Operating System Structures

Meelis R OOS
[email protected]

Institute of Computer Science

Tartu University

fall 2009
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Literature

A. S. Tanenbaum. Modern Operating Systems. 2nd ed. Prentice

Hall. 2001.

G. Nutt. Operating Systems: A Modern Perspective. 3rd ed.

Addison-Wesley. 2003.

A. Silberschatz, P. B. Galvin, G. Gagne. Operating System

Concepts. 6th ed. or later, John Wiley & Sons. 2002.

Course webpage:
http://www.cs.ut.ee/ mroos/os/

Course mailing list:

[email protected]

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Outline of the course

Structure of computer and operating system

Input-output devices
Storage systems, network structure, . . .

File systems
File system interfaces and implementation

Memory management
Main memory management, virtual memory

Process management
Processes and threads
Process scheduling, synchronization, deadlocks

...

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Operating System Components

Process management

Main memory management

File management

I/O system management

Secondary storage management

Networking

Protection and security

Shell

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Process Management

Process is a running program

Process needs resources to run (CPU time, main meory, files,

I/O devices)

Operating system is responsible for the following duties:

Process creation and deletion
Stopping and resuming of processes
Process synchronization mechanisms
Inter-process communication mechanisms
Deadlock management mechanisms

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Memory Management

Memory can be seen as a large array of words or bytes, each

having own address; can be accessed quickly by CPU and I/O
devices

Main memory is volatile (lost on crash or power-off)

Operating system is responsible for the following tasks:

Memory allocation and freeing when asked by processes
Accounting of memory areas are they used, by whom?
Decisions about what process to bring into memory next
when some memory is freed

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File Management

File is a batch of information about related subjects

Structure of any specific file is defined by the creator

Programs (in both source and executable form) and data are
mostly stored in files

Operating system is responsible for the following tasks in file

management:
File creation and deletion
Directory creation and deletion
Support for manipulating files and directories
Storing files on secondary storage
Managing backups of files

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Input-Output System

I/O system consists of:

I/O buffering system
Cache management system
General interfaces for device drivers
Specific device drivers

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Secondary Storage Management

Main memory is lost after power outage, neither do all

necessary programs and data fit into memory

Thus we need to use secondary storage to hold information

Disks, tapes, . . .

Operating system is responsible for the following tasks in

secondary storage management:
Space allocation
Free space management
Disk access scheduling

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Protection Mechanisms

Protection mechanisms control access to system and user

resources by program, processes or users

A protection mechanism must:

Tell apart authorized and unauthorized users
Provide access rules
Enforce these rules

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Shell

Many commands to operating system are control commands of

the system itself:
Process creation
I/O operations
Main memory management
File system manipulation
Protection mechanisms
Network operations

Shell a program that interacts with the user and lets him
control the system

Examples: UNIX shell, MS-DOS COMMAND.COM, MacOS

GUI+Finder, Windows GUI+Explorer

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Operating System Services

Services that operating system provides to programs

Program execution (loading into memory and starting)

I/O operations because programs can not usually access

peripheral devices directly, operating system must offer services
for it

File system manipulation file creation, deletion, reading,

writing, directory operations

Communication exchange of data between processes (in the

same or in differnet computers), implemented by message
passing or shared memory

Fault detection discovery of faults with CPU, memory, I/O

devices and user programs and appropriate reactions to them

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Additional functions of the OS

Not user-oriented but for better functioning of the system

Resource allocation and freeing

Accounting who used what resources and how much (for

payment and statistics)

Protection and security

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System Calls

System calls are the interface between running program and

operating system kernel

Usually implemented in assembly language

Often also directly available in system programming languages

(C, C++)

Three ways of parameter passing:

Parameters in CPU registers
Parameters in memory table, fixed register contains address
of the table
Parameters in the stack

API Application Programming Interface

ABI Application Binary Interface

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Most Common Types of System Calls

Process management

File management

Device management

General information

Communication

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System Programs

. . . help to create an environment for application program

execution and development

. . . give access to system calls and services in user-accessible

way

User view of the system is usually defined by system programs

From the point of view of operating system kernel these

programs look like any user program
File manipulation
Status information retrieval
...

Some system programs are often implemented as parts of shell

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Structure: MS-DOS

Designed to get maximal func- application program

tionality with scarce memory

Not divided into modules
resident system program
Some internal structure exists
but interfaces and functionality
are not separated DOS device drivers

Applications extend operating

system as they find convenient
ROM BIOS device drivers

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Structure: original UNIX

UNIX was also written for computers with modest resources

Somewhat structured but still monolitic
Two separated layers: system programs and kernel
Kernel is everything below system call interface

(the users)

shells and commands

compilers and interpreters
system libraries

systemcall interface to the kernel

signals file system CPU scheduling

terminal handling swapping page replacement
character I/O system block I/O system demand paging
terminal drivers disk and tape drivers virtual memory

kernel interface to the hardware

terminal controllers device controllers memory controllers
terminals disks and tapes physical memory

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Layered Approach

Operating system is divided into layers

Each layer uses services of lower layers

The lowest layer is hardware

The highest layer is application program with user interface

Modularity: each layer only uses operations and services from

lower layers

Example: OS/2

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Microkernel

As much modules as possible are moved out from kernel to

user level (as processes)

The modules communicate using message passing

Benefits:
Easier to extend
Easier to port to a new architecture
More robust (less code works in kernel mode)
More secure

Exampled: Tru64 UNIX, MacOS X, QNX, also somewhat

Windows NT

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Virtual Machines

Logical next step from layered system

Any layers below are seen as hardware that is usable for

current layer

Virtual machine gives client machines an interface that is

identical to actual hardware

Creates an illusion of many processes that use their own

processor and run its own operating system there along with its
own (virtual) memory

This client operating system can be very simple (even

single-user and single-tasking)

IBM has been the main maker of virtualized architectures

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Virtual Machines

The resources of physical computer are divided to create virtual

machines
The sharing of processor(s) gives the impression that users have
their own processors
File system and spooling give virtual card readers, disks and
printers
Normal time-shared terminal acts as the console of virtual
machine
Shared disks (minidisk)
Virtual network interfaces for communicating between virtual
machines
Paravirtualization as a way to compensate for not fully
virtualizable architecture

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Virtual Machines: pros and cons

Perfect protection of system resources because of virtual

machine isolation

No direct sharing of resources because of this

Theoretically a powerful means for operating systems research

and development

More efficieant use of hardware

Implementation is complex, especially when architecture is not

fully virtualized and needs special tricks to achieve near-100%
emulation of hardware; fully virtualizable hardware is a big
bonus

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Exokernels

Advancement of microkernel idea

Device access is not translated (each client system no more has

its own zero address)

Different processes are given different address ranges

These address ranges are enfoced on hardware and kernel level

Bonus is eliminated address translation overhead

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