Filesystem resource managers register a
mountpoint with the process manager. A mountpoint
is the portion of the path that's managed by the
process manager. The remaining parts of the path are
managed by the filesystem resource manager.
For example, when a filesystem resource manager attaches a mountpoint at
/mount, and the path
/mount/home/thomasf is examined:
-
/mount/
- Identifies the mountpoint that's managed by the process manager.
-
home/thomasf
- Identifies the remaining part that's to be managed by the filesystem resource manager.
Here are some examples of using filesystem resource managers:
- flash filesystem drivers (although the source code for
flash drivers takes care of these details)
- a tar filesystem process that presents the contents of
a tar file as a filesystem
that the user can cd into and ls from
- a mailbox-management process that registers the name
/mailboxes
and manages individual mailboxes that look like directories, and files
that contain the actual messages.