CS308 – Operating Systems

V Semester CSE

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 CS308 – Operating Systems

Unit – I Operating System Structure

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Operating-System Structures

✓Operating System Services

✓User Operating System Interface
✓System Calls
✓Types of System Calls
✓System Programs
✓Operating System Design and Implementation
✓Operating System Structure
✓System Boot

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Objectives
• Services that the OS provides to users, processes, and other systems
• Interface that it makes available to users and programmers
• Explain on its components and their interconnections; how operating
systems are installed and customized and how they boot

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A View of Operating System Services

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Operating System Services
• OS provide an environment for execution of programs and services to
programs and users
• OS services :
✓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

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Operating System Services (Cont..)
• File-system manipulation - Programs need to read and write files and
directories, create and delete, search them, list file.
• Communications – Processes may exchange information, on the same
computer or between computers over a network
✓ Communications via shared memory or through message passing
• 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 users and programmers abilities

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Operating System Services (Cont..)
• 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 - 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

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User and Operating System Interface - CLI
CLI or command interpreter allows direct command entry
• Sometimes implemented in 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

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Bourne Shell Command Interpreter

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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
• 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)

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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.

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Choice of Interface

• The Mac OS X GUI

• System administrators
✓Use CLI

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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)

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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
• 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
• 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

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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 (Cont..)
• 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

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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
• 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

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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
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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

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OS Design and Implementation
• Design Goals
• 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
• Software engineering principles

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OS Design and Implementation(Cont..)
• Mechanisms and Policies
• Important principle to separate
✓Policy: What will be done?
✓Mechanism: How to do it?
• Policies are likely to change across places or over time
• Implementation
✓operating systems are collections of many programs, written by many people
over a long period of time
✓Early operating systems were written in assembly language
✓ C, C++ - High level - Can be written faster, is more compact, and is easier to
understand and debug.
✓easier to port—to move to some other hardware
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Operating System Structure
• A common approach is to partition the task into small components, or
modules, rather than have one monolithic system

1) Simple Structure
2) Layered Approach
3) Microkernels
4) Modules
5) Hybrid Systems
✓Mac OS X
✓iOS
✓Android

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Simple Structure
• Many operating systems do not have well-defined structures
• Like MS-DOS, UNIX was limited by hardware functionality
• Consists of two separable parts: the kernel and the system programs

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Layered Approach

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Layered Approach (Cont..)
• OS can be broken into number of layers
• OS can retain much greater control over the computer and over the
application

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Microkernels
• This method removing all nonessential components from the kernel
and implementing them as system and user-level programs.
• The result is a smaller kernel.
• Message Passing

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Modules
• The best current methodology for operating-system design involves
using loadable kernel modules.
• The kernel has a set of core components and links in additional
services via modules, either at boot time or during run time.
• UNIX, Solaris, Linux, and Mac OS, as well as Windows

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Modules (Cont..)

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Hybrid Systems
• Combine different structures, resulting in hybrid systems that address
performance, security, and usability issues
✓Apple Mac OS X
✓iOS
✓Android

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Mac OS X

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iOS

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Android

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System Boot
• When power initialized on system, execution starts at a fixed memory location
• Firmware ROM used to hold initial boot code

• 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

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Acknowledgement
Operating-System Concepts
by
Abraham-Silberschatz
Peter Baer Galvin
Greg Gagne

Ninth Edition

Publisher : Wiley

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