A Lock-Free Approach for Fixing File Management System Concurrency Problems in Operating Systems

Dhakaa Mohsin  Kareem; Maysoon A. Mohammed; Shaymaa Kadhim Mohsin

doi:10.71229/2d68by86

Authors

Dhakaa Mohsin Kareem Department of Accounting Techniques, Al-Suwaira Technical Institute, Middle Technical University, Wasit, Iraq
Maysoon A. Mohammed College of Mechanical Engineering, University of Technology - Iraq, Baghdad, Iraq
Shaymaa Kadhim Mohsin College of Mechanical Engineering, University of Technology - Iraq, Baghdad, Iraq

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.71229/2d68by86

Keywords:

Lock-free file systems, MVCC, CAS, concurrency control, distributed storage

Abstract

Modern operating systems have trouble with too many attempts by the process of opening a file. The traditional approach to such a challenge is by using locks, which will not allow more than one process at a time to work with the file. But there are issues with that technique, including slowness and the possibility of deadlocks (and even just sluggishness) when the system is heavily loaded. This paper proposes a novel manner of accessing files called Lock-Free File Access Mechanism, LFFAM. Instead of locks, LFFAM uses atomic updates to file Metadata, stores multiple versions of data and enforces transaction-like semantics for updating the filesystem. This let read and write proceed without having to wait for a lock, which in turn allows individual threads to operate independently and at higher speed. LFFAM is evaluated for different activity levels by comparing state-of-threat conventional methods such as POSIX locks and journaling file systems. We conclude that LFFAM performs efficiently on park tasks in a very short schedule time, keeping fixed and low delays through the number of processes considered, and preventing deadlocks if more than one process is running. All these results indicate that lock free is more scalable than locks in high-concurrency systems, such as cloud computing. In addition, LFFAM provides the foundation for future improvements such as intelligent file versions management and system-level metadata support.

Author Biography

Dhakaa Mohsin Kareem, Department of Accounting Techniques, Al-Suwaira Technical Institute, Middle Technical University, Wasit, Iraq

MSc Degree, Department of Accounting Techniques, Al-Suwaira Technical Institute, Middle Technical University, Wasit, Iraq.

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