File Sharing in Operating System
File sharing, also known as file-swapping is the accessing or sharing of files by one or more users. It is performed on computer networks as a quick way to transmit data. Generally, a file-sharing system usually has more than one administrator, where the users may have the same or different access privileges. It also implies having an allocated amount of personal files in the common storage.
File sharing has been used in mainframe and multi-user computer systems for many years, and now with widespread access to the internet, a file transfer system known as the File-Transfer Protocol or FTP is widely used.
The world wide web in itself can be considered as a large-scale file-sharing system where files are constantly downloaded or viewed by the web user.
However, in the file-sharing system, the user can read and write in the files, and if the entire system is not available for access, at least the common file that is shared by the owner can be read and written onto.
Certain issues arise when multiple users are allowed to access the files. The system can either grant access to the users by default or requires the user to specifically grant access to the files. This causes problems of control and protection, and to implement sharing and protection, the system needs to maintain more file and directory attributes than it would have done in the case of a single-user system.
File Sharing in Operating System