Chapter 2: Operating-System

Structures

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

 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.2 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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).
 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 2.3 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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
 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
 May occur in the CPU and memory hardware, in I/O
devices, in user program
 For each type of error, OS should take the appropriate
action to ensure correct and consistent computing
 Debugging facilities can greatly enhance the user’s and
programmer’s abilities to efficiently use the system
Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.4 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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
 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
 Protection involves ensuring that all access to system
resources is controlled
 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 2.5 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 A View of Operating System Services

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.6 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 User Operating System Interface - CLI

CLI or command interpreter allows direct command

entry
 Sometimes implemented in kernel, sometimes by
systems program
 Sometimes multiple flavors implemented – shells
 Primarily fetches a command from user and
executes it
 Sometimes commands built-in, sometimes just
names of programs
 If the latter, adding new features doesn’t
require shell modification

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.7 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Bourne Shell Command Interpreter

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.8 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 User Operating System Interface - GUI
 User-friendly desktop metaphor interface
 Usually mouse, keyboard, and monitor
 Icons represent files, programs, actions, etc
 Various mouse buttons over objects in the interface
cause various actions (provide information, options,
execute function, open directory (known as a folder)
 Invented at Xerox PARC
 Many systems now include both CLI and GUI interfaces
 Microsoft Windows is GUI with CLI “command” shell
 Apple Mac OS X is “Aqua” GUI interface with UNIX
kernel underneath and shells available
 Unix and Linux have CLI with optional GUI
interfaces (CDE, KDE, GNOME)

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.9 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Touchscreen Interfaces

 Touchscreen devices
require new interfaces
 Mouse not possible or not
desired
 Actions and selection based
on gestures
 Virtual keyboard for text
entry
 Voice commands.

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.10 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 The Mac OS X GUI

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.11 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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)

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.12 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 How System Calls Work
 The Applications run in an area of memory known as user space. A system call connects
to the operating system's kernel, which executes in kernel space. When an application
creates a system call, it must first obtain permission from the kernel. It achieves this
using an interrupt request, which pauses the current process and transfers control to the
kernel.

 If the request is permitted, the kernel performs the requested action, like creating or
deleting a file. As input, the application receives the kernel's output. The application
resumes the procedure after the input is received. When the operation is finished, the
kernel returns the results to the application and then moves data from kernel space to user
space in memory.

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.13 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 How System Calls Work
 A simple system call may take few nanoseconds to provide the
result, like retrieving the system date and time. A more
complicated system call, such as connecting to a network device,
may take a few seconds. Most operating systems launch a
distinct kernel thread for each system call to avoid bottlenecks.
Modern operating systems are multi-threaded, which means they
can handle various system calls at the same time.

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.14 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Example of System Calls
 System call sequence to copy the contents of one file to
another file

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.15 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Example of Standard API

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.16 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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
 Managed by run-time support library (set of
functions built into libraries included with
compiler)

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.17 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 API – System Call – OS Relationship

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.18 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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
 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
 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.19 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Parameter Passing via Table

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.20 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Types of System Calls
 Process control
 create process, terminate process
 end, abort
 load, execute (Process loads another program and executes
it)
 get process attributes, set process attributes ()
 wait for time (process waiting for time)
 wait event, signal event (wait for a certain amount of time
to pass, processes should then signal when that event has
occurred )
 allocate and free memory
 Dump memory if error
 Locks for managing access to shared data between
processes

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.21 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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 2.22 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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 using host name or
process name
 From client to server
 Shared-memory model create and gain access to
memory regions
 transfer status information
 attach and detach remote devices

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.23 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Types of System Calls (Cont.)

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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.24 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Examples of Windows and Unix System Calls

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.25 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Standard C Library Example
 C program invoking printf() library call, which calls
write() system call

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.26 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.27 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Example: FreeBSD
 Unix variant
 Multitasking
 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.28 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.29 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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 2.30 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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 2.31 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 System Programs (Cont.)
 Background Services
 Launch at boot time
 Some for system startup, then terminate
 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.32 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.33 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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 2.34 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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
 Consists of everything below the system-call
interface and above the physical hardware
 Provides the file system, CPU scheduling,
memory management, and other operating-
system functions; a large number of
functions for one level

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.35 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Traditional UNIX System Structure
Beyond simple but not fully layered

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.36 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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 2.37 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.38 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Microkernel System Structure

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.39 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.40 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Solaris Modular Approach

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.41 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 System Boot
 The procedure of starting a computer by loading the
kernel is known as booting the system.
 Operating system must be made available to hardware
so hardware can start it
 Small piece of code – bootstrap loader, stored in
ROM or EEPROM locates the kernel, loads it into
memory, and starts it
 Sometimes two-step process where boot block at
fixed location loaded by ROM code, which loads
bootstrap loader from disk
 Common bootstrap loader, GRUB, allows selection of
kernel from multiple disks, versions, kernel options
 Kernel loads and system is then running

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.42 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 End of Chapter 2

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