Patent ID: 8549252
Filing Date: 2013-10-01
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
1. A computer-implemented method of operating a data processing apparatus, said method comprising: configuring a logical volume of computer data storage so that the logical volume is mapped to storage of an associated file of the computer data storage and the logical volume is contained in the associated file; a file system manager of an operating system of the data processing apparatus creating and maintaining a file system on the logical volume; and the file system manager accessing the associated file in response to a file access request from a user or application program for access to the file system; which includes the file system manager producing a volume I/O request for access to the logical volume in response to the file access request from the user or application program, and the operating system converting the volume I/O request to a file I/O request to access the associated file and returning the file I/O request to the file system manager; and wherein the configuring of the logical volume of computer data storage so that the logical volume is mapped to storage of the associated file of the computer data storage and the logical volume is contained in the associated file includes setting a file-mapped logical volume type attribute of the logical volume and setting an associated file name attribute of the logical volume to specify that the associated file is the associated file for containing the logical volume; and the operating system converting the volume I/O request to a file I/O request to access the associated file includes the operating system producing the file I/O request to access the associated file in response to finding that the logical volume has the file-mapped logical volume type attribute and an associated file name attribute specifying the associated file.