Computer Science 3B

Chapter 2 – Operating-System Structures

Chapter 2: 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
• Operating System Debugging
• Operating System Generation
• System Boot

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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
• To explain how operating systems are installed and customized and how they boot

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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

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Operating System Services (Cont.)

• One set of operating-system services provides functions that are helpful to the user (Cont.):
• 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.
• 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

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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 - 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 - 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

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A View of Operating System Services

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User Operating System Interface - CLI

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
• 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 (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 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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The Mac OS X GUI

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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)

Note that the system-call names used throughout this

text are generic

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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

• 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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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 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

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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 (example – timer)
• Specifying and designing an OS is highly creative task of software engineering

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Implementation

• Much variation
• Early OSes in assembly language
• Then system programming languages like Algol, PL/1
• Now C, C++
• Actually usually a mix of languages
• Lowest levels in assembly
• Main body in C
• Systems programs in C, C++, scripting languages like PERL, Python, shell scripts
• More high-level language easier to port to other hardware
• But slower
• Emulation can allow an OS to run on non-native hardware

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Operating System Structure

• General-purpose OS is very large program

• Various ways to structure ones
• Simple structure – MS-DOS
• More complex -- UNIX
• Layered – an abstrcation
• Microkernel -Mach

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Simple Structure -- MS-DOS

• 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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Non Simple 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

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Traditional UNIX System Structure
Beyond simple but not fully layered

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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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Microkernel System Structure

• Moves as much from the kernel into user space

• Mach example of microkernel
• Mac OS X kernel (Darwin) partly based on Mach
• 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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Microkernel System Structure

Application File Device user

Program System Driver mode

messages messages

Interprocess memory CPU kernel

Communication managment scheduling mode

microkernel

hardware

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Modules

• Many modern operating systems implement loadable 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
• Linux, Solaris, etc

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Solaris Modular Approach

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Hybrid Systems

• Most modern operating systems are actually not one pure model
• Hybrid combines multiple approaches to address performance, security, usability needs
• Linux and Solaris kernels in kernel address space, so monolithic, plus modular for dynamic loading of functionality
• Windows mostly monolithic, plus microkernel for different subsystem personalities
• Apple Mac OS X hybrid, layered, Aqua UI plus Cocoa programming environment
• Below is kernel consisting of Mach microkernel and BSD Unix parts, plus I/O kit and dynamically loadable modules (called
kernel extensions)

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Mac OS X Structure
graphical user interface
Aqua

application environments and services

Java Cocoa Quicktime BSD

kernel environment
BSD

Mach

I/O kit kernel extensions

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iOS

• Apple mobile OS for iPhone, iPad

• Structured on Mac OS X, added functionality
• Does not run OS X applications natively
• Also runs on different CPU architecture (ARM vs. Intel)
• Cocoa Touch Objective-C API for developing apps
• Media services layer for graphics, audio, video
• Core services provides cloud computing, databases
• Core operating system, based on Mac OS X kernel

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Android

• Developed by Open Handset Alliance (mostly Google)

• Open Source
• Similar stack to IOS
• Based on Linux kernel but modified
• Provides process, memory, device-driver management
• Adds power management
• Runtime environment includes core set of libraries and Dalvik virtual machine
• Apps developed in Java plus Android API
• Java class files compiled to Java bytecode then translated to executable than runs in Dalvik VM
• Libraries include frameworks for web browser (webkit), database (SQLite), multimedia, smaller libc

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Android Architecture

Applications

Application Framework

Libraries Android runtime

SQLite openGL Core Libraries

surface media
Dalvik
manager framework
virtual machine
webkit libc

Linux kernel

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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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