Patent ID: 7568097

Claim:
A method external from a native operating system of a computer system for generating a file identifier for use in controlling access to file system resources in a computer system comprising the steps of: generating a data structure having a pointer to an index related to a physical location of a file resource in the file system and a pointer to a directory containing a requested file resource, wherein the file resource and the directory are on a memory device; obtaining a unique physical attribute of the file system object, by retrieving a serial number for a file location where a requested file system resource resides the file system location is retrieved from an inode or vnode index or from a serial number generated using a programming interface; obtaining the name of the file system object, by opening the directory identified in the data structure, for each entry in the directory, reading the serial number for the file location, comparing said vnode or inode number to said serial number for the file location number and retrieving the file name of the resource out of the directory; and constructing a file identifier for that file system object from said obtained unique physical attribute and said file system object name, by coupling the unique physical attribute to the file system object name to produce the file identifier for a particular file system object.