Efficient, robust file handle invalidation
US7117303B1 · kind B1 · utility
Assignee
Inventors
Key dates
| Filing date | Mar 14, 2003 |
| Grant date | Oct 3, 2006 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Jan 7, 2024 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC G)Physics
- CPC primaryG06F11/1435
- WIPO fieldComputer technology
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
The present invention provides a technique for efficiently generating and validating external file handles at a storage operating system of a filer. According to one aspect of the technique, the storage operating system associates a unique internal file handle with each file or directory stored in the filer. This unique internal file handle is used to generate a corresponding external file handle. Unlike previous approaches, the internal file handles' representations do not change depending on the location of their corresponding files or directories, e.g., on-disk or in-core, within the filer, thereby simplifying file management within the filer. According to another aspect of the inventive technique, the filer executes a file-handle validation procedure to determine whether an external file handle received with a file access request has become invalid (or “stale”) as a result of an NVRAM failure in the filer. The file-handle validation procedure enables the filer to efficiently determine the validity of the external file handle without having to perform conventional time-consuming and processing-intensive operations. Advantageously, the inventive technique is preferably only appli…
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.