VFS

Table of contents

• What is it
• Set up
• Commands
• Why make it?
• Appendix

What is it?

An emulation of Virtual File System that allows the user to create and mount Internal/Remote file systems. Disks that are mounted are stored within 'disks/' folder, written as binary in a fat32 implementation with the use of a superblock, fat table and userspace which are separated by clusters. Defined szies of these segments are defined within 'config.h' and can be manipulated to the user's preference.

Overall, hopefully this program will allow the user to store folders/files within a binary disk and perform operations on them locally or remotely.

Commands

VFS

Perform action on the virtual file system to add and mount disks or remote connections. Other actions such as initialising a server socket on a specific port.

/vfs ls     - lists the current mounted systems                          | -> /vfs ls
/vfs ifs    - controls internal file systems within the vfs              | -> /vfs ifs add/rm [DISK_NAME] [FS_TYPE]
/vfs rfs    - controls remote file systems within the vfs                | -> /vfs rfs add/rm [NAME] [IP] [PORT]
/vfs mnt    - initialises the file system and mounts it towards the vfs  | -> /vfs mnt [DISK_NAME]
/vfs umnt   - deletes file system data/disk from vfs                     | -> /vfs umnt
/vfs server - toggles server initialisation for client connection on local host on specified port the user to access control of the virtual file system.

File system

Performs action on the mounted system within the virtual file system, these commands can be performed on a filesystem which is mounted internally or remotely.

ls     - display the entries within the current working directory.
mkdir  - create directory within current directory.
cd     - changes the current directory within the file system.
rm     - removes an entry within the file system.
touch  - creates an entry within the file system.
mv     - moves an entry towards a different location.
cp     - copies an entry within the specified directory.
cp imp - copies a file from machine's filesystem and stores within a location of the mounted disk.
cp exp - Stores a file from the disk to a location within the machines filesystem.
cat    - print bytes found at entry.

Compile and execute

Compile

> make

This will produce bin/ directory of object files located within src/

Within Makefile, ${TARGET} variable will be used for the name for the executable, this can be changed.

Execute

> ./$(TARGET)

Clean

> make clean

This will remove the bin/ dir holding object files related to src/*.cpp. Along with $(TARGET).exe

Why make it?

The sole reason of attemting to make an emulation of a virtual file system is just for fun and practicing/learning parts of c++ that I find interesting. I find it interesting dealing a with network connections through made-up protocols to understand the same 'language' and how to interpret a buffer at the client and server side. As well as this, the overall aspect of dealing with a file that is split up into clusters and therefore allowing you to navigate through the bytes to enter a directory and print out stored entries interests me.

Appendix

Screenshots

Mounting a disk Printing directory Connecting remotely