Communicating Process Architectures 2012 1 P.H. Welch et al. (Eds.) Open Channel Publishing Ltd., 2012 c 2012 The authors and Open Channel Publishing Ltd. All rights reserved. Designing a Concurrent File Server James WHITEHEAD II Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford, Wolfson Building, Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3QD, United Kingdom;
[email protected] Abstract. In this paper we present a design and architecture for a concurrent file sys- tem server. This architecture is a compromise between the fully concurrent V6 UNIX implementation, and the simple sequential implementation in the MINIX operating system. The design of the server is made easier through the use of a disciplined model of concurrency, based on the CSP process algebra. By viewing the problem through this restricted lens, without traditional explicit locking mechanisms, we can construct the system as a process network of components with explicit connections and depen- dencies. This provides us with insight into the problem domain, and allows us to anal- yse the issues present in concurrent file system implementation. Keywords. file system, Go, CSP, UNIX, MINIX. Introduction Modern operating systems allow multiple users and programs to share the computing re- sources on a single machine. They also serve as an intermediary between programs and the physical computing hardware, such as persistent storage devices. In the UNIX family of op- erating systems, disk access is accomplished by interacting with files and directories through a hierarchical file system, using system calls. Managing access to the file system in a concurrent environment is a challenging problem. An implementation must ensure that a program cannot corrupt the state of the file system, or the data stored on disk.