OPERATING SYSTEM (17CS64)

MODULE-1

INTRODUCTION

 An Operating System (OS) is a system software that manages the computer hardware.
o It provides a basis for application programs and acts as an intermediary between the
computer users and the computer hardware.
o The purpose of an OS is to provide an environment in which the user can execute the
program in a convenient & efficient manner.

 What Operating Systems do?

A computer system can be divided into four components

 Hardware: The Hardware consists of memory, CPU, ALU, I/O devices, peripherals
devices & storage devices.
 OS: The OS controls & co-ordinates the use of hardware among various application
programs for various users.
 Application Program: The application programs includes word processors, spread
sheets, compilers & web browsers which defines the ways in which the resources are
used to solve the problems of the users.
 User: Who works/executes the required function.

The following figure shows the abstract view of the components of a computer system

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To completely understand the role of operating system two views are considered as below:
 User View:

 The user view of the computer depends on the interface used.

 Some users may use PC’s. Such system is designed for one user. Here, the OS is
designed for ease of use where some attention is mainly on performances and not on
the resource utilization.
 Some users may use a terminal connected to a mainframe or minicomputers. Other
users may access the same computer through other terminals. These users may share
resources and exchange information. In this case the OS is designed to maximize
resource utilization- so that all available CPU time, memory & I/O are used
efficiently.
 Other users may sit at workstations, connected to the networks of other workstation
and servers. In this case OS is designed to compromise between individual usability
& resource utilization.

 System View:

 An operating system can be viewed as resource allocator.

 A computer system has many resources such as CPU Time, memory space, file
storage space, I/O devices and so on that may be used to solve a problem.
 The OS acts as a manager of these resources and decides how to allocate these
resources to programs and the users so that it can operate the computer system
efficiently and fairly.
 A different view of an OS is that it controls various I/O devices & user programs
i.e. an OS is a control program which manages the execution of user programs to
prevent errors and improper use of the computer.

 Computer System Organization

 Computer system operation

 A general purpose computer system consists of one or more CPUs and device
controllers connected through common bus providing access to shared memory as
shown in figure below.

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 Each device controller is in-charge of a particular device type.

 CPUs and device controllers can execute concurrently competing for memory
utilization and memory controller synchronizes the memory access.
 For computer to start running when it is powered-up or rebooted an initial program
called bootstrap program is loaded. It is stored in ROM or EEPROM, generally
known as firmware. It loads the operating system and starts executing the first
process, such as “init” and waits for some event to occur.
 An operating system is interrupt driven. The occurrence of an event is signaled by
an interrupt through signal or system call. When CPU is interrupted it stops its job
and immediately transfers execution to fixed location. Fixed location contains the
starting address of interrupt service routine. On completion of the execution of
interrupt service routine CPU resumes interrupted computation.
 A timeline of this operation is shown below in figure.
 Each computer has its own interrupt design mechanism but several functions are
common. The interrupt transfers the control to the interrupt service routine through
the interrupt vector, which contains the starting addresses of all the interrupt service
routines. The interrupted service routine executes and after completion, CPU returns
back to previous execution by preserving the state of the CPU by storing registers and
the program counter value.

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 Storage Structure

 Main memory is the large storage media that the CPU can access directly. It forms
an array of memory words. Each word has its own address. Interaction is achieved
through a sequence of load and store instructions to specify memory addresses. The
load instruction moves a word from main memory to an internal register within the
CPU, where as store instruction moves the content of a register to main memory.
 It But it is very small and volatile storage device. Computer systems have secondary
storage that provides large nonvolatile storage capacity.
 Magnetic disks are the common secondary storage devices. Other storage devices are
cache memory, CD-ROM, magnetic tapes and so on.

 Storage system is differentiated based on their speed, cost and volatility.

 Storage systems above electronic disks are volatile, expensive but fast. Below are non-
volatile, comparatively cheap and slower.
 Electronic disks can be designed as both volatile and non-volatile. Eg. Flash memory
used in cameras, robot and Personal Digital Assistants (PDA).
 NVRAM (Non Volatile RAM) is a DRAM with a battery backup power.
 Storage systems can be organized in a hierarchy as shown below in figure according
to speed and cost.

Storage devices hierarchy

 I/O Structure

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 Storage is one form of I/O devices. OS spends considerable amount of time in

managing I/O devices because they have an impact on the performance and
reliability of the system.
 There is one device driver for each device controller. Each device controller
maintains a buffer and registers. The device driver understands the device controller
and presents a uniform interface to the device and to the rest of the system.
 When an I/O operation is started, the device driver loads the appropriate registers
within the device controller. The device controller examines the contents of the
registers and determines what action to be taken.
 The controller starts transfer of data from the device to the local buffer.
 Once the transfer is complete the device controller informs the device driver via an
interrupt that the operation is complete. The device driver then returns control to the
OS through an interrupt.

 This form of interrupt driven I/O works well for moving small amounts of data but it
is a big overhead when bulk transfer is required. To solve this problem, DMA (direct
memory access) is used. DMA is used for high-speed I/O devices. The device
controller transfers entire block of data to or from buffer storage to main memory
without CPU intervention. Only one interrupt is generated per block, rather than the
one interrupt per byte.
 The figure shows the interplay of all components of a computer system.

 Computer System Architecture

A computer system can be categorized based on number of processors used.

 Single Processor Systems

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 A system that has one main CPU and is capable of executing a general-purpose
instruction set, including instructions from the user processes.
 Some systems also have special purpose processor to perform specific task, or on
mainframes, they come in the form of general purpose processors such as I/O
processor. These special purpose processors have limited instruction set and do not
run user processes. They are managed by the OS by sending information about the
next task and monitor their status.
 Ex1: A disk controller microprocessor receives a sequence of requests from the
main CPU and implements its own disk queue and scheduling algorithm. This
relieves the main CPU from disk scheduling.
 Ex2: PCs contain a microprocessor in the keyboard to convert the keystrokes into
codes to be sent to the CPU.
 These special purpose processors do not convert single processor system into
multiprocessor system.

 Multiprocessor Systems

 Multiprocessor systems have more than one processor in close communication. Also
known as Tightly Coupled System or Parallel Systems.
 They share computer bus, the clock, memory & peripheral devices.
 Two processes can run in parallel.
 Multi Processor Systems have 3 advantages,
o Increased Throughput: By increasing the number of processors we can get more
work done in less time. Speed up ratio with N processors is not N, but it is less
than N.
o Economy of Scale: As Multiprocessor systems share peripherals, mass storage &
power supplies, they can save more money than multiple single processor
systems. If many programs operate on same data, they will be stored on one disk
and all processors can share them instead of maintaining data on several systems.
o Increased Reliability: If a program is distributed properly on several processors,
then the failure of one processor will not halt the system but it only slows down.
 The ability to continue providing service proportional to the level of surviving
hardware is called graceful degradation. Such systems that provide graceful
degradation are fault tolerant. Fault tolerant requires a mechanism to allow failure to
be detected, and diagnosed and corrected.
 Multi processor systems are of two types
o Asymmetric Multiprocessing: Each processor is assigned a specific task. It uses
a master slave relationship. A master processor controls the system. The master
processors schedules and allocates work to slave processors.
o Symmetric Multiprocessing (SMP): Each processor performs all tasks within
the OS. SMP means all processors are peers i.e. no master slave relationship
exists between processors. Each processor concurrently runs a copy of OS.
Ex: Solaris. The following figure shows SMP architecture.

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 The differences between symmetric & asymmetric multiprocessing may result from
either hardware or software. Special hardware can differentiate the multiple processors,
or the software can be written to allow only one master & multiple slaves.
 A recent trend in CPU design is to include multiple compute cores on a single chip.

 Blade Servers are recent development in which multiple processor boards, I/O boards,
and networking boards are placed in same chassis. Here each processors can boot
independently and run their own OS.

 Clustered Systems

 The clustered systems have multiple CPUs but they are composed of two or more
individual systems coupled together.
 Clustered systems share storage and are closely linked via LAN Network.
 Clustering is usually used to provide high availability.
 A layer of software cluster runs on the cluster nodes. Each node can monitor one or
more of the others. If the monitored machine fails, the monitoring machine takes
ownership of its storage and restarts the applications that were running on failed
machine.
 Clustered systems can be categorized into two groups

1. Asymmetric Clustering.
2. Symmetric clustering.

 In asymmetric clustering one machine is in hot standby mode while others are
running the application. The hot standby machine does nothing but it monitors the
active server. If the server fails the hot standby machine becomes the active server.
 In symmetric mode two or more hosts are running the application & they monitor
each other. This mode is more efficient since it uses all the available hardware.
 Other forms of clusters include parallel clusters and clustering over WAN.
 Parallel clusters allow multiple hosts to access the same data on shared storage.

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 To provide this shared access, system must also supply access control and locking to
ensure that no conflicting operations occur. This function known as distributed lock
manager (DLM) is included.
 Clustering provides better reliability than the multiprocessor systems.

 Operating System Structure

 Multiprogramming system
 Single user cannot keep CPU and I/O devices busy at all times.
 Multiprogramming increases CPU utilization by organizing jobs so that CPU always
has one to execute.
 The OS has to keep several jobs in memory simultaneously as shown in figure
 The OS picks up and starts executing one of the jobs.
 Eventually if this job may not need the CPU due to some reason like, an I/O operation
to complete, then in non multiprogrammed system CPU would sit idle.
 But in a multiprogrammed system instead of having the CPU idle the OS switches to
the next job in the memory.

Memory layout for multiprogramming system

 Timesharing (multitasking)

 It is a logical extension of multiprogramming in which CPU switches among jobs so

frequently that users can interact with each job while it is running, creating interactive
computing.
 Allows many users to share the computer simultaneously.
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 It requires an interactive system or a hands-on computer system that provides direct

communication between the user and the system.
 Response time should be less than 1 second.
 Each user has at least one program executing in memory.
 A program loaded into memory and executing is called a process.
 Timesharing and multiprogramming requires several jobs to be kept simultaneously
in memory.
 Job scheduling: A job pool consists of all processes residing on disk and awaiting
allocation of main memory. If several jobs are ready to be brought into memory and if
there is not enough room for them, then the system must choose among them. Making
this decision is Job scheduling.
 CPU scheduling: If several jobs are ready to run at the same time then the system must
choose among them. Making this decision is CPU scheduling.
 Swapping: In time shared system processes are swapped in and out of main memory into
the disk to ensure reasonable response time. A common method for achieving this is
Virtual memory. The main advantage of the virtual-memory scheme is that it enables
users to run programs that are larger than actual physical memory.

 Operating System Operations

 Modern OS is Interrupt driven.

 Events are signaled by an interrupt or trap.
 An exception or trap is a software generated interrupt either by an error.
(For ex: Division by zero, invalid memory access) or specific request from a user
program.

 Dual-mode operation

 To ensure proper execution of the OS, we must be able to distinguish between OS

code and user defined code.
 Most computer systems provide hardware support to differentiate among various
modes of execution.
 Two modes of operation are
1. User mode
2. kernel mode (also called supervisor, system or privileged mode)
 Mode bit is added to the hardware to indicate current mode User mode(1) and kernel
mode(0).
 When system is executing on behalf of user application, the system is in user mode.
 When a user application requests a service from OS, it must transit from user to
kernel mode to fulfill the request as shown in figure
 At system boot time, the hardware starts in kernel mode. The OS is then loaded and
starts user applications in user mode. Whenever a trap or interrupt occurs, the
hardware switches from user mode to kernel mode. Thus whenever the OS gains

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control of the computer, it is in kernel mode. The system always switches to user
mode before passing control to user program. This allows protection to OS.

Transition from user to kernel mode

 The hardware allows privileged instructions to be executed only in kernel

mode. If an attempt is made to execute privileged instructions in user mode, the hardware
does not execute it but rather treats it as an illegal and traps it to the OS.

 Examples: Instruction to switch to user mode, I/O control instructions, timer

management instructions and interrupt management instructions.
 User program asks OS to perform OS tasks through system call.

 Timer

 Timer is used to prevent a program from getting stuck in an infinite loop or not
calling system services and never returning control to the OS.
 Timer can be set to interrupt the computer after a specific period.
 The period may be fixed or variable. The variable timer is implemented by fixed
rate clock and a counter. Whenever the clock ticks, operating system decrements the
counter. When counter reaches zero it generates an interrupt.
 Timer has to be set before scheduling process to regain control or terminate program
that exceeds allotted time.

 Process Management

 A process is a program in execution. Ex1. A time-shared user program like a

compiler is a process. Ex2. A word processing program run by an individual user on a
PC is a process.
 A process requires certain resources like CPU time, Memory, I/O devices to
complete its task.
 When the process terminates, the OS reclaims all the reusable resources.

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 A program in a file is stored on disk and is a passive entity, where as a process is an

active entity located on main memory.
 A single threaded process has one PC (program counter) specifying the address of
the next instruction to be executed. Such processes are sequential i.e. the CPU
executes one instruction after the other.
 A multi-threaded process has multiple program counters each pointing to the next
instruction to execute for a given thread.
 A system consists of a collection of processes, some of which are OS processes and
the rest are user processes. All these processes can execute concurrently by
multiplexing the CPU among them on a single CPU.
 The OS is responsible for the following activities of the process management,
o Creating & deleting of the user & system processes.
o Suspending and resuming processes.
o Providing mechanisms for process synchronization.
o Providing mechanisms for process communication.
o Providing mechanisms for deadlock handling.

 Memory Management

 Main memory is the central to the operation of the computer system.

 Main memory is the large array of words or bytes, ranging in size from hundreds of
thousands to billions. Each word or byte will have their own address.

 The CPU reads the instruction from main memory during instruction fetch cycle &
during the data-fetch cycle it reads & writes the data.
 The main memory is the only storage device in which a CPU is able to address &
access directly.
 For a program to be executed, it must be loaded into memory & mapped to absolute
addresses. When the program terminates, all available memory will be returned back.
 To improve the utilization of CPU & the response time several programs will be kept
in memory.
 Several memory management schemes are available & selection depends on the
Hardware design of the system.
 The OS is responsible for the following activities
o Keeping track of which parts of the memory are used & by whom.
o Deciding which process and data to move into and out of memory.
o Allocating & deallocating memory space as needed.

 Storage Management

 File System Management

 File management is one of the most visible components of an OS.

 Computer can store information on different types of physical media like Magnetic
Disks, Magnetic tapes, optical disks etc.

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 These devices have their own unique characteristics like access speed, capacity,
data transfer rate, and access method (sequential or random).
 OS implements the abstract concept of a file by managing mass storage media like
tapes, disks etc.,
 A file is a collection of related information defined by its creator. They commonly
represent programs (source and object) and data. Data files may be numeric,
alphabetic or alphanumeric.
 Files can be organized into directories to make them easier to use.
 The OS is responsible for the following activities,
o Creating & deleting files.
o Creating & deleting directories.
o Supporting primitives for manipulating files & directories.
o Mapping files onto secondary storage.
o Backing up files on stable (non volatile) storage media.

 Mass Storage management

 Computer system must provide secondary storage to back up main memory because,
o It is too small to accommodate all data and programs.
o Data held in this memory is lost when power goes off.
 Most programs including compilers, assemblers, word processors, editors etc are
stored on the disk until loaded into the memory and then use disk as both source and
destination of processing. Hence proper management of disk storage is very
important.

 The OS is responsible for the following activities,

o Free space management.
o Storage allocation.
o Disk scheduling.
 Slower and low cost but high capacity backup storage devices are called tertiary
devices which are used for back-up of the regular disk data, seldom used data, long
term archival storage etc. Eg. Magnetic tapes and their drives, CD and DVD drives
and platters like tape and optical platters.

 Caching

 It is an important principle of a computer system and is a fast memory which is used

for storing information on a temporary basis.
 First, the cache is searched when a particular piece of information is required during
processing. If the information already available, then it is directly used from the
cache, otherwise we use information from the source, putting a copy in the cache,
under the assumption that we will need the information again very soon.
 Internal programmable registers like index registers can be used as high-speed
cache for the main memory.
 Caches have limited size and thus Cache management is an important design
problem.

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 In a hierarchical storage structure, the same data may appear in different levels of
storage system. For ex, Suppose that an integer A is to be incremented by 1 is located
in file B which resides on disk, the migration of integer A from Disk to Register is
shown in below

 Once the increment to A takes place in the internal registers, the value of A differs in
various storage systems. The value of A becomes same only after the new value of A
is written from the internal register back to the disk.
 In multitasking environments, extreme care must be taken to use most recent value,
not matter where it is stored in the storage hierarchy.
 The situation becomes more complicated in multiprocessor environment, where
each CPU is associated with local cache. A care must be taken to make sure that an
update to the value of A in one cache is immediately reflected in all other caches.
This situation is called as cache coherency.
 The situation becomes even more complex in a distributed environment. Several
copies of the same file can be kept on different computers. Since the various replicas
may be accessed and updated concurrently, some distributed systems ensure that,
when a replica is updated in one place all other replicas are also updated as soon as
possible.

 I/O Systems

 OS hides peculiarities of hardware devices from the user.

 I/O subsystem consists of several components like,
o The memory management component that includes buffering, caching and
spooling.
o A general device driver interface.
o Drivers for specific hardware devices.
 Only the device driver knows the peculiarities of each of the devices.

 Protection and Security

 If a computer system has multiple users and allows the concurrent execution of
multiple processes, then a protection mechanism is required to regulate access to data.
 System resources like files, memory segments, CPU etc. are made available to only
those processes which have gained authorization from OS.
 Protection is a mechanism for controlling the access of processes or users to the
resources defined by a computer system.
 The mechanism must specify the controls to be imposed and what for.

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 The advantages of providing protection are: it can improve reliability by detecting

latent errors at the interfaces between component subsystems and early detection of
interface errors can prevent corruption of good subsystems by another malfunctioning
subsystem. Protection can prevent misuse by an unauthorized or incompetent user.
 The security system must defend the system from external and internal attacks.
Attacks can be of various types like viruses, worms, denial-of-service attack, identity
theft, theft of service etc. Ex. If a user’s authentication information is stolen then the
owner’s data can be stolen, corrupted or deleted.
 The mechanism of protection and security must be able to distinguish among all its
users. This is possible because the system maintains a list of all user ids. These ids
are unique per user.
 When it is required to distinguish among a set of users rather than individual users
then group functionality is implemented.
 A system-wide list of group names and group ids are stored.
 If a user needs to escalate privileges for gaining extra permissions then different
methods are provided by the OS.

 Distributed Systems

 A distributed system is a collection of physically separate heterogeneous computer

systems that are networked to provide the users with access to various resources that
the system maintains.
 A distributed system is one in which Hardware or Software components located at the
networked computers communicate & coordinate their actions only by passing
messages.

 Distributed systems depend on networking for their functionality. Network may vary
by the protocols used, distance between nodes (LAN, WAN, MAN, etc) & transport
media.
 A network operating system is an OS that provides features such as file sharing
across the network and allows different processes on different computers to exchange
messages.
 The advantages of Distributed Systems are,
o Resource sharing
o Higher reliability
o Better price performance ratio
o Shorter response time
o Higher throughput
o Incremental growth

 Special Purpose Systems

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The special purpose computers are those whose functions are more limited and whose objectives
are to deal with limited computation domains. Egs. Real time Embedded Systems, Multimedia
Systems and Handheld Systems.

 Real- Time Embedded Systems

 Embedded computers are found almost everywhere from car engines, robots, alarm
systems, medical imaging systems, industrial control systems, microwave ovens,
weapon systems etc.
 This class of computers have very specific task and run an OS with very limited
features. Usually they have limited or no user interface.

 Embedded systems runs on real time OS.

 A real time system should have well defined, fixed time constraints. Processing must
be done within the defined constraints or the system will fail. Hence they are often

 used as controlled device in a dedicated application. Real time OS uses priority

scheduling algorithm to meet the response requirement of a real time application.
 Real time systems are of two types
o Hard Real Time Systems
o Soft Real Time Systems
 A hard real time system guarantees that the critical tasks to be completed on time.
This goal requires that all delays in the system be bounded from the retrieval of stored
data to time that it takes the OS to finish the request.
 In soft real time system is a less restrictive one where a critical real time task gets
priority over other tasks & retains the property until it completes. Soft real time
system is achievable goal that can be mixed with other type of systems. They have
limited utility than hard real time systems. Soft real time systems are used in area of
multimedia, virtual reality & advanced scientific projects. It cannot be used in
robotics or industrial controls due to lack of deadline support. Soft real time requires

two conditions to implement, CPU scheduling must be priority based & dispatch
latency should be small.

 Multimedia Systems

 A recent trend in technology is the incorporation of multimedia data.

 Multimedia data consists of audio and video files along with conventional files (text
files, word document, etc).
 The difference from conventional data is that the multimedia data must be delivered
or streamed according to some time restrictions.
 Multimedia applications include video conferencing, news stories download over the
internet, live webcasts of speeches and so on.

 Handheld Systems

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 Handheld systems include Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), Cellular telephones,

palm and pocket PCs and so on, which uses special purpose embedded OS.
 Drawbacks are, because of smaller size they have small amount of memory, slow
processors and small display screen.
 Memory-Because of small size, OS and applications must manage the memory
efficiently. (Making sure all memory allocated is returned back to the memory
manager if no longer used). Many handheld devices do not use virtual memory
techniques.
 Speed-Processors run at a fraction of the speed of the PC processor. Faster processors
require more power. Therefore, OS and applications must not tax the processor.
 The small display screen also limits the output options. To allow the display of the
contents of the web pages web clipping is done where only a small subset of the web
page is delivered and displayed on the screen.
 Advantages are
o Ability to synchronize with desktops.
o Small size hence can be carried around easily.

 Computing Environments

 Traditional Computing

 Consider the “typical office environment”: Few year’s back it consisted of PCs
connected to the network with servers providing file and print service, Remote access
looked tough and portability was achieved through laptop.
 Terminals attached to mainframes were common at many companies with even few
remote access and portability option.
 The web technologies are stretching the boundaries of traditional computing.
Companies have portals, which provide web access to their internal servers. Network
computers are terminals that understand the web based computing. Hand held PDAs
can also connect to wireless networks to use company’s web portal.

 Client-Server Computing

 Many of today’s systems act as server systems to satisfy requests of clients.

 This form of specialized distributed system, called client-server system has general
structure as shown in below figure

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 Server system can be classified as follows

a. Compute-Server Systems: Provides an interface to which client can send
requests to perform some actions, in response the server execute the action
and send back result to the client. Ex. A server running a database that
responds to client requests for data.
b. File-Server Systems: Provides a file system interface where clients can
create, update, read & delete files. Ex. A web server that delivers files to
clients running web browsers.

 Peer-to-Peer(P2P) Computing

 It is another form of a distributed system. Here, clients and servers are not
distinguished from one another.

 All nodes within the system are considered as peers. Each can act as a server or a
client depending on who is requesting or providing a service.
 The advantage is the removal of bottleneck as the services can be provided by
several nodes that are distributed throughout the network.
 To participate in a P2P system a node must first join the network of peers. On joining,
the new node can provide and request for services.
 Determining what services are available in the network can be accomplished in one
of two methods,

1. When a node joins a network, it registers its services with a centralized lookup
service on the network. Any node wants service, first contacts the centralized
lookup service to determine which nodes provides the service. Then the
communication takes place between the client and the service provider.

2. A peer which is a client broadcasts a request for service to all nodes in the
network. The nodes that provide the service responds to the requesting peer. A
discovery protocol is used by the peers to discover the services provided by
other peers.

 Web Based Computing

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 It leads to more access by wider variety of devices other than PCs workstations,
PDAs, and cell phones.
 Web computing has increased the emphasis on networking.
 Devices that were not previously networked have been wired or wireless nowadays.
 The network connectivity is faster through improved network technology and
optimized network implementation code.
 Web based computing has given rise to a new category of devices called load
balancers which distribute network connections among a pool of similar servers.

Operating System Services

An OS provides an environment for the execution of the programs. The common services
provided by the OS are

1. User interface: Almost all operating systems have a user interface (UI).This interface
can take several forms.
a. Command-line interface (CLI): uses text commands and a specific
method for entering them.
b. Batch Interface: commands and directives to control are entered into files
and those files are executed.
c. Graphical User Interface (GUI): most common. Interface is a window
system with a pointing device directing the I/O, choose from menus, make
selections along with keyboard to enter text.
2. Program Execution: The OS must able to load the program into memory & run that
program. The program must be able to end its execution either normally or
abnormally.
3. I/O Operation: A running program may require I/O( file or an I/O device). Users
cannot control the I/O devices directly. So the OS must provide a means for
controlling I/O devices.
4. File System manipulation: Program needs to read and write files and directories.
They also need to create and delete files, search for a given file and list file
information. Some programs include permission management to deny access to files
or directories based on file ownership.

5. Communication: In certain situation one process may need to exchange information

with another process. This communication may takes place in two ways.
i. Between the processes executing on the same computer.
ii. Between the processes executing on different computer that are connected
by a network.
Communications can be implemented via shared memory or by message passing, in
which packets of information are moved between processes by the OS.
6. Error Detection: Errors may occur in CPU, I/O devices or in Memory Hardware.
The OS constantly needs to be aware of possible errors. For each type of errors the
OS should take appropriate actions to ensure correct & consistent computing.

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7. Resource Allocation: When multiple users logs onto the system or when multiple
jobs are running, resources must be allocated to each of them. The OS manages
different types of OS resources. Some resources may need some special allocation
codes & others may have some general request & release code.
8. Accounting: We need to keep track of which users use how many & what kind of
resources. This record keeping may be used for accounting. This accounting data may
be used for statistics or billing. It can also be used to improve system efficiency.
9. Protection and security: Protection ensures that all the access to the system are

controlled. Security starts with each user having authenticated to the system, usually
by means of a password. External I/O devices must also be protected from invalid
access. In multi process environment it is possible that one process may interface with
the other or with the OS, so protection is required.

 User Operating-System Interface

There are two fundamental approaches for users to interface with OS,
1. Command Interpreter
2. Graphical User Interface

 Command Interpreter(CI)

 Some OS include CI in the kernel, and in others like windows-XP and UNIX, it is
treated as a special program that is running when a job is initiated or when a user
first logs on.
 On systems with multiple command interpreters to choose from, the interpreters
are known as shells. For ex: On UNIX and Linux systems, there are different
shells a user may choose from including Bourne shell, C shell and Korn shell etc
 The main function of the command interpreter is to get and execute the next user-
specified command.
 Commands are implemented in two ways:
1. In one approach, the command interpreter itself has the code to execute the
command. Ex. a command to delete a file.

2. This will result in the command interpreter to go to a section of its code that
sets up the parameters and makes the appropriate system call. In this method,
the size of the command interpreter depends on the number of commands that
can be given.
3. Alternative approach used by UNIX is most commands are implemented
through system programs. The command interpreter uses the command to
identify a file to be loaded into memory and executed. Ex. rm file.txt would
make the command interpreter search for a file rm, load that file into memory
and execute it with parameter file.txt.
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 Advantages of CIs are,

o Command interpreter program is small.
o Command interpreter does not have to be changed when new commands
are added.
o New commands can be easily added to the system.

 Graphical User Interface

 GUI provides user-friendly desktop metaphor interface where the mouse is

moved to position where images or icons on the desktop that represent programs,
files directories and other system functions.
 Depending on mouse pointer’s location, clicking the mouse button can invoke the
corresponding program, select a file or directory known as folders or pull down a
menu that contains commands.
 First appeared in 1970s as a part of research at Xerox Parc research facility.
 It became widespread with the coming of Apple Macintosh in 1980s.
 Microsoft’s first version of Windows was based on GUI interface for MS-DOS.
The various windows systems that have been appeared and had enhancements in
the GUI.
 UNIX later implemented GUI in CDE (Common Desktop Environment) and X-
Windows Systems. Also seen in Solaris and IBM’s AIX system.

 SYSTEM CALLS

 System provides interface to the services made available by an OS.

 These calls are generally available as routines written in C and C++, although certain
low-level tasks may need to be written using assembly language instruction.
 System call sequence to read the contents of one file and copy to another file is
illustrated in below figure
o The first input that the program will need is the names of two files which can
be specified in many ways. This sequence requires many I/O system calls.
o Next, the program must open the input file which requires another system call.
If opening of file fails, it should display error message on console (another
system call) and should terminate abnormally (another system call).
o Next, the program must create the output file (another system call), If fails, it
should display error message on console (another system call) and should also
abort (another system call).

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o Next, we enter a loop that reads from input file (system call) and writes to the
output file (system call).Write/read operation may fail, which needs another
system call to continue.
o Finally, after the entire file is copied, the program may close both files
(system call), write message to console (system call)), and terminate normally
(system call).

 Application developers design programs according to an Application Program

Interface (API). API specifies the set of functions that are available to an application
programmer including the parameter that are passed to each function and returns
values the programmer can expect.
 Three most common APIs are Win32 API for Windows, POSIX API for POSIX-
based systems (UNIX, Linux, and Mac OS X), and Java API for the Java virtual
machine (JVM).
 The runtime support system (a set of functions built into libraries included with a
compiler) for most programming languages provides a system call interface that
serves as the link to system calls made available by the OS.
 The system call interface intercepts function call in the API and invokes the necessary
system call within the OS.
 A number is associated with each system call and the 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 needs to know nothing about how the system call is implemented or what it
does during execution.
 The figure illustrates how the OS handles a user application which is invoking open()
system call.

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Three general methods are used to pass the parameters to the OS.
1. The simplest approach is to pass the parameters in registers.
2. In some cases there can be more parameters than registers. In these cases the
parameters are stored in a block or table in memory and the address of the block
is passed as a parameter in register. It is shown in below figure. This approach is
used by Linux and Solaris.
3. Parameters can also be placed or pushed onto stack by the program & popped
off the stack by the OS.

Some OS prefer the block or stack methods, because those approaches do not limit the
number or length of parameters being passed.

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 Types of System calls

System calls may be grouped roughly into 5 categories

1. Process control

 end, abort

 A running program needs to be able to halt its execution either normally or

abnormally. In an abnormal termination a dump of memory is taken and an error
message is generated. Dump is written to disk and examined by the debugger to
determine the cause of problem.
 In normal or abnormal situations the OS must transfer the control to the command
interpreter system, which then reads the next command given by the user.
 In batch system the command interpreter terminates the execution of job &
continues with the next job. Batch-systems uses control cards to indicate the
special recovery action to be taken in case of errors. It is a command to manage
the execution of a process.
 More severe errors can be indicated by a higher level error parameter. Normal &
abnormal termination can be combined by defining normal termination as an error
at level 0. The command interpreter uses this error level to determine next action
automatically.

 load, execute

 A process executing one program may want to load and execute another
program. This feature allows the command interpreter to execute programs as
directed by the user.
 The question of where to return the control when the loaded program terminates is
related to the problem of whether the existing program is lost, saved or allowed to
continue execution concurrently with the new program. There is a system call for
this purpose (create or submit process).

 create process, terminate process

 If we create a new job or process, it should be able to control its execution.

 This control requires the ability to determine and reset the attributes of a process,
including the process priority, its maximum allowable execution time, and so on
(get process attributes and set process attributes).
 We may also want to terminate a process that we created (terminate process)

 wait event, signal event

 When new jobs have been created, we may want to wait for certain amount of
time using wait time system call.
 When a job has to wait for a certain event to occur wait event system call is used.

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 When the event has occurred the job should signal the occurrence through the
signal event system call.
 get process attributes, set process attributes
 wait for time
 allocate and free memory

o In MS-DOS
 MS-DOS is an example of single tasking system, which has command interpreter
system that is invoked when the computer is started as shown in figure a.
 To run a program MS-DOS uses simple method. It does not create a new process
when one process is running.
 It loads the program into memory and gives the program as much memory as
possible as shown in figure b.

o In FreeBSD
 Free BSD is an example of multitasking system.
 In free BSD the command interpreter may continue running while other program
is executed as shown in figure

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 fork() is a system call used to create new process.

 Then, the selected program is loaded into memory via an exec() system call, and
then program is executed.

2. File management

 create file, delete file

 System calls can be used to create & delete files. System calls may require the
name of the files and attributes for creating & deleting of files.
 open, close file
 Opens the file for usage and finally we need to close the file.
 read, write, reposition
 Other operation may involve the reading of the file, write & reposition the file
after it is opened.

 get and set file attributes

 For directories, some set of operation are to be performed. Sometimes it is
required to reset some of the attributes on files & directories. The system call get
file attribute & set file attribute are used for this type of operation.

3. Device management

 request device, release device

 read, write, reposition
 get device attributes, set device attributes
 logically attach or detach devices

 The system calls are also used for accessing devices.

 Many of the system calls used for files are also used for devices.
 A system with multiple users may require us to first request the device, to ensure
exclusive use of it.

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 After using the device, it must be released using release system call. These
functions are similar to open & close system calls of files.
 Read, write & reposition system calls may be used with devices.
 MS-DOS & UNIX merge the I/O devices & the files to form file-device
structure.

4. Information maintenance

 get time or date, set time or date

 get system data, set system data
 get and set process, file, or device attributes

 Many system calls exist for the purpose of transferring information between the
user program and the operating system.
 For example, most systems have a system call to return the current time and date.
 Other system calls may return information about the system, such as the number
of current users, the version number of the operating system, the amount of free
memory or disk space, and so on.
 The operating system also keeps information about all its processes, and system
calls are used to access this information.
 System calls are also used to reset the process information (get process
attributes and set process attributes).

5. Communications
 create, delete communication connection
 send, receive messages
 transfer status information
 attach and detach remote devices

There are two models of inter-process communication:

 Message Passing model

 In message passing model, the communicating processes exchange messages with

one another to transfer information. Messages can be exchanged between the
processes either directly or indirectly through a common mailbox.
 Each computer in a network will have a host name. Similarly, each process has a
process name, and this name is translated into an identifier by which the
operating system can refer to the process. The get hostid and get processid
system calls do this translation.
 The identifiers are then passed to the general purpose open and close calls
provided by the file system or to specific open connection and close connection
system calls, depending on the system's model of communication.

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 The recipient process must give its permission for communication to take place
with an accept connection system call.
 The receiving daemons execute a wait for connection call and are awakened
when a connection is made.
 The source of the communication, known as the client, and the receiving daemon,
known as a server, exchange messages by using read message and write
message system calls.
 The close connection call terminates the communication.

 Shared Memory model

 In shared memory model, processes use shared memory create and shared
memory attach system calls to create and gain access to regions of memory
owned by other processes.

 The OS tries to prevent one process from accessing another process’s memory, so
several processes have to agree to remove this restriction. Then they exchange
information by reading and writing in the shared areas.
 The processes are also responsible for ensuring that they are not writing to the
same location simultaneously.

 System Programs

 System programs, also known as system utilities, provide a convenient environment

for program development and execution. Some of them are simply user interfaces to
system calls and others are considerably more complex. They can be divided into
these categories:

i. File management: These programs create, delete, copy, rename, print, dump,
list, and generally manipulate files and directories.
ii. Status information: Some programs asks the system for the date, time,
amount of available memory or disk space, number of users, or similar status

iii. information. Others are more complex, providing detailed performance,

logging, and debugging information.
iv. File modification: Several text editors are available to create and modify the
content of files stored on disk or other storage devices. There may also be
special commands to search contents of files or perform transformations of the
text.
v. Programming language support: Compilers, assemblers, debuggers, and
interpreters for common programming languages (such as C, C++, Java,
Visual Basic, and PERL) are often provided to the user with the operating
system.
vi. Program loading and execution: Once a program is assembled or compiled,
it must be loaded into memory to be executed. The operating system may

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provide absolute loaders, relocatable loaders, linkage editors, and overlay

loaders.
vii. Communications: These programs provide the mechanism for creating
virtual connections among processes, users, and computer systems. They
allow users to send messages to one another's screen, to browse web pages, to
send electronic-mail messages, to log in remotely, or to transfer files from one
machine to another.

In addition to system programs, most operating systems are supplied with application
programs that are useful in solving common problems or performing common
operations. Such application programs are word processors, text formatters, spreadsheets,
database systems, compilers, plotting and statistical-analysis packages and games.

 OS Design & Implementation

 Design goals
 The first aspect in designing a system is defining goals and specifications. Next we
need to define the mechanisms and policies to be implemented. Finally the
implementation takes place.
 At the highest level, the system design will be affected by the choice of hardware and
type of system like timesharing, batch, distributed, real time, single user, multiuser
OS or general purpose etc.
 At the next level the requirements can be divided into two basic groups: user goals
and system goals.
 The user goals basically comprises of convenient to use, easy to learn and to use,
reliable, safe and fast etc.
 The system goals are from the designer’s perspective that the system must be easy to
design, create and maintain. It should also be flexible, reliable, error free and
efficient.
 The requirements vary from system to system. Different requirements result in
different solutions and hence different Operating Systems.

 Mechanisms and policies

 Mechanisms determine how to do something. Mechanisms that are insensitive to
changes in policy are more desirable.
 Policy determines what will be done. Policies are likely to change across places and
over time.
 Change in policy may require redefinition of certain parameters of the system.
 Policy decisions are important for all resource allocation.
o Ex. timer construct is a mechanism to ensure CPU protection, whereas for how
long the timer is to be set for a particular user is a policy decision.

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 Implementation
 Once an operating system is designed, it must be implemented.
 Traditionally, operating systems have been written in assembly language.
 MS-DOS was initially implemented in Intel 8088 and was available on Intel CPUs
only. Master Control Program (MCP) written in ALGOL, MULTICS in PL/I, and
Linux is with C and available on Intel 8086, Motorola 680, SPARC and MIPS
RX000.
 Now, they are most commonly written in higher-level languages such as C or C++.
 The advantages of using higher-level languages are, the code can be written faster, it
is more compact, and is easier to understand and debug.
 The improvements in compiler technology will improve the generated code for the
entire operating system by simple recompilation.
 Finally, an operating system is easier to port (to move to some other hardware) if it is
written in a higher-level language.
 The only possible disadvantages of implementing an operating system in a higher-
level language are reduced speed and increased storage requirements.

 Operating System Structures

 Modern OS is large & complex. It consists of different types of components. These

components are interconnected & melded into kernel.
 For designing the system, different types of structures are used. They are,
 Simple structures.
 Layered Approach.
 Micro kernels.

 Simple Structures

 Simple structure OS are small, simple & limited systems. The structure is not well
defined.
 MS-DOS is an example of simple structure OS. MS-DOS layer structure is shown in
below figure

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 In MS-DOS, the interfaces and levels of functionality are not well separated.
 For instance, application programs are able to access the basic I/O routines to write
directly to the display and disk drives.
 UNIX is another example for simple structure. Initially it was limited by hardware
functions.
o It consists of two separable parts: the kernel and the system programs.
o The kernel is further separated into series of interfaces & device drivers.
o We can view the traditional UNIX operating system as being layered, as shown
in figure
 Everything below the system-call interface and above the physical hardware is the
kernel.
 Kernel provides the file system, CPU scheduling, memory management, and other
operating-system functions through system calls.
 This monolithic structure was difficult to implement and maintain.

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 Layered Approach

 A system can be made modular in many ways. One method is the layered approach
in which the OS is divided into number of layers, where one layer is built on the top
of another layer.
 The bottom layer (layer 0) is hardware and higher layer (layer N) is the user
interface. This layering structure is depicted in below figure 2.8.

 An OS is an implementation of abstract object made up of data & operations that

manipulate these data.

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 A typical operating-system layer say layer M consists of data structures and a set of
routines that can be invoked by higher-level layers. Layer M, in turn can invoke
operations on lower level layers.
 The main advantage of layered approach is the simplicity i.e. each layer uses the
services & functions provided by the lower layer. This approach simplifies the
debugging & verification. Once first layer is debugged the correct functionality is
guaranteed while debugging the second layer. If an error is identified then it is a
problem in that layer because the layer below is already debugged.
 Each layer tries to hide some data structures, operations & hardware from the higher
level layers.
 A problem with layered implementation is that they are less efficient.

 Micro Kernels

 In the mid-1980s, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University developed an operating

system called Mach that modularized the kernel using the operating system by
removing all nonessential components from the kernel and implementing them as
system and user level programs. The result is a smaller kernel.
 The main function of the micro kernels is to provide communication facilities
between the client program and various services that are running in user space.
 This approach provided a high degree of flexibility and modularity.
 It includes the ease of extending OS. All the new services are added to the user space
& do not need the modification of kernel.
 This approach also provides more security & reliability.
 Most of the services will be running as user process rather than the kernel process.
 A micro kernel in Windows NT provides portability and modularity.

 Modules

 The best current methodology for operating-system design involves using object-
oriented programming techniques to create a modular kernel.
 Here, the kernel has a set of core components and links in additional services either
during boot time or during run time. Such a strategy uses dynamically loadable
modules and is common in modern implementations of UNIX, such as Solaris, Linux,
and Mac OS X.
 For example, the Solaris operating system structure, shown in the figure 2.9, is
organized around a core kernel with seven types of loadable kernel modules:

1.Scheduling classes
2.File systems
3.Loadable system calls
4.Executable formats
5.STREAMS modules
6.Miscellaneous
7.Device and bus drivers

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 The Apple Macintosh Mac OS X operating system uses a hybrid structure. It is a

layered system in which one layer consists of the Mach microkernel. The structure of
Mac OS X appears as shown in figure

 The top layers include application environments and a set of services providing a
graphical interface to applications.

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 Below these layers is the kernel environment, which consists primarily of the Mach
microkernel and the BSD kernel.

 Mach provides memory management, support for remote procedure calls (RPCs) and
interprocess communication facilities, including message passing and thread
scheduling.
 The BSD component provides a BSD command line interface, support for networking
and file systems, and an implementation of POSIX APIs, including Pthreads.

 Virtual Machines

 The fundamental idea behind a virtual machine is to abstract the hardware of a single
computer (the CPU, memory, disk drives, network interface cards, and so on) into
several different execution environments, thereby creating the illusion that each
separate execution environment is running its own private computer.
 By using CPU scheduling and virtual-memory techniques, an operating system can
create the illusion that a process has its own processor with its own (virtual) memory.
 Each process is provided with a (virtual) copy of the underlying computer as shown
in the below figure

(a) Non virtual machine (b) virtual machine

 A major difficulty with the virtual machine approach involves disk systems. Suppose
that the physical machine had three disk drives but wanted to support seven virtual
machines. Clearly, it could not allocate a disk drive to each virtual machine, because

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the virtual machine software itself will need substantial disk space to provide virtual
memory and spooling. The solution is to provide virtual disks-termed minidisks in
IBM's VM operating system which are identical in all respects except size.

 Implementation

 It is difficult to implement VM concept. Much work is required to provide an exact

duplicate of the underlying machine.
 The machine typically has two modes: user mode and kernel mode.
 The virtual-machine software can run in kernel mode, since it is the operating system.
The virtual machine itself can execute in only user mode.
 The major difference between virtual and non virtual m/c is time. The real I/O might
have taken 100 milliseconds, the virtual I/O might take less time (because it is
spooled) or more time (because it is interpreted). In addition, the CPU is being multi
programmed among many virtual machines, further slowing down the virtual
machines in unpredictable ways.

 Benefits

 The virtual-machine concept provides complete protection of system resources since

each virtual machine is isolated from all other virtual machines. This isolation permits
no direct sharing of resources.
 A virtual-machine system is a perfect vehicle for operating-systems research and
development.
 System programmers are given their own VM, and system development is done on
the virtual machine instead on a physical machine. Thus changing OS will not cause
any problem.

Examples

1. VMware

 It is a popular commercial application that abstracts Intel X86 and compatible

hardware into isolated virtual machines.
 It runs as an application on a host operating system such as Windows or Linux and
allows this host system to concurrently run several different guest operating systems
as independent virtual machines.
 The architecture is shown below figure
 Here, Linux is running as the host operating system and FreeBSD, Windows NT, and
Windows XP are running as guest operating systems.
 The virtualization layer is the heart of VMware, as it abstracts the physical hardware
into isolated virtual machines running as guest operating systems.
 Each virtual machine has its own virtual CPU, memory, disk drives, network
interfaces, and so on.

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VMware architecture

2. Java virtual machine

 Java is a popular object-oriented programming language introduced by Sun

Microsystems in 1995.
 In addition to a language specification and a large API library, Java also provides a
specification for a Java virtual machine-or JVM.
 Java objects are specified with the class construct. A Java program consists of one or
more classes. For each Java class, the compiler produces an architecture-neutral
bytecode output (.class) file that will run on any implementation of the JVM.
 The JVM is a specification for an abstract computer. It consists of a class loader and a
Java interpreter that executes the architecture-neutral byte codes, as given in figure

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The Java virtual machine

 The class loader loads the compiled .class files from both the Java program and the
Java API for execution by the Java interpreter.
 After a class is loaded, the verifier checks that the .class file is valid Java bytecode
and does not overflow or underflow the stack. It also ensures that the bytecode does
not perform pointer arithmetic, which could provide illegal memory access.
 If the class passes verification, it is run by the Java interpreter.
 The JVM also automatically manages memory by performing garbage collection -the
practice of reclaiming memory from objects no longer in use and returning it to the
system.
 The JVM may be implemented in software on top of a host operating system, such as
Windows, Linux, or Mac OS X, or as part of a Web browser.

 System Boot

 The procedure of starting a computer by loading the kernel is known as booting the
system.
 Bootstrap program or Bootstrap loader locates the kernel, loads it into main memory
and start its execution.
 Bootstrap program is in the form of read only memory (ROM) because the RAM is in
unknown state at a system startup. All forms of ROM are knows as firmware.
 For large OS like Windows, Mac OS, the Bootstrap loaders is stored in firmware and the
OS is on disk.
 Bootstrap has a bit code to read a single block at a fixed location from disk into the
memory and execute the code from that boot block.
 A disk that has a boot partition is called a boot disk or system disk.

VTU Question Paper Questions

PROCESS CONCEPTS
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 Process Concepts

 Process is an active entity. A process is a sequence of instruction execution. Process

exists in a limited span of time. Two or more process may execute the same program
by using its own data & resources.
 A program is a passive entity which is made up of program statement. Program
contains instructions.

 The Process

 A process is more than the program code which is also called text section.
 It contains program counter which represents the current activity and also the
contents of the processor's registers.
 A process also consists of a process stack section which contains temporary data
& data section which contains global variables.
 A process may also include a heap, which is memory that is dynamically
allocated during process run time.
 The structure of a process in memory is shown in below figure

 Process State

 As process executes it changes its state and each process may be in one of the
following states:
o New: The process is being created
o Running: Instructions are being executed
o Waiting: The process is waiting for some event to occur
o Ready: The process is waiting to be assigned to a process
o Terminated: The process has finished execution
 Only one process can be running on any processor at any instant. Many processes
may be ready and waiting.
 The state diagram corresponding to these states is shown below figure

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 Process Control Block

 A process in an operating system is represented by a data structure known as a

Process Control Block (PCB) and it is also called as task control block. The
following figure shows the process control block.

 The PCB contains important information about the specific process including,

o Process state: The current state of the process i.e., whether it is ready, running,
waiting, halted and so on.
o Program counter: Indicates the address of the next instruction to be executed
for a process.
o CPU registers: The registers vary in number and type. Along with program
counter this state information should be saved to allow process to be continued
correctly after an interrupt occurs as shown in below figure.
o CPU scheduling information: This information includes a process priority,
pointers to scheduling queues, and any other scheduling parameters.

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o Memory-management information: This information may include the value

of base and limit registers, the page tables, or the segment tables, depending
on the memory system used by the OS.
o Accounting information: This information includes the amount of CPU and
real time used, time limits, account numbers, job or process numbers, and so
on.
o I/O status information: This information includes the list of I/O devices
allocated to the process, a list of open files, and so on.

CPU switch from process to process

 Threads

 A process is a program that performs a single thread of execution. For example,

when a process is running a word-processor program, a single thread of
instruction is being executed. This single thread of control allows the process to
perform only one task at one time. The user cannot simultaneously type in
characters and run the spell checker within the same process.
 Many modern operating systems have extended the process concept to allow a
process to have multiple threads of execution and thus to perform more than one
task at a time. On a system that supports threads, the PCB is expanded to include
information for each thread. Eg: Windows OS and UNIX

 Process Scheduling
The process scheduler selects an available process for execution on the CPU.

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 Scheduling queues

 The following are the different types of process scheduling queues.

o Job queue: set of all processes in the system.

o Ready queue: The processes that are placed in main memory and are ready
and waiting to execute are placed in a list called the ready queue. This is in the
form of linked list, the header contains pointer to the first and final PCB in the
list. Each PCB contains a pointer field that points to next PCB in ready queue.

o Device queue: The list of processes waiting for a particular I/O device is
called device queue. When the CPU is allocated to a process it may execute for
some time and may quit or interrupted or wait for the occurrence of a particular
event like completion of an I/O request, but the I/O may be busy with some
other processes. In this case the process must wait for I/O and it will be placed
in device queue. Each device will have its own queue.

 The below figure shows Ready queue and various I/O Device queues

 The process scheduling is represented using a queuing diagram as shown in

below figure 3.5. Queues are represented by the rectangular box and resources
they need are represented by circles, and the arrows indicate the flow of
processes in the system.

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 A new process is initially put in the ready queue and it waits there until it is
selected for execution or dispatched. Once the process is assigned CPU and is
executing, the following events can occur,
o It can execute an I/O request and is placed in I/O queue.
o The process can create a sub process & wait for its termination.
o The process may be removed from the CPU as a result of interrupt and can
be put back into ready queue.

 Schedulers

 The following are the different types of schedulers,

o Long-term scheduler (or job scheduler): selects which processes should

be brought into the ready queue. Long-term scheduler is invoked very
infrequently (in terms of seconds or minutes). The long-term scheduler
controls the degree of multiprogramming (number of processes in main
memory).
o Short-term scheduler (or CPU scheduler): selects which process should
be executed next and allocates CPU. Short-term scheduler is invoked very
frequently.
o Medium-term schedulers: Some OS introduces intermediate level of
scheduling called Medium-term schedulers as shown in figure. It can be
advantageous to remove processes from memory and thus reduce the degree
of multiprogramming. The process can be later reintroduced into memory,
and its execution can be continued where it left off. The process is swapped
out, and is later swapped in, by the medium-term scheduler.

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 Processes can be described as either:

o I/O-bound process: processes spend more time doing I/O than
computations.
o CPU-bound process: processes spend more time doing computations; and
generates I/O request less frequently.

 Context Switch

 When an interrupt occurs, the system needs to save the current context of the
process running on the CPU. The context is represented in the PCB of the
process.
 When CPU switches to another process, the system must save the state of the old
process and load the saved state for the new process. A state save of the current
state of the CPU, and then state restore to resume operations is performed.
 Context-switch time is overhead and the system does no useful work while
switching. Context-switch times are highly dependent on hardware support.
Context-switch speed varies from machine to machine, depending on the memory
speed, the number of registers that must be copied, and the existence of special
instructions.

 Process Operations

The processes in most systems can execute concurrently, and they may be created and
deleted dynamically. Thus, these systems must provide a mechanism for process creation
and termination.

 Process Creation

 A process may create several new processes by some create-process system call,
during the course of execution.
 The creating process is called parent process and the created one is called the
child process. Each of the new process may in turn create other processes,
forming a tree of processes. Processes are identified by unique process identifier
( or pid).
 Figure 3.7 shows the process tree for the solaris OS. The process at the top of the
tree is sched process, with pid of 0, and this creates several children processes.

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The sched process creates several children processes including pageout and
fsflush. These processes are responsible for managing memory and file systems.
The sched process also creates the init process, which serves as the root parent
process for all user processes. These processes are responsible for managing
memory and file systems.
 inetd and dtlogin are two children of init where inetd is responsible for
networking services such as telnet and ftp; dtlogin is the process representing a
user login screen.
 When a user logs in, dtlogin creates an X-windows session (Xsession), which in
turns creates the sdt_shel process. Below sdt_shel, a user's command-line shell,
the C-shell or csh is created. In this command line interface, the user can then
invoke various child processes, such as the ls and cat commands.
 There is also csh process with pid of 7778 representing a user who has logged
onto the system using telnet. This user has started the Netscape browser (pid of
7785) and the emacs editor (pid of 8105).
 A process needs certain resources to accomplish its task. Along with the various
logical and physical resources that a process obtains when it is created,
initialization data may be passed along by the parent process to the child
process.

 When a process creates a new process, two possibilities exist in terms of

execution.
1. The parent continues to execute concurrently with its children.
2. The parent waits until some or all of the children have terminated.
 There are also two possibilities in terms of the address space of the new process.
1. The child process is a duplicate of the parent process.
2. The child process has a new program loaded into it.
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 In UNIX OS, fork() system call creates new process. In windows CreateProcess()
does the job.
 Exec() system call is called after a fork() to replace the process memory space
with a new program.
 The C program shown below illustrates these system calls.

int main()
{
Pid_t pid;
pid = fork(); /* fork another process */

if (pid < 0) /* error occurred */

{
fprintf(stderr, "Fork Failed");
exit(-1);
}
else if (pid == 0) /* child process */
{
execlp("/bin/ls", "ls", NULL);
}
else /* parent process */
{
wait (NULL); /* parent will wait for the child to complete */
printf ("Child Complete");
exit(0);
}
}

 If there are two different processes running a copy of the same program, the pid
for child is zero and for the parent it is greater than zero. The parent process
waits for the child process to complete with the wait() system call.
 When the child process completes, the parent process resumes from the call to
wait(), where it completes using exit() system call. This is shown in below figure

 Process Termination

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 A process terminates when it finishes executing its last statement and asks the
operating system to delete it by using exit() system call.
 Process resources are deallocated by the operating system. A process can
terminate another process via TerminateProcess() system call. A Parent may
terminate execution of children processes (abort) for the following reasons.
o Child has exceeded usage of allocated resources.
o Task assigned to child is no longer required.
o If parent is exiting some operating system do not allow child to continue if
its parent terminates.
 Some systems does not allow child to exist if its parent has terminated. If process
terminates then all its children must also be terminated, this phenomenon is
referred as cascading termination.

 Interprocess Communication (IPC)

 Processes executing concurrently in the operating system may be either independent

processes or cooperating processes.
 A process is independent if it cannot affect or be affected by the other processes
executing in the system. Any process that does not share data with any other process
is independent.
 A process is cooperating if it can affect or be affected by the other processes
executing in the system. Any process that shares data with other processes is a
cooperating process.
 Advantages of process cooperation are,
o Information sharing: several users may be interested in same piece of
information, so an environment must be provided to allow concurrent access
to such information.
o Computation speed-up: If we want particular task to run faster, it can be
broken into subtasks, each of which will be executing in parallel with each
other.
o Modularity: If the system is to be constructed in modular fashion, then
system functions can be divided into separate processes or threads.
o Convenience: An individual user may work on many tasks at the same time.

 Cooperating processes require an Interprocess Communication (IPC) mechanism

that will allow them to exchange data and information. There are two fundamental
models of IPC as shown in below figure.
1. Shared memory: A region of memory that is shared by cooperating processes
is established. Processes then exchange information by reading and writing
data to the shared region.
2. Message passing: Communication takes place by means of message exchange
between the cooperating processes.

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Communication models (a) Message passing. (b) Shared memory.

 The differences between these two models are,

Message passing Shared memory

a. Useful for exchanging small
a. large data
amount of data.
b. easy to implement b. complex
c. slower c. faster
d. system calls are required only to
d. implemented using system calls
establish Shared memory region

 Shared Memory System

 A region of memory that is shared by cooperating processes is

established. Processes then exchange information by reading and writing data to
the shared region.
 To illustrate cooperating processes, consider producer-consumer problem.
 Producer process produces information that is consumed by a consumer process.
 One solution to producer-consumer problem uses shared memory. To allow
producer and consumer processes to run concurrently, there must be a buffer of
items that can be filled by a producer and emptied by consumer. The buffer will
reside in a shared memory region.

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 The producer can produce one item while the consumer is consuming another
item. The producer and consumer must be synchronized, so that the consumer
does not try to consume an item that has not yet been produced by the producer.

 Two types of buffers can be used.

o unbounded-buffer: places no practical limit on the size of the buffer. The
consumer may have to wait for new items, but the producer can always
produce new items.
o bounded-buffer: assumes that there is a fixed buffer size, so the
consumer must wait if the buffer is empty, and the producer must wait if
the buffer is full.
 The following variables reside in a region of memory shared by the producer and
consumer processes

#define BUFFER_SIZE 10
typedef struct {
……..
……..

}item;

item buffer[BUFFER_SIZE];
int in = 0;
int out = 0;

 The shared buffer is implemented as a circular array with two logical pointers in
and out. The variable in points to the next free position in the buffer; out points
to the first full position in the buffer. The buffer is empty when in= =out, the
buffer is full when ((in+ 1)% BUFFER_SIZE) = = out.
 The code for the producer process is shown below.

item nextProduced;
while (true)
{
/* produce an item in nextProduced */
while ( ((in + 1) % BUFFER_SIZE) = = out); // do nothing
buffer[in] = nextProduced;
in = (in + 1) % BUFFER_SIZE;
}

 The code for the consumer process is shown below.

item nextConsumed;
while (true)
{
while (in = = out); // do nothing
nextConsumed = buffer[out];

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out = (out + 1) % BUFFER_SIZE;

/* consume the item in nextConsumed */
}
 Message Passing System

 Communication takes place by means of message exchange between the

cooperating processes.
 Message passing facility provides two operations.
o Send (message)
o Receive (message)
 Message size can be fixed or variable.
 If P and Q wish to communicate, they need to establish a communication link
between them and communication link can be,
o physical (eg: shared memory, hardware bus)
o logical (eg: logical properties)
 Several methods for logically implementing a link are,
o Direct or Indirect communication
o Synchronous or asynchronous communication
o Automatic or explicit buffering

 Naming

 Processes that want to communicate must have a way to refer to each other.
They can use either direct or indirect communication.
 Under Direct Communication processes must name each other explicitly
 The send() and receive() primitives are defined as,
o Send (P, message) – send a message to process P.
o Receive (Q, message) – receive a message from process Q.
 Properties of communication link in this scheme are,
o Links are established automatically between every pair of processes
that want to communicate.
o A link is associated with exactly two communicating processes.
o Between each pair there exists exactly one link.
 This scheme exhibits two types of addressing,
o Symmetry: Both sender and receiver must name the other to
communicate.
o Asymmetry: Only the sender names the recipient, the recipient is not
required to name the sender. The send() and receive() primitives are
defined as,
Send (P, message) – send a message to process P
Receive (id, message) – receive a message from any process; the
variable id is set to the name of the process with which
communication has taken place.
 In Indirect Communication messages are sent and received from mailboxes
(also referred to as ports)
 A mailbox can be viewed abstractly as an object into which messages can be
placed by processes and from which messages can be removed.

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 Each mailbox has a unique id and processes can communicate only if they
share a mailbox.

 The send() and receive() primitives are defined as,

o Send (A, message) – send a message to mailbox A
o Receive (A, message) – receive a message from mailbox A
 Properties of communication link are,
o Links are established only if processes share a common mailbox.
o A link may be associated with many processes.
o Each pair of processes may share several communication links.
 OS allows the process to do the following operations
o create a new mailbox
o send and receive messages through mailbox
o destroy a mailbox

 Synchronization

 Message passing may be either blocking or non-blocking. Blocking is

considered synchronous. Non-blocking is considered asynchronous.

o Blocking send: The sending process is blocked until the message is

received by the receiving process or by the mailbox.
o Non-blocking send: The sending process sends the message and
resumes operation.
o Blocking receive: The receiver blocks until a message is available.
o Non-blocking receive: The receiver retrieves either a valid message
or a null.

 Buffering

 Messages exchanged by communicating processes reside in a temporary

queue, and such queues can be implemented in one of three ways,
1. Zero capacity – Maximum length is zero and sender must wait for
the receiver.
2. Bounded capacity – finite length of n messages, sender must wait
if link is full.
3. Unbounded capacity – infinite length and sender never waits.

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QUESTION BANK- MODULE-1

1. Explain fundamental difference between i) N/w OS and distributed OS ii) web based and
Embedded computing. . (8) Dec 07/Jan 08
2. What do you mean by cooperating process? Describe its four advantages. (6) Dec 07/Jan 08
3. What are different categories of system programs? Explain. (6) Dec 07/Jan 08
4. Define OS. Discuss its role from different perspectives. (7) Dec 08/Jan 09.
5. List different services of OS. Explain. (6) Dec 08/Jan 09.
6. Explain the concept of virtual machines. Bring out its advantages. (5) Dec 08/Jan 09.
7. Difference between a trap and an interrupt (2) Dec 08/Jan 09.
8. Define an operating system. Discuss its role with user and system view points. (06)
Dec.09/Jan.10

9. Give features of symmetric and asymmetric multiprocessing systems (4) Dec.09/ Jan.10
10. Briefly explain common classes of services provided by various OS for helping use for
ensuring efficient operation of system. (10) Dec.09/ Jan.10
11. Define OS. Explain its two view points (5) Dec 2010
12. What are OS operations? Explain (6) Dec.09/ Jan.10
13. Define Virtual machine. With diagram, explain its working. What are its benefits? (9)
Dec.09/Jan.10
14. Distinguish among following terminologies: Multiprogramming systems, multitasking
systems, multiprocessor systems. (12) Dec.09/ Jan.10
15. What are system calls? With examples explain different categories of system call? (10)
( Dec 2012)
16. List and explain services provided by an OS that are designed to make using computer
system more convenient for the user. (8) (July 2013)
17. Is separation of mechanism and policy desirable while designing an OS.Discuss with an Ex.
(4) (July 2013)
18. With a neat diagram of VM ware architecture explain the concept of virtual machines and the
main advantage of using VM architecture. (8) (July 2013)
19. Differentiate between multiprogramming and multiprocessing (5) (Dec 2014)

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20. Explain various functions of OS with respect to process and memory management. (5) (Dec
2014)
21. Explain any two facilities provided for implementing interacting process in programming
language and OS. (5) (Dec 2014)
22. Define an operating system? What is system’s viewpoint of an operating system? Explain
the dual mode operation of an operating system. (8) (Dec 2015)
23. Explain the types of multiprocessor systems and the types of clustering. What are fault
tolerant systems? (6) (Dec 2015)
24. Explain the concept of virtual machines. (6) (Dec 2015)
25. What is an Operating system? Explain its functions and goals.
26. Define the essential properties of the following types of operating systems:
a) Batch
b) Multiprogramming
c) Multitasking
d) Distributed
e) Real time
27. Give the examples of real time system application.
28. Explain the function of memory management.
29. Explain the various operating system services.
30. What are the different types of system calls.
31. Explain different types of system structures.
32. Explain file management and its activity.
33. What is microkernel? Discuss the layers of kernel.
34. Explain the different categories of system calls.
35. What are the three main purposes of an operating system?

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