LEC VI

Device Controllers
Device drivers are software modules that can be plugged into an OS to
handle a particular device. Operating System takes help from device drivers
to handle all I/O devices.

The Device Controller works like an interface between a device and a device
driver. I/O units (Keyboard, mouse, printer, etc.) typically consist of a
mechanical component and an electronic component where electronic
component is called the device controller.

There is always a device controller and a device driver for each device to
communicate with the Operating Systems. A device controller may be able
to handle multiple devices. As an interface its main task is to convert serial
bit stream to block of bytes, perform error correction as necessary.

Any device connected to the computer is connected by a plug and socket,

and the socket is connected to a device controller. Following is a model for
connecting the CPU, memory, controllers, and I/O devices where CPU and
device controllers all use a common bus for communication.

Synchronous vs. asynchronous I/O

 Synchronous I/O − In this scheme CPU execution waits while I/O proceeds
 Asynchronous I/O − I/O proceeds concurrently with CPU execution

Communication to I/O Devices

The CPU must have a way to pass information to and from an I/O device.
There are three approaches available to communicate with the CPU and
Device.

 Special Instruction I/O

 Memory-mapped I/O

 Direct memory access (DMA)

Special Instruction I/O

This uses CPU instructions that are specifically made for controlling I/O
devices. These instructions typically allow data to be sent to an I/O device or
read from an I/O device.

Memory-mapped I/O
When using memory-mapped I/O, the same address space is shared by
memory and I/O devices. The device is connected directly to certain main
memory locations so that I/O device can transfer block of data to/from
memory without going through CPU.

While using memory mapped IO, OS allocates buffer in memory and informs
I/O device to use that buffer to send data to the CPU. I/O device operates
asynchronously with CPU, interrupts CPU when finished.
The advantage to this method is that every instruction which can access
memory can be used to manipulate an I/O device. Memory mapped IO is
used for most high-speed I/O devices like disks, communication interfaces.

Direct Memory Access (DMA)

Slow devices like keyboards will generate an interrupt to the main CPU after
each byte is transferred. If a fast device such as a disk generated an
interrupt for each byte, the operating system would spend most of its time
handling these interrupts. So a typical computer uses direct memory access
(DMA) hardware to reduce this overhead.

Direct Memory Access (DMA) means CPU grants I/O module authority to
read from or write to memory without involvement. DMA module itself
controls exchange of data between main memory and the I/O device. CPU is
only involved at the beginning and end of the transfer and interrupted only
after entire block has been transferred.

Direct Memory Access needs a special hardware called DMA controller

(DMAC) that manages the data transfers and arbitrates access to the
system bus. The controllers are programmed with source and destination
pointers (where to read/write the data), counters to track the number of
transferred bytes, and settings, which includes I/O and memory types,
interrupts and states for the CPU cycles.
The operating system uses the DMA hardware as follows –

Step Description

1 Device driver is instructed to transfer disk data to a buffer address X.

2 Device driver then instruct disk controller to transfer data to buffer.

3 Disk controller starts DMA transfer.

4 Disk controller sends each byte to DMA controller.

5 DMA controller transfers bytes to buffer, increases the memory address,

 decreases the counter C until C becomes zero.

6 When C becomes zero, DMA interrupts CPU to signal transfer completion.

Polling vs Interrupts I/O

A computer must have a way of detecting the arrival of any type of input.
There are two ways that this can happen, known
as polling and interrupts. Both of these techniques allow the processor to
deal with events that can happen at any time and that are not related to the
process it is currently running.

Polling I/O
Polling is the simplest way for an I/O device to communicate with the
processor. The process of periodically checking status of the device to see if
it is time for the next I/O operation, is called polling. The I/O device simply
puts the information in a Status register, and the processor must come and
get the information.

Most of the time, devices will not require attention and when one does it will
have to wait until it is next interrogated by the polling program. This is an
inefficient method and much of the processors time is wasted on
unnecessary polls.

Compare this method to a teacher continually asking every student in a

class, one after another, if they need help. Obviously the more efficient
method would be for a student to inform the teacher whenever they require
assistance.

Interrupts I/O
An alternative scheme for dealing with I/O is the interrupt-driven method.
An interrupt is a signal to the microprocessor from a device that requires
attention.

A device controller puts an interrupt signal on the bus when it needs CPU’s
attention when CPU receives an interrupt, It saves its current state and
invokes the appropriate interrupt handler using the interrupt vector
(addresses of OS routines to handle various events). When the interrupting
device has been dealt with, the CPU continues with its original task as if it
had never been interrupted.

Operating System - I/O Softwares

I/O software is often organized in the following layers −

 User Level Libraries − This provides simple interface to the user program to
perform input and output. For example, stdio is a library provided by C and C+
+ programming languages.
 Kernel Level Modules − This provides device driver to interact with the device
controller and device independent I/O modules used by the device drivers.
 Hardware − This layer includes actual hardware and hardware controller which
interact with the device drivers and makes hardware alive.

A key concept in the design of I/O software is that it should be device

independent where it should be possible to write programs that can access
any I/O device without having to specify the device in advance. For
example, a program that reads a file as input should be able to read a file
on a floppy disk, on a hard disk, or on a CD-ROM, without having to modify
the program for each different device.
Device Drivers
Device drivers are software modules that can be plugged into an OS to
handle a particular device. Operating System takes help from device drivers
to handle all I/O devices. Device drivers encapsulate device-dependent code
and implement a standard interface in such a way that code contains
device-specific register reads/writes. Device driver, is generally written by
the device's manufacturer and delivered along with the device on a CD-
ROM.

A device driver performs the following jobs −

 To accept request from the device independent software above to it.

 Interact with the device controller to take and give I/O and perform required error
handling

 Making sure that the request is executed successfully

How a device driver handles a request is as follows: Suppose a request
comes to read a block N. If the driver is idle at the time a request arrives, it
starts carrying out the request immediately. Otherwise, if the driver is
already busy with some other request, it places the new request in the
queue of pending requests.

Interrupt handlers
An interrupt handler, also known as an interrupt service routine or ISR, is a
piece of software or more specifically a callback function in an operating
system or more specifically in a device driver, whose execution is triggered
by the reception of an interrupt.

When the interrupt happens, the interrupt procedure does whatever it has
to in order to handle the interrupt, updates data structures and wakes up
process that was waiting for an interrupt to happen.

The interrupt mechanism accepts an address ─ a number that selects a

specific interrupt handling routine/function from a small set. In most
architectures, this address is an offset stored in a table called the interrupt
vector table. This vector contains the memory addresses of specialized
interrupt handlers.

Device-Independent I/O Software

The basic function of the device-independent software is to perform the I/O
functions that are common to all devices and to provide a uniform interface
to the user-level software. Though it is difficult to write completely device
independent software but we can write some modules which are common
among all the devices. Following is a list of functions of device-independent
I/O Software −

 Uniform interfacing for device drivers

 Device naming - Mnemonic names mapped to Major and Minor device numbers

 Device protection

 Providing a device-independent block size

 Buffering because data coming off a device cannot be stored in final destination.

 Storage allocation on block devices

  Allocation and releasing dedicated devices

 Error Reporting

User-Space I/O Software

These are the libraries which provide richer and simplified interface to
access the functionality of the kernel or ultimately interactive with the
device drivers. Most of the user-level I/O software consists of library
procedures with some exception like spooling system which is a way of
dealing with dedicated I/O devices in a multiprogramming system.

I/O Libraries (e.g., stdio) are in user-space to provide an interface to the OS

resident device-independent I/O SW. For example putchar(), getchar(),
printf() and scanf() are example of user level I/O library stdio available in C
programming.

Kernel I/O Subsystem

Kernel I/O Subsystem is responsible to provide many services related to I/O.
Following are some of the services provided.

 Scheduling − Kernel schedules a set of I/O requests to determine a good order

in which to execute them. When an application issues a blocking I/O system call,
the request is placed on the queue for that device. The Kernel I/O scheduler
rearranges the order of the queue to improve the overall system efficiency and
the average response time experienced by the applications.
 Buffering − Kernel I/O Subsystem maintains a memory area known
as buffer that stores data while they are transferred between two devices or
between a device with an application operation. Buffering is done to cope with a
speed mismatch between the producer and consumer of a data stream or to
adapt between devices that have different data transfer sizes.
 Caching − Kernel maintains cache memory which is region of fast memory that
holds copies of data. Access to the cached copy is more efficient than access to
the original.
 Spooling and Device Reservation − A spool is a buffer that holds output for a
device, such as a printer, that cannot accept interleaved data streams. The
spooling system copies the queued spool files to the printer one at a time. In
some operating systems, spooling is managed by a system daemon process. In
other operating systems, it is handled by an in kernel thread.
  Error Handling − An operating system that uses protected memory can guard
against many kinds of hardware and application errors.

Operating System - File System

File
A file is a named collection of related information that is recorded on
secondary storage such as magnetic disks, magnetic tapes and optical
disks. In general, a file is a sequence of bits, bytes, lines or records whose
meaning is defined by the files creator and user.

File Structure
A File Structure should be according to a required format that the operating
system can understand.

 A file has a certain defined structure according to its type.

 A text file is a sequence of characters organized into lines.
 A source file is a sequence of procedures and functions.
 An object file is a sequence of bytes organized into blocks that are
understandable by the machine.
 When operating system defines different file structures, it also contains the code
to support these file structure. Unix, MS-DOS support minimum number of file
structure.

File Type
File type refers to the ability of the operating system to distinguish different
types of file such as text files source files and binary files etc. Many
operating systems support many types of files. Operating system like MS-
DOS and UNIX have the following types of files −

Ordinary files

 These are the files that contain user information.

 These may have text, databases or executable program.

 The user can apply various operations on such files like add, modify, delete or
even remove the entire file.
Directory files

 These files contain list of file names and other information related to these files.
Special files

 These files are also known as device files.

 These files represent physical device like disks, terminals, printers, networks,
tape drive etc.

These files are of two types −

 Character special files − data is handled character by character as in case of

terminals or printers.
 Block special files − data is handled in blocks as in the case of disks and
tapes.

File Access Mechanisms

File access mechanism refers to the manner in which the records of a file
may be accessed. There are several ways to access files −

 Sequential access

 Direct/Random access

 Indexed sequential access

Sequential access
A sequential access is that in which the records are accessed in some
sequence, i.e., the information in the file is processed in order, one record
after the other. This access method is the most primitive one. Example:
Compilers usually access files in this fashion.

Direct/Random access
 Random access file organization provides, accessing the records directly.
 Each record has its own address on the file with by the help of which it can be
directly accessed for reading or writing.
 The records need not be in any sequence within the file and they need not be in
adjacent locations on the storage medium.
Indexed sequential access

 This mechanism is built up on base of sequential access.

 An index is created for each file which contains pointers to various blocks.

 Index is searched sequentially and its pointer is used to access the file directly.

Space Allocation
Files are allocated disk spaces by operating system. Operating systems
deploy following three main ways to allocate disk space to files.

 Contiguous Allocation

 Linked Allocation

 Indexed Allocation
Contiguous Allocation

 Each file occupies a contiguous address space on disk.

 Assigned disk address is in linear order.

 Easy to implement.

 External fragmentation is a major issue with this type of allocation technique.

Linked Allocation

 Each file carries a list of links to disk blocks.

 Directory contains link / pointer to first block of a file.

 No external fragmentation

 Effectively used in sequential access file.

 Inefficient in case of direct access file.

Indexed Allocation

 Provides solutions to problems of contigous and linked allocation.

 A index block is created having all pointers to files.

 Each file has its own index block which stores the addresses of disk space
occupied by the file.

 Directory contains the addresses of index blocks of files.

 Operating System - Security
Security refers to providing a protection system to computer system
resources such as CPU, memory, disk, software programs and most
importantly data/information stored in the computer system. If a computer
program is run by an unauthorized user, then he/she may cause severe
damage to computer or data stored in it. So a computer system must be
protected against unauthorized access, malicious access to system
memory, viruses, worms etc. We're going to discuss following topics in this
chapter.

 Authentication

 One Time passwords

 Program Threats

 System Threats

 Computer Security Classifications

Authentication
Authentication refers to identifying each user of the system and associating
the executing programs with those users. It is the responsibility of the
Operating System to create a protection system which ensures that a user
who is running a particular program is authentic. Operating Systems
generally identifies/authenticates users using following three ways −

 Username / Password − User need to enter a registered username and

password with Operating system to login into the system.
 User card/key − User need to punch card in card slot, or enter key generated
by key generator in option provided by operating system to login into the
system.
 User attribute - fingerprint/ eye retina pattern/ signature − User need to
pass his/her attribute via designated input device used by operating system to
login into the system.

One Time passwords

One-time passwords provide additional security along with normal
authentication. In One-Time Password system, a unique password is
required every time user tries to login into the system. Once a one-time
password is used, then it cannot be used again. One-time password are
implemented in various ways.

 Random numbers − Users are provided cards having numbers printed along
with corresponding alphabets. System asks for numbers corresponding to few
alphabets randomly chosen.
 Secret key − User are provided a hardware device which can create a secret id
mapped with user id. System asks for such secret id which is to be generated
every time prior to login.
 Network password − Some commercial applications send one-time passwords
to user on registered mobile/ email which is required to be entered prior to
login.

Program Threats
Operating system's processes and kernel do the designated task as
instructed. If a user program made these process do malicious tasks, then it
is known as Program Threats. One of the common example of program
threat is a program installed in a computer which can store and send user
credentials via network to some hacker. Following is the list of some well-
known program threats.

 Trojan Horse − Such program traps user login credentials and stores them to
send to malicious user who can later on login to computer and can access
system resources.
 Trap Door − If a program which is designed to work as required, have a security
hole in its code and perform illegal action without knowledge of user then it is
called to have a trap door.
 Logic Bomb − Logic bomb is a situation when a program misbehaves only when
certain conditions met otherwise it works as a genuine program. It is harder to
detect.
 Virus − Virus as name suggest can replicate themselves on computer system.
They are highly dangerous and can modify/delete user files, crash systems. A
virus is generatlly a small code embedded in a program. As user accesses the
program, the virus starts getting embedded in other files/ programs and can
make system unusable for user

System Threats
System threats refers to misuse of system services and network
connections to put user in trouble. System threats can be used to launch
program threats on a complete network called as program attack. System
threats creates such an environment that operating system resources/ user
files are misused. Following is the list of some well-known system threats.

 Worm − Worm is a process which can choked down a system performance by

using system resources to extreme levels. A Worm process generates its
multiple copies where each copy uses system resources, prevents all other
processes to get required resources. Worms processes can even shut down an
entire network.
 Port Scanning − Port scanning is a mechanism or means by which a hacker
can detects system vulnerabilities to make an attack on the system.
 Denial of Service − Denial of service attacks normally prevents user to make
legitimate use of the system. For example, a user may not be able to use
internet if denial of service attacks browser's content settings.

Computer Security Classifications

As per the U.S. Department of Defense Trusted Computer System's
Evaluation Criteria there are four security classifications in computer
systems: A, B, C, and D. This is widely used specifications to determine and
model the security of systems and of security solutions. Following is the
brief description of each classification.

S.N. Classification Type & Description

1
Type A

Highest Level. Uses formal design specifications and verification

techniques. Grants a high degree of assurance of process security.

2
Type B

Provides mandatory protection system. Have all the properties of a class

C2 system. Attaches a sensitivity label to each object. It is of three types.

 B1 − Maintains the security label of each object in the system. Label

 is used for making decisions to access control.
 B2 − Extends the sensitivity labels to each system resource, such as
storage objects, supports covert channels and auditing of events.
 B3 − Allows creating lists or user groups for access-control to grant
access or revoke access to a given named object.

3
Type C

Provides protection and user accountability using audit capabilities. It is of

two types.

 C1 − Incorporates controls so that users can protect their private

information and keep other users from accidentally reading /
deleting their data. UNIX versions are mostly Cl class.
 C2 − Adds an individual-level access control to the capabilities of a
Cl level system.

4
Type D

Lowest level. Minimum protection. MS-DOS, Window 3.1 fall in this

category.

Operating System - Linux

Linux is one of popular version of UNIX operating System. It is open source
as its source code is freely available. It is free to use. Linux was designed
considering UNIX compatibility. Its functionality list is quite similar to that of
UNIX.

Components of Linux System

Linux Operating System has primarily three components

 Kernel − Kernel is the core part of Linux. It is responsible for all major activities
of this operating system. It consists of various modules and it interacts directly
 with the underlying hardware. Kernel provides the required abstraction to hide
low level hardware details to system or application programs.
 System Library − System libraries are special functions or programs using
which application programs or system utilities accesses Kernel's features. These
libraries implement most of the functionalities of the operating system and do
not requires kernel module's code access rights.
 System Utility − System Utility programs are responsible to do specialized,
individual level tasks.

Kernel Mode vs User Mode

Kernel component code executes in a special privileged mode called kernel
mode with full access to all resources of the computer. This code
represents a single process, executes in single address space and do not
require any context switch and hence is very efficient and fast. Kernel runs
each processes and provides system services to processes, provides
protected access to hardware to processes.

Support code which is not required to run in kernel mode is in System

Library. User programs and other system programs works in User
Mode which has no access to system hardware and kernel code. User
programs/ utilities use System libraries to access Kernel functions to get
system's low level tasks.
Basic Features
Following are some of the important features of Linux Operating System.

 Portable − Portability means software can works on different types of hardware

in same way. Linux kernel and application programs supports their installation
on any kind of hardware platform.
 Open Source − Linux source code is freely available and it is community based
development project. Multiple teams work in collaboration to enhance the
capability of Linux operating system and it is continuously evolving.
 Multi-User − Linux is a multiuser system means multiple users can access
system resources like memory/ ram/ application programs at same time.
 Multiprogramming − Linux is a multiprogramming system means multiple
applications can run at same time.
 Hierarchical File System − Linux provides a standard file structure in which
system files/ user files are arranged.
 Shell − Linux provides a special interpreter program which can be used to
execute commands of the operating system. It can be used to do various types
of operations, call application programs. etc.
 Security − Linux provides user security using authentication features like
password protection/ controlled access to specific files/ encryption of data.

LINUX Architecture
The following illustration shows the architecture of a Linux system −
The architecture of a Linux System consists of the following layers −

 Hardware layer − Hardware consists of all peripheral devices (RAM/ HDD/ CPU
etc).

 Kernel − It is the core component of Operating System, interacts directly with

hardware, provides low level services to upper layer components.

 Shell − An interface to kernel, hiding complexity of kernel's functions from

users. The shell takes commands from the user and executes kernel's functions.

 Utilities − Utility programs that provide the user most of the functionalities of
an operating systems.

ASSIGNMENT:

Describe how to implement a lock using semaphores.

REFERECES:
Useful Links on Operating System
 Operating system − A wikipage giving a short description about operating
system.
 What is an Operating System − An operating system is the most important
software that runs on a computer.
 Computer Basics by BBC − An introduction to computers including computer
parts and health and safety.
 Some Basic Terminology − Various computer terms has been explained in
simple language.
 Basic Computer Literacy Information − A quick go through Basic Computer
Literacy Information.

REFERENCE BOOKS:

//END OF LEC VII

END OF ALL LEC NOTES
BEST OF LUCK WITH YOUR EXAMS