (where all inodes) were at
the beginning of the disk partition, in FFS the inodes are allocated
per cylinder group. The question is as to how many inodes to
allocate. This paragraph explains that FFS allocates one inode per 2K
of the disk space in a cylinder group.

>
> Do we need to study the old unix file system or only its succesor the 
> Fast File System?
>
You need to know about the design of the traditional unix file system
to the extent that we talked about it in class and it is covered in
the FFS paper.


thanks,
-- 
Mikhail