Batna 2 university Mathematics and computer science faculty

Computer science department Computer Engineer 1st year 2023-2024

Introduction of operating systems

Chapter II: UNIX/LINUX system presentation

I/ Introduction:
The Unics (Uniplexed Information and Computing Service) system was created at AT&T Bell
Laboratories in 1969 by Ken Thompson, and modified and named by Brian Kernighan. It was a scaled-
down version of Multics (Multiplexed Information and Computing Service). Shortly afterwards, the
name Unics was changed to Unix, and from then on, the Unix system began a long road of technical
development.

II/ History
The Unix system was a real success when it was rewritten in the C language in 1973 by Denis Ritchie
and Thompson. The University of California at Berkeley obtained a copy of version 6 of the Unix system.
AT&T and Berkeley separately made numerous modifications and improvements to the Unix system
(AT&T's System V and Bekerley's 4.4BSD). A simplified view of the evolution of Unix is shown in next
figure 1.
The project standardization of the Unix system Posix (Portable Operating System UnIX ) has led to
the development of a standard that defines a set of procedures. All Posix-compliant Unix systems
provide these standard procedures or system calls. These procedures constitute the standard Unix
library. Any software written using only Posix standard procedures should run on all Unix systems
conforming to this standard.
A free version of Unix is called Linux (source code available). It was created by Linus Torvalds in 1991.
Subsequently, a large number of programmers contributed to its accelerated development. Initially
designed to run on machines with the 80x86 processor, Linux has migrated to several other platforms.
The Linux operating system can be downloaded from a number of sites, including http://www.linux.org.
FreeBSD is another free version of Unix. It is an operating system for x86 compatibles, DEC Alpha,
and PC-98 architectures. It is derived from BSD Unix and developed by a large community of individuals.

III/ Characteristics:
❑ Unix is an interactive, multi-user (time-sharing) system. Several users can use the system's
computing power at the same time.
❑ The Unix system controls and manages the use of resources, allocating them in turn to different
users.
❑ It enables processes to be created, communicated and synchronized.
❑ Unix is an open, portable operating system available on a variety of platforms.
❑ Linux is also free, and you have the right to study and modify the source code.

Chapter II: Unix/Linux system presentation 1 Dr. Saadi Leila

Batna 2 university Mathematics and computer science faculty
Computer science department Computer Engineer 1st year 2023-2024
Introduction of operating systems
❑ Linux is available in numerous distributions from a number of major branches, differing in terms
of system maintenance tools and software packages, as well as server or consumer orientation:
Slackware and its derivatives (Suse, OpenSuse, etc.), Redhat and its derivatives (Mandrake then
Mandriva and today Mageia, centOS, Scientific Linux, Fedora), which use the RPM package
management system (Redhat Package Manager), Debian from which knopix and Ubuntu derive,
etc. To get an idea of the abundance of products, take a look at the UNIX family tree
http://www.levenez.com/unix/ or the linux family tree http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Distribution_Linux.

Figure 1: History of Unix system

Chapter II: Unix/Linux system presentation 2 Dr. Saadi Leila

Batna 2 university Mathematics and computer science faculty
Computer science department Computer Engineer 1st year 2023-2024
Introduction of operating systems
1/ Unix system structure:
A Unix/Linux computer system is made up of layers of software, as shown in the figure 2.
The operating system, called the kernel, manages the hardware and provides programs with a
system call interface. System calls enable programs to create and manage processes and files.
Each system call corresponds to a library procedure that the user can call (standard library). Each
procedure places the parameters of the corresponding system call in a predefined location, such as the
processor registers, and causes a software interrupt (TRAP instruction) to switch from user mode to
kernel mode, thereby activating the operating system.
The purpose of the library procedure is to hide the details of the TRAP instruction and make
procedure calls appear as ordinary procedure calls.
For example, read(f, b, 50) will be used to read 50 characters from a temporary storage or buffer b,
from a file f currently open.
When the operating system takes control following TRAP, it checks the validity of the parameters
and carries out the requested processing. At the end of processing, it places a status code, indicating
whether processing has succeeded or failed, in a register, then returns control to the library procedure
and returns to user mode. The library procedure, in turn, gives control back to the caller, passing on the
status code. Users can develop programs and invoke system calls, thanks to the standard library and a
set of utilities (shells, editors, compilers, etc.) supplied with the Unix/Linux system.
For example, to execute the READ system call, a C/C++ program can call the standard library
procedure read(), which will make the actual READ system call.
Note: True system calls run in kernel mode, protecting the operating system from intrusion attempts
and errors.
2/ Unix from Windows:
Starting from a personal workstation running the Windows operating system, there are many ways
of accessing the Unix world. We'll look at just a few of them, starting with the easiest to implement.
MobaXterm (see https://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/) allows you to locally simulate some of the
commands of the UNIX system. It also provides tools for connecting to Unix servers.
Cygwin The cygwin software is a fairly complete emulation of the Linux system, but requires a slightly
heavier installation.
wubi for Windows-based UBuntu Installer (see https://doc.ubuntu-fr.org/wubi) used to install
Ubuntu on a Windows machine without modifying partitions. Since 2017, however, it has been
discouraged, as several Linux distributions (including Ubuntu and OpenSuse) are available (in the
Microsoft App Store) as simple Windows 10 subsystems, without modifying partitions or virtual
machines (see https://blog.ikoula.com/fr/sous-syst%C3%A8me-linux-pour-Windows).

Chapter II: Unix/Linux system presentation 3 Dr. Saadi Leila

Batna 2 university Mathematics and computer science faculty
Computer science department Computer Engineer 1st year 2023-2024
Introduction of operating systems

Figure 2: Layers of Unix system

Unix machines on dedicated media If you have a bootable physical medium, such as a disk or USB
stick, which you can devote entirely to the Unix system, this can be a prudent solution, without
interfering with the existing system. This is what the open-source software Linuxlive USB Creator offers
for a wide range of Linux distributions (see http://www.linuxliveusb.com).
In virtual machines, you can also install a fairly complete UNIX system as a special Windows
application: in this case, we speak of a virtual machine simulated by the physical machine, drawing on
its resources. Virtual machines are guest operating systems, while the physical machine is the host
system that hosts them. Before installing a virtual machine, you first need to install the virtual machine
hosting software, known as virtualization software, such as Virtualbox (https://www.virtualbox.org), or
VMware (https://www.vmware.com). It will then be possible to install several operating systems on the
host machine.
Finally, let's mention the dual-boot technique: the Linux system is installed in parallel, possibly on
the same disk, alongside the Windows system; the choice of which operating system to activate is made
at boot-up. Installing Unix using this method requires administrative skills and entails the risk of
information loss, particularly when partitioning the disk.

Chapter II: Unix/Linux system presentation 4 Dr. Saadi Leila

Batna 2 university Mathematics and computer science faculty
Computer science department Computer Engineer 1st year 2023-2024
Introduction of operating systems
3/ Unix users:
Two types of people who use Unix
❑ The person who is going to use the system in order to produce something, for whom the UNIX
system is a means, a tool. This person is the UNIX user, and can include programmers, database
users and so on.
❑ The second category of people responsible for installing, configuring and running the UNIX system
are UNIX system administrators. On a UNIX system, UNIX users have limited rights, i.e., they are
not allowed to run certain commands or access certain parts of the system. System administrators,
on the other hand, have full rights over the system.
4/ Principal functions of Unix:
❑ Fair resource sharing
✓ UNIX ensures that all computer resources (printer, memory, etc.) are shared equally between
all processes.
❑ Hardware interface
✓ UNIX ensures that no process has direct access to a hardware resource (hard disk, floppy drive,
etc.).:
✓ To access these resources, we use special files. A special file is seen by a user as a classic file: to
write to a floppy disk in the floppy disk drive, we simply write to the special file in the floppy
disk drive. Similarly, to read from a hard disk, you read the special file on the hard disk.
❑ Memory management
✓ Unix must therefore ensure that memory is shared between all processes: one process must not
monopolize all memory, otherwise other processes would no longer be able to function.
✓ Memory is seen as a hardware resource, so Unix must ensure that no process accesses memory
directly or reserves a memory area for itself.
❑ File management
✓ Unix provides the tools needed to store data and retrieve it quickly and easily. It also provides
the tools for easy viewing of all files. These files are located on the hard disk, known as a File
System.
✓ Unix also provides a file protection mechanism. Several users can work on the same machine at
the same time - this is known as multi-user. Each user of the system has his or her own files, and
UNIX gives them the means to protect their files, and to grant or deny other users access to their
files.

5/ Unix shell:

▪ To operate the computer, the user has access to software or a utility that allows direct input of
commands. This utility is called the shell. Its role is to interpret user commands before
transmitting them to the kernel, which is why it's also known as a command interpreter.

Chapter II: Unix/Linux system presentation 5 Dr. Saadi Leila

Batna 2 university Mathematics and computer science faculty
Computer science department Computer Engineer 1st year 2023-2024
Introduction of operating systems
▪ There are several types of shell, differing in their syntax and the richness of their commands.
The most common is the Bourne shell, but there is also the C shell, which is similar to the C
programming language, the Korn shell, the Posix shell and, under Linux, the bash shell.
▪ Non-graphical user interface
✓ Text terminals
✓ Remote access
▪ Script interpreter
✓ Batch processing
✓ Automation
▪ Launch multiple tasks
✓ Combined tasks (pipe)
✓ Job control
▪ It’s an ordinary program
▪ Vast choices:
✓ sh, sash, ksh, csh, tcsh, ash, bash, psh, fish, ...
▪ Multiple shells can be run in parallel (Unix is multitasking)
▪ Several users can run a shell at the same time (Unix is multi-user)

Note: To access the shell, use the ALT+CTRL+T keystroke combination.

Chapter II: Unix/Linux system presentation 6 Dr. Saadi Leila