1. Design and Implementation of a USB File System for Bare PC Applications
Presented by
Dr. Ramesh K. Karne
Department of Computer and Information Sciences
Towson University
Towson, MD 21252, USA
(Authors: William Thompson, Ramesh Karne, Sonjie Liang, Alexander Wijesinha, Hamdan Alabsi, and Hojin Chang)

2. History Started in 2001 Motivated by complexity and obsolescence
Frustrated by too many environments
Initially funded by NSF grants
Over 45 publications and 15 doctoral dissertations
Started from scratch and built all BMC code and over a dozen complex applications

3. Related Work Exokernel Bare Metal Linux Nano and Micro Kernels
Lean kernels
Sandboxing
Palacio and Kitten
IO-Lite

4. What is a Bare Machine Computing (BMC)?
A computer application(s) run on a bare computing device (such as a PC)
The computing device consists of CPU, Memory, User interfaces such as (Keyboard, Mouse, Monitor, Network card)
Application(s) are self contained, self managed
The box containing the computing device is known as a bare machine
The concept is applicable any computing device

5. BMC Characteristics A Bare Machine is: Ownerless
Valueless, no valuable resources in the bare box
Uses detachable or network storage
Bootable, loadable and controllable by user application(s)
Application(s) are stored on a detachable storage device such as a flash drive
There is nothing to damage in the bare machine, other than physical vandalism
Super secure, ultimate security for application(s)
A bare machine can be placed any place, accessed by anyone without ownership
A bare machine application is stable, not prone to obsolescence, contains code that does not depend on other computing environments
A bare machine application(s) are totally user controlled and closed systems.

6. What is a bare PC File System?
It is a standard FAT32 compatible file system
USB based
Runs only on a x86 compatible PCs, can be extended to other CPU architectures by writing direct API
The files can be accessible on other OSs
Lean, efficient and application driven
Resident on detachable devices
No OS vulnerabilities
Closed system

7. USB Layout

8. Memory Layout

9. Initialization Process

10. File Table Structure

11. File API

12. Use of API

13. USB Parameters and Driver

14. USB Operations

15. USB Analyzer Trace

16. Bare Root Directory

17. Root Directory on USB

18. Bare PC Screen Shot

19. Design Challenges Broad knowledge for a programmer
Device driver knowledge
System and application programming
Debugging bare code
Reducing semantic-gap between application and hardware
Integrating with other bare PC applications

20. Further Research Multiple USBs for storage
Integrating with SQLITE database and others
Integrating with Web server and Webmail
Extending to NFS and other file system protocols
Performance comparison with conventional systems
Adding security to USB flash drives

21. Conclusions Described internals of a bare PC file system
Presented a novel computing architecture (BMC)
Described internals of a bare PC file system
Possible use in super-secure applications
Bare to bare applications are super-secure
Identified further research