Unit 2: Operating-System

Structures

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Unit 2

● Operating System Services

● System Calls
● Types of System Calls
● System Programs
● Operating System Design and Implementation
● Operating System Structure

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.2 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Objectives
● To describe the services an operating system provides to users,
processes, and other systems
● To discuss the various ways of structuring an operating system
● To explain how operating systems are installed and customized and
how they boot

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 Operating System Services
● Operating systems provide an environment for execution of programs and
services to programs and users
● One set of operating-system services provides functions that are helpful to the
user:
● User interface - Almost all operating systems have a user interface (UI).
4 Varies between Command-Line (CLI), Graphics User Interface
(GUI), Batch
● Program execution - The system must be able to load a program into
memory and to run that program, end execution, either normally or
abnormally (indicating error)
● I/O operations - A running program may require I/O, which may
involve a file or an I/O device

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.4 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Operating System Services (Cont.)

● One set of operating-system services provides functions that are helpful to the user
(Cont.):
● File-system manipulation - The file system is of particular interest. Programs
need to read and write files and directories, create and delete them, search them,
list file Information, permission management.
● Communications – Processes may exchange information, on the same computer
or between computers over a network
4 Communications may be via shared memory or through message passing
(packets moved by the OS)
● Error detection – OS needs to be constantly aware of possible errors
4 May occur in the CPU and memory hardware, in I/O devices, in user
program
4 For each type of error, OS should take the appropriate action to ensure
correct and consistent computing
4 Debugging facilities can greatly enhance the user’s and programmer’s
abilities to efficiently use the system

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.5 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Operating System Services (Cont.)
● Another set of OS functions exists for ensuring the efficient operation of the system
itself via resource sharing
● Resource allocation - When multiple users or multiple jobs running
concurrently, resources must be allocated to each of them
4 Many types of resources - CPU cycles, main memory, file storage, I/O
devices.
● Accounting - To keep track of which users use how much and what kinds of
computer resources
● Protection and security - The owners of information stored in a multiuser or
networked computer system may want to control use of that information,
concurrent processes should not interfere with each other
4 Protection involves ensuring that all access to system resources is
controlled
4 Security of the system from outsiders requires user authentication, extends
to defending external I/O devices from invalid access attempts

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.6 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 A View of Operating System Services

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 System Calls
● Programming interface to the services provided by the OS
● Typically written in a high-level language (C or C++)
● Mostly accessed by programs via a high-level Application
Programming Interface (API) rather than direct system call
use
● Three most common APIs are Win32 API for Windows, POSIX
API for POSIX-based systems (including virtually all versions
of UNIX, Linux, and Mac OS X), and Java API for the Java
virtual machine (JVM)

Note that the system-call names used throughout this

text are generic

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 Example of System Calls

● System call sequence to copy the contents of one file to another file

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 Example of Standard API

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 System Call Implementation

● Typically, a number associated with each system call

● System-call interface maintains a table indexed according to these
numbers
● The system call interface invokes the intended system call in OS kernel
and returns status of the system call and any return values
● The caller need know nothing about how the system call is implemented
● Just needs to obey API and understand what OS will do as a result
call
● Most details of OS interface hidden from programmer by API
4 Managed by run-time support library (set of functions built into
libraries included with compiler)

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 API – System Call – OS Relationship

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 System Call Parameter Passing

● Often, more information is required than simply identity of desired

system call
● Exact type and amount of information vary according to OS and call
● Three general methods used to pass parameters to the OS
● Simplest: pass the parameters in registers
4 In some cases, may be more parameters than registers
● Parameters stored in a block, or table, in memory, and address of
block passed as a parameter in a register
4 This approach taken by Linux and Solaris
● Parameters placed, or pushed, onto the stack by the program and
popped off the stack by the operating system
● Block and stack methods do not limit the number or length of
parameters being passed

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 Parameter Passing via Table

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 Types of System Calls
● Process control
● create process, terminate process
● end, abort
● load, execute
● get process attributes, set process attributes
● wait for time
● wait event, signal event
● allocate and free memory
● Dump memory if error
● Debugger for determining bugs, single step execution
● Locks for managing access to shared data between processes

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 Types of System Calls

● File management
● create file, delete file
● open, close file
● read, write, reposition
● get and set file attributes
● Device management
● request device, release device
● read, write, reposition
● get device attributes, set device attributes
● logically attach or detach devices

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.16 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Types of System Calls (Cont.)

● Information maintenance
● get time or date, set time or date
● get system data, set system data
● get and set process, file, or device attributes
● Communications
● create, delete communication connection
● send, receive messages if message passing model to host name or
process name
4 From client to server
● Shared-memory model create and gain access to memory regions
● transfer status information
● attach and detach remote devices

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 Types of System Calls (Cont.)

● Protection
● Control access to resources
● Get and set permissions
● Allow and deny user access

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 Examples of Windows and Unix System Calls

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 Standard C Library Example
● C program invoking printf() library call, which calls write() system call

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 Example: MS-DOS

● Single-tasking
● Shell invoked when system
booted
● Simple method to run program
● No process created
● Single memory space
● Loads program into memory,
overwriting all but the kernel
● Program exit -> shell reloaded

At system startup running a program

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 Example: FreeBSD
● Unix variant
● Multitasking
● User login -> invoke user’s choice of shell
● Shell executes fork() system call to create
process
● Executes exec() to load program into
process
● Shell waits for process to terminate or
continues with user commands
● Process exits with:
● code = 0 – no error
● code > 0 – error code

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 System Programs
● System programs provide a convenient environment for program
development and execution. They can be divided into:
● File manipulation
● Status information sometimes stored in a File modification
● Programming language support
● Program loading and execution
● Communications
● Background services
● Application programs
● Most users’ view of the operation system is defined by system programs,
not the actual system calls

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 System Programs
● Provide a convenient environment for program development and
execution
● Some of them are simply user interfaces to system calls; others are
considerably more complex

● File management - Create, delete, copy, rename, print, dump, list, and
generally manipulate files and directories

● Status information
● Some ask the system for info - date, time, amount of available
memory, disk space, number of users
● Others provide detailed performance, logging, and debugging
information
● Typically, these programs format and print the output to the terminal
or other output devices
● Some systems implement a registry - used to store and retrieve
configuration information

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.24 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 System Programs (Cont.)
● File modification
● Text editors to create and modify files
● Special commands to search contents of files or perform
transformations of the text
● Programming-language support - Compilers, assemblers, debuggers
and interpreters sometimes provided
● Program loading and execution- Absolute loaders, relocatable
loaders, linkage editors, and overlay-loaders, debugging systems for
higher-level and machine language
● Communications - Provide the mechanism for creating virtual
connections among processes, users, and computer systems
● Allow users to send messages to one another’s screens, browse web
pages, send electronic-mail messages, log in remotely, transfer files
from one machine to another

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.25 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 System Programs (Cont.)
● Background Services
● Launch at boot time
4 Some for system startup, then terminate
4 Some from system boot to shutdown
● Provide facilities like disk checking, process scheduling, error logging,
printing
● Run in user context not kernel context
● Known as services, subsystems, daemons

● Application programs
● Don’t pertain to system
● Run by users
● Not typically considered part of OS
● Launched by command line, mouse click, finger poke

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 Operating System Design and Implementation

● Design and Implementation of OS not “solvable”, but some approaches

have proven successful

● Internal structure of different Operating Systems can vary widely

● Start the design by defining goals and specifications

● Affected by choice of hardware, type of system

● User goals and System goals

● User goals – operating system should be convenient to use, easy to
learn, reliable, safe, and fast
● System goals – operating system should be easy to design, implement,
and maintain, as well as flexible, reliable, error-free, and efficient

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.27 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Operating System Design and Implementation (Cont.)

● Important principle to separate

Policy: What will be done?
Mechanism: How to do it?
● Mechanisms determine how to do something, policies decide what
will be done
● The separation of policy from mechanism is a very important
principle, it allows maximum flexibility if policy decisions are to be
changed later (example – timer)
● Specifying and designing an OS is highly creative task of software
engineering

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 Implementation

● Much variation
● Early OSes in assembly language
● Then system programming languages like Algol, PL/1
● Now C, C++
● Actually usually a mix of languages
● Lowest levels in assembly
● Main body in C
● Systems programs in C, C++, scripting languages like PERL, Python,
shell scripts
● More high-level language easier to port to other hardware
● But slower
● Emulation can allow an OS to run on non-native hardware

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 Operating System Structure
● General-purpose OS is very large program
● Various ways to structure ones
● Simple structure – MS-DOS
● More complex -- UNIX
● Layered – an abstrcation
● Microkernel -Mach

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 Simple Structure -- MS-DOS

● MS-DOS – written to provide the

most functionality in the least space
● Not divided into modules
● Although MS-DOS has some
structure, its interfaces and
levels of functionality are not
well separated

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.31 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Non Simple Structure -- UNIX

UNIX – limited by hardware functionality, the original UNIX

operating system had limited structuring. The UNIX OS consists of
two separable parts
● Systems programs
● The kernel
4 Consists of everything below the system-call interface and
above the physical hardware
4 Provides the file system, CPU scheduling, memory
management, and other operating-system functions; a large
number of functions for one level

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 Traditional UNIX System Structure
Beyond simple but not fully layered

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 Layered Approach

● The operating system is divided

into a number of layers (levels),
each built on top of lower layers.
The bottom layer (layer 0), is the
hardware; the highest (layer N) is
the user interface.
● With modularity, layers are
selected such that each uses
functions (operations) and services
of only lower-level layers

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.34 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Microkernel System Structure
● Moves as much from the kernel into user space
● Mach example of microkernel
● Mac OS X kernel (Darwin) partly based on Mach
● Communication takes place between user modules using message
passing
● Benefits:
● Easier to extend a microkernel
● Easier to port the operating system to new architectures
● More reliable (less code is running in kernel mode)
● More secure
● Detriments:
● Performance overhead of user space to kernel space
communication

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 Microkernel System Structure

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 Modules
● Many modern operating systems implement loadable kernel modules
● Uses object-oriented approach
● Each core component is separate
● Each talks to the others over known interfaces
● Each is loadable as needed within the kernel
● Overall, similar to layers but with more flexible
● Linux, Solaris, etc

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 Solaris Modular Approach

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 Hybrid Systems

● Most modern operating systems are actually not one pure model
● Hybrid combines multiple approaches to address performance,
security, usability needs
● Linux and Solaris kernels in kernel address space, so monolithic,
plus modular for dynamic loading of functionality
● Windows mostly monolithic, plus microkernel for different
subsystem personalities
● Apple Mac OS X hybrid, layered, Aqua UI plus Cocoa programming
environment
● Below is kernel consisting of Mach microkernel and BSD Unix
parts, plus I/O kit and dynamically loadable modules (called kernel
extensions)

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 Mac OS X Structure

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 iOS

● Apple mobile OS for iPhone, iPad

● Structured on Mac OS X, added functionality
● Does not run OS X applications natively
4 Also runs on different CPU architecture
(ARM vs. Intel)
● Cocoa Touch Objective-C API for developing
apps
● Media services layer for graphics, audio, video
● Core services provides cloud computing,
databases
● Core operating system, based on Mac OS X
kernel

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 Android
● Developed by Open Handset Alliance (mostly Google)
● Open Source
● Similar stack to IOS
● Based on Linux kernel but modified
● Provides process, memory, device-driver management
● Adds power management
● Runtime environment includes core set of libraries and Dalvik virtual
machine
● Apps developed in Java plus Android API
4 Java class files compiled to Java bytecode then translated to
executable than runs in Dalvik VM
● Libraries include frameworks for web browser (webkit), database
(SQLite), multimedia, smaller libc

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 Android Architecture

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 End of Unit 2

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013