INTRODUCTION TO OPERATING SYSTEMS AND

RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
UNIT 2
OPERATING SYSTEMS
STRUCTURES
BY DR D B NTALASHA

1 Introduction to OS - Ntalasha 2020 24/08/2024

 Outline
 Operating System Services
 User Operating System Interface
 System Calls
 Types of System Calls
 System Programs
 Operating System Design and Implementation
 Operating System Structure
 Virtual Machines
 Operating System Debugging
 Operating System Generation
 System Boot
2 Introduction to OS - Ntalasha 2020 24/08/2024
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 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
 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.
 Operating System Services (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 – 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 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 - Some (such as CPU cycles, main memory, and
file storage) may have special allocation code, others (such as I/O
devices) may have general request and release code
 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
 If a system is to be protected and secure, precautions must be instituted
throughout it. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.
A View of Operating System Services
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
o If the latter, adding new features doesn’t require shell
modification
 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 as “Aqua” GUI interface with UNIX kernel
underneath and shells available
 Solaris is CLI with optional GUI interfaces (Java Desktop, KDE)
The Mac OS X GUI
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
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), and Java API for the
Java virtual machine (JVM)
 Why use APIs rather than system calls?

(Note that the system-call names used throughout this text are
generic)
Example of System Calls
 System call sequence to copy the contents of one file to
another file
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
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)
API – System Call – OS Relationship
Standard C Library Example
 C program invoking printf() library call, which calls write()
system call
 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
Parameter Passing via Table
Types of System Calls
 Process control
 end, abort
 load, execute
 create process, terminate process
 get process attributes, set process attributes
 wait for time
 wait event, signal event
 allocate and free memory
 File management
 create file, delete file
 open, close file
 read, write, reposition
 get and set file attributes
Types of System Calls (Cont.)
 Device management
 request device, release device
 read, write, reposition
 get device attributes, set device attributes
 logically attach or detach devices
 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
Examples of Windows and
Unix System Calls
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
MS-DOS execution

(a) At system startup (b) running a program

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 of 0 – no error or > 0 – error code
FreeBSD Running Multiple Programs
 System Programs
 System programs provide a convenient environment for
program development and execution. They can be
divided into:
 File manipulation
 Status information
 File modification
 Programming language support
 Program loading and execution
 Communications
 Application 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
 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
 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
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 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-
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
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
MS-DOS Layer Structure
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
Traditional UNIX System 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
Layered Operating System
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
Mac OS X Structure
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

Solaris Modular Approach
Virtual Machines
 A virtual machine takes the layered approach to its
logical conclusion. It treats hardware and the operating
system kernel as though they were all hardware.

 A virtual machine provides an interface identical to the

underlying bare hardware.

 The operating system host creates the illusion that a

process has its own processor and (virtual memory).

 Each guest provided with a (virtual) copy of underlying

computer.
Virtual Machines History and Benefits

 First appeared commercially in IBM mainframes in 1972

 Fundamentally, multiple execution environments (different
operating systems) can share the same hardware
 Protect from each other
 Some sharing of file can be permitted, controlled
 Commutate with each other, other physical systems via
networking
 Useful for development, testing
 Consolidation of many low-resource use systems onto
fewer busier systems
 “Open Virtual Machine Format”, standard format of virtual
machines, allows a VM to run within many different virtual
Virtual Machines (Cont.)
 Para-virtualization
 Presents guest with system similar but not identical to
hardware

 Guest must be modified to run on paravirtualized hardware

 Guest can be an OS, or in the case of Solaris 10 applications

running in containers
Virtualization Implementation
 Difficult to implement – must provide an exact duplicate of
underlying machine
 Typically runs in user mode, creates virtual user mode and
virtual kernel mode
 Timing can be an issue – slower than real machine
 Hardware support needed
 More support-> better virtualization
 i.e. AMD provides “host” and “guest” modes
Solaris 10 with Two Containers
VMware Architecture
The Java Virtual Machine
 Operating-System Debugging
 Debugging is finding and fixing errors, or bugs
 OSes generate log files containing error information
 Failure of an application can generate core dump file capturing
memory of the process
 Operating system failure can generate crash dump file containing
kernel memory
 Beyond crashes, performance tuning can optimize system performance
 Kernighan’s Law: “Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the
first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you
are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it.”
 DTrace tool in Solaris, FreeBSD, Mac OS X allows live instrumentation
on production systems
 Probes fire when code is executed, capturing state data and sending
it to consumers of those probes
Solaris 10 dtrace Following System Call
 Operating System Generation
 Operating systems are designed to run on any of a class of
machines; the system must be configured for each specific
computer site

 SYSGEN program obtains information concerning the

specific configuration of the hardware system

 Booting – starting a computer by loading the kernel

 Bootstrap program – code stored in ROM that is able to locate

the kernel, load it into memory, and start its execution
System Boot
 Operating system must be made available to hardware so
hardware can start it
 Small piece of code – bootstrap loader, locates the kernel,
loads it into memory, and starts it
 Sometimes two-step process where boot block at fixed
location loads bootstrap loader
 When power initialized on system, execution starts at a fixed
memory location
 Firmware used to hold initial boot code
 The end
 Questions???

53 Introduction to OS - Ntalasha 2020 24/08/2024