Bilkent University

Department of Computer Engineering

CS342 Operating Systems

Lecture 2
Operating System Structures
(chapter 2)
Dr. İbrahim Körpeoğlu
http://www.cs.bilkent.edu.tr/~korpe

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References

• The slides here are adapted/modified from the textbook and its slides:
Operating System Concepts, Silberschatz et al., 7th & 8th editions,
Wiley.

REFERENCES
• Operating System Concepts, 7th and 8th editions, Silberschatz et al.
Wiley.
• Modern Operating Systems, Andrew S. Tanenbaum, 3rd edition, 2009.

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 Outline

• Operating System Services

• User Operating System Interface
• System Calls
• System Programs
• Operating System Structure

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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

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 Operating System Services

• Two major tasks of an operating system

– 1) Providing a nice/convenient environment for users/applications

• Provide some set of services for user applications
• Visible to users

– 2) Resource allocation and management

• Not much visible to users

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Operating System Services

• 1) 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
– File-system manipulation - Programs need to read and write files
and directories, create and delete them, search them, list file
Information, permission management.

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 Operating System Services

• One set of operating-system services provides functions that are

helpful to the user (Cont):
– 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 and handling – 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

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A View of Operating System Services

• 2) 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, Memory, File Storage, I/O
devices, etc.
– Accounting - To keep track of which users use how much and
what kinds of computer resources
– Protection and security - The owners of information should be
able to control use of that information; concurrent processes should
not interfere with each other
• Access control to resources, authentication, …

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 OS Services

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[User - Operating System] Interface - CLI

Command Line Interface (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
– later case: add new programs
easily

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 [User-Operating System] Interface - GUI

• User-friendly desktop metaphor interface

– Icons represent files, programs, actions, etc
– Various mouse buttons over objects in the interface cause various
actions (provide information, options, execute function, open
directory

• Many operating systems now include both CLI and GUI interfaces
– Linux: command shells available (CLI); KDE as GUI

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Bourne Shell Command Interpreter

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 The MacOS X GUI

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System Calls

• Programming interface to the services provided by the OS

– Interface provided to applications
• Typically written in a high-level language (C or C++)

• Mostly accessed by programs via a high-level Application Program

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),
– Java API for the Java virtual machine (JVM)

• Why use APIs rather than system calls?

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 System Calls

Application
(a process, a Application
running program)

Sytsem Call Interface

…. System Calls
(OS functions)
Each has a name/number, set of parameters

Other kernel functions

Kernel/OS other kernel functions can be called by system calls

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System Calls

…
user level code

Your Program fd =open(…); Your Program Code

….

API open (…) fopen(…) Standard C library

{…} {…} Code
kernel level code

System Calls sys_open (…) Kernel Code

{…}

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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

• Consider the ReadFile() function in the

• Win32 API—a function for reading from a file

• A description of the parameters passed to ReadFile()

– HANDLE file—the file to be read
– LPVOID buffer—a buffer where the data will be read into and
written from
– DWORD bytesToRead—the number of bytes to be read into the
buffer
– LPDWORD bytesRead—the number of bytes read during the last
read
– LPOVERLAPPED ovl—indicates if overlapped I/O is being used
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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 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)

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API – System Call – OS Relationship

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 Standard C Library Example

• C program invoking printf() library call, which calls write() system call

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System Call Parameter Passing

• Often, more information is required than the identity of the 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
– 1) Simplest: pass the parameters in registers
• In some cases, may be more parameters than registers
– 2) Parameters stored in a block, or table, in memory, and address
of block passed as a parameter in a register
– 3) Parameters placed, or pushed, onto the stack by the program
and popped off the stack by the operating system
Last two 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
• File management
• Device management
• Information maintenance
• Communications
• Protection

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 Examples of Windows and Unix System
Calls

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System Programs

• System programs provide a convenient environment for program

development and execution. They can be divided into:
– File manipulation (create, delete, copy, rename, print, list, …)
– Status information (date, time, amount of available memory, disk
space, who is logged on, …)
– File modification (text editors, grep, …)
– Programming language support (compiler, debuggers, …)
– Program loading and execution (loaders, linkers)
– Communications (ftp, browsers, ssh, …)

– Other System Utilities/Applications may come with OS CD (games,

math solvers, plotting tools, database systems, spreadsheets, word
processors, …)

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 System Programs

• Most users’ view of the operation system is defined by system

programs, not the actual system calls

• 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

• create file: simple system program that can just call “create”
system call or something similar
• compiler: complex system program

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System Programs

Users
System Programs Other User Applications

System Calls

Kernel

From OS’s view: system+user programs are all applications

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 User

User Interface (GUI/CLI)

System Programs Application Programs

System Calls

Rest of Kernel

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OS Structure

• Simple Structure (MSDOS)

• Layered Approach

• Microkernel Approach

• Modules Approach

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 Simple Structure

• 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

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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

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 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

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Traditional UNIX System Structure

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 Layered Operating System

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Microkernel System Structure

• Moves as much from the kernel into “user” space

• 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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 Modules

• Most modern operating systems implement 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

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Solaris Modular Approach

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 End of Lecture

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