Open System Services Management and Operations Guide (G06.27+, H06.04+)

Open System Services Management and Operations Guide—527191-003
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Understanding the OSS File System
To manage the Open System Services (OSS) environment effectively, you must
understand the OSS file system.
The OSS file system works in the same way as a UNIX file system from the point of
view of the user. Files in the OSS environment are organized in a hierarchical tree
structure. For further information about using the tree structure, see the Open System
Services User’s Guide. For information about the content of the tree structure as
released by HP, see the hier(5) reference page either online or in the Open System
Services System Calls Reference Manual.
The OSS file system consists of one or more filesets. Each fileset is a hierarchy of
files: a set of directories, subdirectories, and files themselves.
A fileset can have other filesets mounted on directories in it. In fact, the collection of
directories and files under the root directory is part of one fileset. Every file belongs to
a fileset. You control the operation of filesets as described in Section 5, Managing
Filesets.
Every file has an OSS pathname. The OSS pathname consists of one or more OSS
filenames and helps locate the file within the tree structure.
The following subsections provide a brief overview of the relationships between OSS
pathnames and Guardian filenames and an overview of the tree structure. Later
subsections describe how the OSS name servers maintain and use these relationships
for access to the filesets they manage.
OSS Pathnames
An OSS pathname describes a path through the OSS directory tree to a file. The
length of OSS pathnames is limited:
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Each OSS directory name or OSS filename in an OSS pathname can contain up to
248 characters.
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OSS pathnames can contain up to 1024 characters.
An OSS file can have more than one pathname, using either hard or symbolic links:
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An OSS file can have as many as 128 links (128 OSS pathnames can point to the
same file).
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As many as 20 symbolic links can be followed when resolving an OSS pathname.
For further information about OSS files and pathnames, see the Open System
Services User’s Guide and to the filename(5) reference page either online or in the
Open System Services System Calls Reference Manual.