CS8493-OPERATING SYSTEMS

UNIT-I

Lecture 5 :
Operating System Structures

Staff Incharge
Mr.R.Prabhu AP/CSE
OPERATING SYSTEM Structures
What Is In This Chapter?
• System Components
• System Calls
• How Components Fit Together
• Virtual Machine

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SYSTEM COMPONENTS
These are the pieces of the system we’ll be looking at:

• Process Management
• Main Memory Management
• File Management
• I/O System Management
• Secondary Management
• Networking Protection System
• Command-Interpreter System

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PROCESS MANAGEMENT

A process is a program in execution: (A program is passive, a process active.)

A process has resources (CPU time, files) and attributes that must be managed.

Management of processes includes:

 Process Scheduling (priority, time management, . . . )

 Creation/termination
 Block/Unblock (suspension/resumption )
 Synchronization
 Communication
 Deadlock handling
 Debugging

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MAIN MEMORY MANAGEMENT
 Allocation/de-allocation for processes, files, I/O.
 Maintenance of several processes at a time
 Keep track of who's using what memory
 Movement of process memory to/from secondary storage.

FILE MANAGEMENT
A file is a collection of related information defined by its creator. Commonly, files
represent programs (both source and object forms) and data.
The operating system is responsible for the following activities in connections with file
management:
• File creation and deletion.
• Directory creation and deletion.
• Support of primitives for manipulating files and directories.
• Mapping files onto secondary storage.
• File backup on stable (nonvolatile) storage media.

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I/O MANAGEMENT
 Buffer caching system
 Generic device driver code
 Drivers for each device - translate read/write
commands.

SECONDARY STORAGE MANAGEMENT

 Disks, tapes, optical, ...

 Free space management ( paging/swapping )

 Storage allocation ( what data goes where on disk )

 Disk scheduling

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NETWORKING
 Communication system between distributed processors.
 Getting information about files/processes/etc. on a remote machine.
 Can use either a message passing or a shared memory model.

PROTECTION
 Of files, memory, CPU, etc.
 Means controlling of access
 Depends on the attributes of the file and user

SYSTEM PROGRAMS
 Command Interpreters -- Program that accepts control statements
(shell, GUI interface, etc.)
 Compilers/linkers
 Communications (ftp, telnet, etc.)

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System Tailoring
Modifying the Operating System program for a particular machine. The goal is to includ
all the necessary pieces, but not too many extra ones.

 Typically a System can support many possible devices, but any one installation ha
only a few of these possibilities.

 Plug and play allows for detection of devices and automatic inclusion of the cod
(drivers) necessary to drive these devices.

 A sysgen is usually a link of many OS routines/modules in order to produce a

executable containing the code to run the drivers.

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System Calls
A System Call is the main way a user program interacts with the
Operating System.

Figure
3.1

Figure
2.8

2: OS Structures

9
HOW A SYSTEM CALL WORKS

 Obtain access to system space

 Do parameter validation
System resource collection ( locks on
structures )
 Ask device/system for requested item
 Suspend waiting for device
 Interrupt makes this thread ready to run
 Wrap-up
 Return to user

There are 11 (or more) steps in making the system call

read (fd, buffer, nbytes) Linux API

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Example of Windows 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

11
Two ways of passing
data between programs.

Shared Memory
Msg Passing

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These are examples
of various system
calls.

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How An Operating System Is Put Together
A SIMPLE STRUCTURE:

Example of MS-DOS.

Application Programming

Note how all

layers can touch
Resident System Programming the hardware.
Bad News!!

MS-DOS Drivers

ROM - BIOS Device Drivers

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 How An Operating System Is Put Together

A LAYERED STRUCTURE:
Example of Windows 2000.

System Services

Windows Security
VM Proces
MGR Referenc
Manager s
& e
Manag IO
GDI Monitor
er Manager

Graphic
s Windows 2000 Kernel
Device
Drivers

Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL)

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How An Operating System Is Put Together
A LAYERED STRUCTURE:
Example of UNIX.

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Virtual Machine

In a Virtual Machine - each process "seems" to execute on its own processor

with its own memory, devices, etc.

 The resources of the physical machine are shared. Virtual devices are
sliced out of the physical ones. Virtual disks are subsets of physical ones.
 Useful for running different OS simultaneously on the same machine.
 Protection is excellent, but no sharing possible.
 Virtual privileged instructions are trapped.

Virtual User
Physical User
Virtual Machine

Monitor Mode Physical Machine

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Virtual Machine

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Virtual Machine

Example of MS-DOS on top of Windows XP.

DOS APPLICATION
Physical User
BIOS DRIVERS

Windows XP Physical Machine

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Virtual Machine

Example of Java Virtual Machine

The Java Virtual Machine allows Java code to be portable
between various hardware and OS platforms.

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