S-VFS: Searchable virtual file system for an intelligent ubiquitous storage

Abstract

With advances in ubiquitous environments, user demand for easy data-lookup is growing rapidly. Not only users but intelligent ubiquitous applications also require data-lookup services for a ubiquitous computing framework. This paper proposes a backward-compatible, searchable virtual file system (S-VFS) for easy data-lookup. We add search functionality to the VFS, the de facto standard abstraction layer over the file system. Users can find a file by its attributes without remembering the full path. S-VFS maintains the attributes and the indexing structures in a normal file per partition. It processes queries and returns the results in a form of a virtual directory. S-VFS is the modified VFS, but uses legacy file systems wit out any modification. Since S-VFS supports full backward compatibility, users can even browse hierarchically with the legacy path name. We implement S-VFS in Linux kernel 2.6.7-21. Experiments with randomly generated queries demonstrate outstanding lookup performance with a small overhead for indexing.