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Summary: Analysis and Evolution of Journaling File Systems
Vijayan Prabhakaran, Andrea C. Arpaci-Dusseau, and Remzi H. Arpaci-Dusseau
Computer Sciences Department
University of Wisconsin, Madison
{vijayan, dusseau, remzi}@cs.wisc.edu
Abstract
We develop and apply two new methods for analyzing file sys-
tem behavior and evaluating file system changes. First, seman-
tic block-level analysis (SBA) combines knowledge of on-disk
data structures with a trace of disk traffic to infer file system be-
havior; in contrast to standard benchmarking approaches, SBA
enables users to understand why the file system behaves as it
does. Second, semantic trace playback (STP) enables traces of
disk traffic to be easily modified to represent changes in the file
system implementation; in contrast to directly modifying the file
system, STP enables users to rapidly gauge the benefits of new
policies. We use SBA to analyze Linux ext3, ReiserFS, JFS,
and Windows NTFS; in the process, we uncover many strengths
and weaknesses of these journaling file systems. We also apply
STP to evaluate several modifications to ext3, demonstrating the
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