Patent ID: 7831578

Claim:
An apparatus for file system management comprising: a non-volatile storage device storing a file containing actual file content; a volatile memory device storing physical file handle context comprising a pointer to the beginning of the actual file content; and a processing unit receiving a virtual file generation request with a physical file handle corresponding to the physical file handle context, and mapping information corresponding to a segment of the actual file content, and generating a virtual file name comprising the physical file handle and the mapping information, wherein: the processing unit receives a virtual file open request with the generated virtual file name, extracts the physical file handle and the mapping information, generates and stores virtual file handle context comprising the extracted physical file handle and mapping information, and assigns a virtual file handle to the generated virtual file handle context; and the processing unit receives a file read request with the virtual file handle and a read length, acquires the virtual file handle context corresponding to the virtual file handle, acquires the physical file handle from the virtual file handle context, acquires the physical file handle context corresponding to the acquired physical file handle, acquires the pointer to the beginning of the actual file content from the physical file handle context, acquires an offset from the beginning of the actual file content from the virtual file handle context, acquires the current access position from the beginning of the segment of the actual file content from the virtual file handle context, and acquires the read length data from the acquired pointer plus the acquired offset further plus the acquired current access position.