Free Space Management

A file system must track which inodes and data blocks are free, and which are not, so that when a new file or directory is allocated, it can find space for it. Thus free space management is important for all file systems. In vsfs, we have two simple bitmaps for this task.

For example, when we create a file, we will have to allocate an inode for that file. The file system will thus search through the bitmap for an inode that is free, and allocate it to the file; the file system will have to mark the inode as used (with a 1) and eventually update the on-disk bitmap with the correct information. A similar set of activities take place when a data block is allocated.

Some other considerations might also come into play when allocating data blocks for a new file. For example, some Linux file systems, such as ext2 and ext3, will look for a sequence of blocks (say 8) that are free when a new file is created and needs data blocks. By finding such a sequence of free blocks, and then allocating them to the newly-created file, the file system guarantees that a portion of the file will be contiguous on the disk, thus improving performance. Such a pre-allocation policy is thus a commonly-used heuristic when allocating space for data blocks.