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File Management - Daniel self prepared lecture notes.

Operating Systems (Monash University)

Studocu is not sponsored or endorsed by any college or university

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File Management

A file management system is a type of software that manages data files in a computer

system. It has limited capabilities and is designed to manage individual or group

files, such as special office documents and records. It may display report details,

like owner, creation date, state of completion and similar features useful in an office

environment. A file management system is also known as a file manager.

Terms

File manager

In general, file manager refers to a software program that is often a portion of the

operating system that helps a user manage all the files on their computer. For

example, all file managers allow the user to view, edit, copy, and delete the files on

their computer. File Manager is a program included with Windows that enabled

users to manage their files on the computer. A file manager or file browser is a

computer program that provides a user interface to manage files and folders. The

most common operations performed on files or groups of files include creating,

opening (e.g. viewing, playing, editing or printing), renaming, moving or copying,

deleting and searching for files, as well as modifying file attributes, properties and

file permissions. Folders and files may be displayed in a hierarchical tree based on

their directory structure. Some file managers contain features inspired by web

browsers, including forward and back navigational buttons. Some file managers

provide network connectivity via protocols, such as FTP, NFS, SMB or WebDAV. This

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is achieved by allowing the user to browse for a file server (connecting and

accessing the server's file system like a local file system) or by providing its own full

client implementations for file server protocols.

File manager functions

• Identify and locate a selected file

• Use a directory to describe the location of all files plus their attributes

• On a shared system describe user access control

• Blocking for access to files

• Allocate files to free blocks

• Manage free storage for available blocks

Objectives for a File Management

 To meet the management requirements of the user.

 To guarantee the data in file are valid.

 To optimize performance of the file access.

 To support for a variety of storage device type.

 Meet the data management needs and requirements of the user

 To eliminate the potential for lost data.

 To provide a standardized set of I/O interface.

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 To provide I/O support for multiple users.

 Guarantee that the data in the file are valid

 Optimize performance

 Provide I/O support for a variety of storage device types

 Minimize or eliminate the potential for lost or destroyed data

 Provide a standardized set of I/O interface routines

 Provide I/O support for multiple users

File systems

A file system is the methods and data structures that an operating system uses to

keep track of files on a disk or partition; that is, the way the files are organized on the

disk. The word is also used to refer to a partition or disk that is used to store the files

or the type of the file system.

Naming

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FAT

Part of a hard disk where the size and location (and other items of information) of

every file on that disk is recorded for fast access by the computer's operating

system.

FAT features

i. It supports up to 2 Terabytes in size.

ii. Uses space more effectively

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iii. It is more robust and is more flexible

iv. FAT mirroring can be disabled

v. These features allow for dynamic resizing of partitions.

FAT volume layout

A FAT volume is divided into several regions, which are shown in Figure 12-2. The

file allocation table, which gives the FAT file system format its name, has one entry

for each cluster on a volume. Because the file allocation table is critical to the

successful interpretation of a volume's contents, the FAT format maintains two copies

of the table so that if a file system driver or consistency-checking program (such as

Chkdsk) can't access one (because of a bad disk sector, for example) it can read

from the other.

NTFS File System

NTFS offers major improvements over FAT in the areas of performance, reliability

and compatibility. It is designed to perform standard file operations such as read,

write, and search rapidly on very large hard disks.

The NTFS file system includes security features required for file servers in a

corporate environment and it supports data access control and ownership

privileges. NTFS files and folders can have permissions assigned whether they are

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shared or not. NTFS is the only Microsoft file system that allows permissions to be

assigned to individual files.

The NTFS design is simple but powerful. Everything on an NTS volume is a file and

everything in a file is an attribute, e.g.: data attribute, security attribute, file name

attribute, etc. Every allocated sector on an NTFS volume belongs to some file.

Features of NTFS

NTFS multiple data streams

NTFS supports multiple data streams, where the stream name identifies a new data

attribute on the file.

NTFS Compressed Files

With compression it is possible to store most files in a way that they take up less

space on the disk than they normally would.

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NTFS Security and Encryption

All the recourses in a system are treated as objects. Any user who wants access to

these objects should have the right to do so. This feature cannot be overridden in

any way, including attempt to view the volume through another operating system.

One of the security features is encryption. The Encrypting File System provides the

core file encryption technology used to store encrypted files on NTFS volumes and

thus cannot be read by another NT installation. In combination with a standard and

very much safe password on the system itself, this possibility provides the safety of

files selected by the user. If an intruder tries to access, open, read, copy, move or

rename the encrypted file or folder, he/she receives an access denied message.

NTFS Sparse File

A sparse file has an attribute that causes the I/O subsystem to allocate only

meaningful data. Nonzero data is allocated on disk, and non-meaningful data is not.

When a sparse file is read, allocated data is returned, as it was stored; non-allocated

data is returned, by default, as zeros. NTFS deallocates sparse data streams and only

maintains other data as allocated. When a program accesses a sparse file, the file

system yields allocated data as actual data and deallocated data as zeros.

The advantages of NTFS

i. NTFS uses Unicode to save filenames. It was impossible to read or access files

in FAT that contains non-Latin symbols, if you switched to another encoding.

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ii. NTFS has a built-in security system which controls sharing of files between

users.

iii. NTFS can encrypt and decrypt files and folders while reading or writing them.

iv. It can compress and decompress individual files and folders just as easily.

v. It introduces user quotas, allowing administrators to control disk usage, thus

preventing unfair behavior when a user grabs all available disk space for his

or her needs and deprives all the other users.

vi. NTFS can successfully deal with very large files and partitions.

Disadvantages

NTFS volume layout structure

Partition boot sector

A boot sector or boot block is a region of a hard disk, floppy disk, optical disc, or

other data storage device that contains machine code to be loaded into random-

access memory (RAM) by a computer system's built-in firmware. The purpose of a

boot sector is to allow the boot process of a computer to load a program (usually, but

not necessarily, an operating system) stored on the same storage device.

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Master file table

The master file table (MFT) is a database in which information about every file and

directory on an NT File System (NTFS) volume is stored. There is at least one record

for every file and directory on the NTFS logical volume.

System files

Where executable files (in machine language) that are part of the operating system

or other control program are stored.

File area

Where application file are stored in the hard disk.

File Management Techniques

Directory implementation

In computing, a directory is a file system cataloging structure which contains

references to other computer files, and possibly other directories.

A directory serves as a collection data structure for files; conceptually, it behaves as

precisely that a place for listing and locating files. Internally, directories themselves

reside in disk blocks. On many computers, directories are known as folders or

drawers to provide some relevancy to a workbench or the traditional office file

cabinet. Files are organized by storing related files in the same directory. In a

hierarchical file system, a directory contained inside another directory is called a

subdirectory.

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The choice of the directory implementation is crucial for the efficiency,

performance, and reliability of the file system.

Directories are implemented in two ways.

 Linear list

Where each entry referring to a file in that directory

Advantages

 Simple to program

Disadvantages

 Time-consuming to execute

 Hash table

Hash tables are unordered structures; you would typically sort them in

memory to list a whole directory.

Advantages

 Fasterfile search

Disadvantages

 Decreases directory search time

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File allocation methods

File allocation method refers to how disk blocks are allocated for files:

Contiguous allocation

Contiguous allocation maps a file to a linear sequence of blocks on the disk.

Contiguous allocation supports sequential and direct access well, but is very prone

to external fragmentation and requires prior file size knowledge. Each file occupies

a set of contiguous blocks on the disk.

Advantages

 Simple – only starting location (block #) and length (number of blocks) are

required

 Random access

Disadvantages

 Wasteful of space

 Files cannot grow

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Linked allocation

Linked allocation treats disk blocks as nodes on a linked list. A file’s directory entry

serves as the list head, and each disk block stores a pointer to the next disk block.

Each file is a linked list of disk blocks: blocks may be scattered anywhere on the

disk.

It is Simple – need only starting address.

Advantages

 No waste of space

 No random access

 No external fragmentation, no need for no need to know the file size in

advance or with files that grow over time

Disadvantages

 Very difficult to implement direct access

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 High relative fragility of a linked list (i.e., one bad pointer screws everything

up).

 cost is increased overhead

Indexed allocation

Indexed allocation uses an index block, which resembles the page tables used for

main memory management. Each file has an index block, and this index block

contains all of the pointers to the file’s data blocks. The file’s directory entry points

to its index block. Like linked allocation, indexed allocation addresses external

fragmentation and file size issues, but may actually have more overhead — the index

block itself particularly for small files (because even a zero length file uses up at

least one disk block).

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Advantages

 Does not suffer from external fragmentation

 Much more effective for direct access

Disadvantages

 Inefficient for small files

Directory Levels

Single-Level Directory

In this type of directory system, there is a root directory which has all files. It has a

simple architecture and there are no sub directories. Advantage of single level

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directory system is that it is easy to find a file in the directory. This type of directory

system is used in cameras and phones.

Two Level or Hierarchical directory system

In a hierarchical directory system, files are grouped together to form a sub

directory. At the top of the hierarchy is the root directory and then there are sub

directories which has files.

Advantages

 Users can be provided access to a sub directory rather than the entire

directory.

 Provides a better structure to file system

 Managing millions of files is easy with this architecture.

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Tree-structured directory

It is an extension to the two-tiered directory structure, and the one with which we are

all most familiar. Each user / process has the concept of a current directory from

which all files may be accessed using either absolute pathnames or relative

pathnames. Directories are stored the same as any other file in the system, except

there is a bit that identifies them as directories, and they have some special structure

that the OS understands.

Acyclic-Graph Directories

Have shared subdirectories and files

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General Graph Directory

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File Sharing

File sharing is the practice of sharing or offering access to digital information or

resources, including documents, multimedia, graphics, computer programs, images

and e-books. It is the private or public distribution of data or resources in a network

with different levels of sharing privileges. Operating systems also provide file-

sharing methods, such as network file sharing (NFS).

The file system should provide a flexible tool for allowing extensive file sharing

among users.

Access Rights

These are permissions by users to access files in a system. The file system should

provide a number of options so that the way in which a particular file is accessed can

be controlled. Typically, users or groups of users are granted certain access rights

to a file. A wide range of access rights has been used. The following list is

representative of access rights that can be assigned to a particular user for a

particular file:

None

The user may not even learn of the existence of the file, much less access it. To

enforce this restriction, the user would not be allowed to read the user directory that

includes this file.

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Knowledge

The user can determine that the file exists and who its owner is. The user is then able

to petition the owner for additional access rights.

Execution

The user can load and execute a program but cannot copy it. Proprietary programs

are often made accessible with this restriction.

Reading

The user can read the file for any purpose, including copying and execution. Some

systems are able to enforce a distinction between viewing and copying. In the

former case, the contents of the file can be displayed to the user, but the user has no

means for making a copy.

Appending

The user can add data to the file, often only at the end, but cannot modify or delete

any of the file’s contents. This right is useful in collecting data from a number of

sources.

Updating

The user can modify, delete, and add to the file’s data. This normally includes

writing the file initially, rewriting it completely or in part, and removing all or a

portion of the data. Some systems distinguish among different degrees of updating.

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Changing protection

The user can change the access rights granted to other users. Typically, this right is

held only by the owner of the file. In some systems, the owner can extend this right

to others. To prevent abuse of this mechanism, the file owner will typically be able to

specify which rights can be changed by the holder of this right.

Deletion

The user can delete the file from the file system. These rights can be considered to

constitute a hierarchy, with each right implying those that precede it. Thus, if a

particular user is granted the updating right for a particular file, then that user is also

granted the following rights: knowledge, execution, reading, and appending.

User Access Rights

Specific User
Owner All
Users Groups
usually the
initial creator of all users who
the file have access to
this system
individual users a set of users
who are who are not
has full rights
designated by individually
user ID defined
these are public
may grant rights files
to others

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One user is designated as owner of a given file, usually the person who initially

created a file. The owner has all of the access rights listed previously and may grant

rights to others. Access can be provided to different classes of users:

 Specific user

Individual users who are designated by user ID

 User groups

A set of users who are not individually defined. The system must have some

way of keeping track of the membership of user groups.

 All

All users who have access to this system. These are public files.

Mode of access

 Read

 Write

 Execute

Disk space management

File systems allocate space in a granular manner, usually multiple physical units on

the device. The file system is responsible for organizing files and directories, and

keeping track of which areas of the media belong to which file and which are not

being used.

This results in unused space when a file is not an exact multiple of the allocation unit.

The size of the allocation unit is chosen when the file system is created. Choosing the

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allocation size based on the average size of the files expected to be in the file system

can minimize the amount of unusable space. Frequently the default allocation may

provide reasonable usage. Choosing an allocation size that is too small results in

excessive overhead if the file system will contain mostly very large files.

Disk space management methods

The major methods of allocating disk space are:

 Continuous

In contiguous allocation, files are assigned to contiguous area of secondary

storage. A linear ordering of disk addresses is seen on the disk. The

technique, in which the operating system provides units of file space on

demand by user running processes, is known as dynamic allocation of disk

space.

Advantages

 Successive logical records are physically adjacent and require no head

movement. So disk seek time is minimal and speeds up access of records.

Also, this scheme is relatively simple to implement.

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 Non-Continuous

This scheme has replaced the previous ones. The popular non-contiguous

storages because the files do tend either to grow or shrink over time and

users rarely know in advance how large their files will be contiguous.

Types of non-continuous allocation

 Linked/Chained Collection

Linked allocation is essentially a disk-based version of the linked list. The disk

blocks may be scattered anywhere on the disk. The directory contains a

pointer to the first and last block of the file. Also each block contains pointers

to the next block, which are not made available to the user. It can be used

effectively for sequential access only but there also it may generate long

seeks between blocks. Another issue is the extra storage space required for

pointers. Yet the reliability problem is also there due to loss/damage of any

pointer.

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 Indexed Allocation

Index allocation addresses many of the problems of contiguous and chained

allocation. In this case, the file allocation table contains a separate one-level

index for each file; the index has one entry for each portion allocated to file.

Typically, the file indexes are not physically stored as part of the file

allocation table. Rather, the index for a file is kept in a separate block, and

entry for the file in the allocation table points to that block. The allocation may

be on the basis of either fixed size blocks or variable size portions.

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File system management

The system that an operating system or program uses to organize and keep track of

files. It is the subsystem of an operating system that manages the data storage

organization on disk, and provides services to processes related to file access. In

this sense, it interfaces the application programs with the low-level media-I/O

subsystem, freeing on the application programmers from having to deal with low-

level intricacies and allowing them to implement I/O using convenient data-

organizational abstractions like files and records. On the other end, the FMS services

often is the only way thorough which applications can access the data stored in the

files, thus achieving an encapsulation of the data themselves which can be usefully

exploited for the purposes of data protection, maintenance and control.

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Functions of file system management

 Data Management

An FMS should provide data management services to the applications through

convenient abstractions, simplifying and making device-independent the

common operations involved in data access and modification.

 Generality with respect to storage devices

The FMS data abstractions and access methods should remain unchanged

irrespective of the devices involved in data storage.

 Validity

An FMS should guarantee that at any given moment the stored data reflect the

operations performed on them, regardless of the time delays involved in

actually performing those operations. Appropriate access synchronization

mechanism should be used to enforce validity when multiple accesses from

independent processes are possible.

 Protection

Illegal or potentially dangerous operations on the data should be controlled

by the FMS, by enforcing a well-defined data protection policy.

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 Concurrency

In multiprogramming systems, concurrent access to the data should be

allowed with minimal differences with respect to single-process access, save

for access synchronization enforcement.

 Performance

The above functionalities should be offered achieving at the same a good

compromise in terms of data access speed and data transferring rate.

Function of file system management to end user (or application)

 File creation, modification and deletion.

 User's (or user groups') ownership of files, and access control on the basis of

ownership permissions.

 Facilities to structure data within files (predefined record formats, etc.).

 Facilities for maintaining data redundancy against technical failure (back-ups,

disk mirroring, etc.).

 Logical identification and structuring of the data, via file names and

hierarchical directory structures.

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File system performance

Disk access is the bottleneck for the file system performance. Most systems maintain

a separate section of main memory for a disk cache (block cache, or buffer cache),

where blocks are kept under the assumption that they will be re-used in near future.

Logical file system

The logical file system is the level of the file system at which users can request file

operations by system call. This level of the file system provides the kernel with a

consistent view of what might be multiple physical file systems and multiple file

system implementations. As far as the logical file system is concerned, file system

types, whether local, remote, or strictly logical, and regardless of implementation,

are indistinguishable.

A consistent view of file system implementations is made possible by the virtual file

system abstraction. This abstraction specifies the set of file system operations that an

implementation must include in order to carry out logical file system requests.

Physical file systems can differ in how they implement these predefined operations,

but they must present a uniform interface to the logical file system. Each set of

predefined operations implemented constitutes a virtual file system. As such, a

single physical file system can appear to the logical file system as one or more

separate virtual file systems.

Virtual file system operations are available at the logical file system level through

the virtual file system switch. This array contains one entry for each virtual file

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system, with each entry holding entry point addresses for separate operations. Each

file system type has a set of entries in the virtual file system switch.

The logical file system and the virtual file system switch support other operating

system file-system access semantics. This does not mean that only other operating

system file systems can be supported. It does mean, however, that a file system

implementation must be designed to fit into the logical file system model.

Operations or information requested from a file system implementation need be

performed only to the extent possible.

Logical file system can also refer to the tree of known path names in force while the

system is running. A virtual file system that is mounted onto the logical file system

tree itself becomes part of that tree. In fact, a single virtual file system can be

mounted onto the logical file system tree at multiple points, so that nodes in the

virtual subtree have multiple names. Multiple mount points allow maximum

flexibility when constructing the logical file system view.

Physical file system

Storage space on a computer usually resides on several devices. This encompasses

several different types of media, including hard drives, CD-ROM drives, and floppy

drives. Each of these devices has a distinct physical file system associated with it.

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File allocation

This is the way files size and location in the hard disk are recorded for fast access by

the computer's operating system.

File allocation features

i. It supports up to 2 Terabytes in size.

ii. Uses space more effectively

iii. It is more robust and is more flexible

iv. FAT mirroring can be disabled

v. These features allow for dynamic resizing of partitions.

Operating system security

Operating system security is the process of ensuring OS integrity, confidentiality

and availability. OS security refers to specified steps or measures used to protect the

OS from threats, viruses, worms, malware or remote hacker intrusions. OS security

encompasses all preventive-control techniques, which safeguard any computer

assets capable of being stolen, edited or deleted if OS security is compromised.

File protection

Refers to the prevention of erasing of or writing upon a disk but allows a program to

read the data from the disk

Physical file protection is provided on the storage medium by turning a switch,

moving a lever or covering a notch. Writing is prohibited even if the software directs

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the computer to do so. For example, on the earlier half-inch tape, a plastic ring in the

center of the reel was removed.

Logical file protection is provided by the operating system, which can designate

files as read only. This allows both regular (read/write) and read only files to be

stored on the same disk volume. Files can also be designated as hidden files, which

make them invisible to most software programs.

File security

Security refers to providing a protection system to computer system resources such

as CPU, memory, disk, software programs and most importantly data/information

stored in the computer system. If a computer program is run by unauthorized user

then he/she may cause severe damage to computer or data stored in it. So a

computer system must be protected against unauthorized access, malicious access

to system memory, viruses, worms etc.

Importance of File Protection and security

 To avoid modification of file information

 To safeguard system files

 To avoid deletion of important system files

File Protection and security objectives

 Data confidentiality

 Data integrity

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 System availability

 Privacy

 Malicious intruders

 Accidental data loss

Software security and application security

Software security is an idea implemented to protect software against malicious

attack and other hacker risks so that the software continues to function correctly

under such potential risks. Security is necessary to provide integrity, authentication

and availability. Any compromise to integrity, authentication and availability makes

a software unsecure. Software systems can be attacked to steal information, monitor

content, introduce vulnerabilities and damage the behavior of software. Malware

can cause DoS (denial of service) or crash the system itself.

Security vulnerabilities

In computer security, vulnerability is a weakness which allows an attacker to reduce

a system's information assurance. Vulnerability is the intersection of three elements:

a system susceptibility or flaw, attacker access to the flaw, and attacker capability to

exploit the flaw.

Application Vulnerability

Application vulnerability is a system flaw or weakness in an application that could be

exploited to compromise the security of the application. Once an attacker has found

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a flaw, or application vulnerability, and determined how to access it, the attacker has

the potential to exploit the application vulnerability to facilitate a cyber-crime. These

crimes target the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of resources possessed by

an application, its creators, and its users.

Types of Security Vulnerabilities

Buffer Overflows

A buffer overflow occurs when an application attempts to write data past the end of a

buffer. Buffer overflows can cause applications to crash, can compromise data, and

can provide an attack vector for further privilege escalation to compromise the

system on which the application is running.

Invalidated Input

As a general rule, you should check all input received by your program to make

sure that the data is reasonable. Any input received by your program from an

untrusted source is a potential target for attack.

Race Conditions

A race condition exists when changes to the order of two or more events can cause a

change in behavior. If the correct order of execution is required for the proper

functioning of the program, this is a bug. If an attacker can take advantage of the

situation to insert malicious code, change a filename, or otherwise interfere with the

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normal operation of the program, the race condition is security vulnerability.

Attackers can sometimes take advantage of small time gaps in the processing of

code to interfere with the sequence of operations, which they then exploit.

Interprocess Communication

Separate processes either within a single program or in two different programs

sometimes have to share information. Common methods include using shared

memory or using some messaging protocol, such as Sockets, provided by the

operating system. These messaging protocols used for interprocess communication

are often vulnerable to attack; thus, when writing an application, you must always

assume that the process at the other end of your communication channel could be

hostile.

Insecure File Operations

Programmers often make assumptions about the ownership, location, or attributes of

a file that might not be true. For example, you might assume that you can always

write to a file created by your program. However, if an attacker can change the

permissions or flags on that file after you create it, and if you fail to check the result

code after a write operation, you will not detect the fact that the file has been

tampered with.

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Access Control Problems

Access control is the process of controlling who is allowed to do what. This ranges

from controlling physical access to a computer keeping your servers in a locked

room, for example to specifying who has access to a resource and what they are

allowed to do with that resource. Some access control mechanisms are enforced by

the operating system, some by the individual application or server, some by a

service in use. Many security vulnerabilities are created by the careless or improper

use of access controls, or by the failure to use them at all.

Security attacks

Security attack refers to a process whereby a person compromises your computer

by installing harmful malicious software in your computer without your knowledge.

This malicious software includes viruses, spywares, adwares, and Trojan horses.

This software often deletes certain vital files on your computer, making your

computer to function abnormally, spying on your online surfing habits, and cause

advertisements to pop up on your screen when you are online.

Types of attack

Passive Attack

A passive attack monitors unencrypted traffic and looks for clear-text passwords and

sensitive information that can be used in other types of attacks. Passive attacks

include traffic analysis, monitoring of unprotected communications, decrypting

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weakly encrypted traffic, and capturing authentication information such as

passwords. Passive interception of network operations enables adversaries to see

upcoming actions. Passive attacks result in the disclosure of information or data files

to an attacker without the consent or knowledge of the user.

Active Attack

In an active attack, the attacker tries to bypass or break into secured systems. This

can be done through stealth, viruses, worms, or Trojan horses. Active attacks include

attempts to circumvent or break protection features, to introduce malicious code,

and to steal or modify information. These attacks are mounted against a network

backbone, exploit information in transit, electronically penetrate an enclave, or

attack an authorized remote user during an attempt to connect to an enclave. Active

attacks result in the disclosure or dissemination of data files, DoS, or modification of

data.

Distributed Attack

A distributed attack requires that the adversary introduce code, such as a Trojan

horse or back-door program, to a “trusted” component or software that will later be

distributed to many other companies and users Distribution attacks focus on the

malicious modification of hardware or software at the factory or during distribution.

These attacks introduce malicious code such as a back door to a product to gain

unauthorized access to information or to a system function at a later date.

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Insider Attack

An insider attack involves someone from the inside, such as a disgruntled

employee, attacking the network Insider attacks can be malicious or no malicious.

Malicious insiders intentionally eavesdrop, steal, or damage information; use

information in a fraudulent manner; or deny access to other authorized users. No

malicious attacks typically result from carelessness, lack of knowledge, or

intentional circumvention of security for such reasons as performing a task

Close-in Attack

A close-in attack involves someone attempting to get physically close to network

components, data, and systems in order to learn more about a network Close-in

attacks consist of regular individuals attaining close physical proximity to networks,

systems, or facilities for the purpose of modifying, gathering, or denying access to

information. Close physical proximity is achieved through surreptitious entry into

the network, open access, or both.

One popular form of close in attack is social engineering in a social engineering

attack, the attacker compromises the network or system through social interaction

with a person, through an e-mail message or phone. Various tricks can be used by

the individual to revealing information about the security of company. The

information that the victim reveals to the hacker would most likely be used in a

subsequent attack to gain unauthorized access to a system or network.

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Phishing Attack

In phishing attack the hacker creates a fake web site that looks exactly like a popular

site such as PayPal. The phishing part of the attack is that the hacker then sends an e-

mail message trying to trick the user into clicking a link that leads to the fake site.

When the user attempts to log on with their account information, the hacker records

the username and password and then tries that information on the real site.

Hijack attack

Hijack attack In a hijack attack, a hacker takes over a session between you and

another individual and disconnects the other individual from the communication.

You still believe that you are talking to the original party and may send private

information to the hacker by accident.

Spoof attack

Spoof attack in a spoof attack, the hacker modifies the source address of the packets

he or she is sending so that they appear to be coming from someone else. This may

be an attempt to bypass your firewall rules.

Buffer overflow

Buffer overflow A buffer overflow attack is when the attacker sends more data to an

application than is expected. A buffer overflow attack usually results in the attacker

gaining administrative access to the system in a command prompt or shell.

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Exploit attack

Exploit attack In this type of attack, the attacker knows of a security problem within

an operating system or a piece of software and leverages that knowledge by

exploiting the vulnerability.

Password attack

Password attack an attacker tries to crack the passwords stored in a network account

database or a password-protected file. There are three major types of password

attacks: a dictionary attack, a brute-force attack, and a hybrid attack. A dictionary

attack uses a word list file, which is a list of potential passwords. A brute-force attack

is when the attacker tries every possible combination of characters.

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Authorization and authentication

Authentication is the process of verifying who you are. When you log on to a PC with

a user name and password you are authenticating.

Authentication is the process of proving authenticity. Something is authentic if it is

not false or an imitation. In software, authentication is validating that an entity is who

or what it claims to be. That is, authentication is proving that you are you, or that a

computer or a particular program is what it claims to be.

Authorization is the process of verifying that you have access to something. Gaining

access to a resource (e.g. directory on a hard disk) because the permissions

configured on it allow you access is authorization.

Authorization is the process of authorizing. Something is authorized to do X if it has

permission or approval to do X. In software, authorization is validating that a user

can perform a given action. That is, once a user is authenticated as a particular user,

authorization is about what that user can and cannot do.

Viruses and worms

A Virus is a program that piggy-backs on other programs. It can be attached to a

Word or Excel file. Each time the file is run, the virus runs too. It attaches itself to

other programs and continues to reproduce.

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A Worm uses computer networks to replicate itself. It searches for servers with

security holes and copies itself there. It then begins the search and replication

process again.

A Trojan horse is a computer program masquerading as a game or a “cute”

program. However, when it runs it does something else - like erasing your hard

drive or blocking your screen with a graphic will not go away.

Audit trail

A record showing who has accessed a computer system and what operations he or

she has performed during a given period of time. Audit trails are useful both for

maintaining security and for recovering lost transactions. Most accounting systems

and database management systems include an audit trail component. In addition,

there are separate audit trail software products that enable network administrators

to monitor use of network resources.

An audit trail also called audit log is a security-relevant chronological record, set of

records, and/or destination and source of records that provide documentary

evidence of the sequence of activities that have affected at any time a specific

operation, procedure, or event. Audit records typically result from activities such as

financial transactions, scientific research and health care data transactions, or

communications by individual people, systems, accounts, or other entities.

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Importance of Audit trail or Logs

Accountability

Log data can identify what accounts are associated with certain events. This

information then can be used to highlight where training and/or disciplinary actions

are needed.

Reconstruction

Log data can be reviewed chronologically to determine what was happening both

before and during an event. For this to happen, the accuracy and coordination of

system clocks are critical. To accurately trace activity, clocks need to be regularly

synchronized to a central source to ensure that the date/time stamps are in synch.

Intrusion Detection

Unusual or unauthorized events can be detected through the review of log data,

assuming that the correct data is being logged and reviewed. The definition of what

constitutes unusual activity varies, but can include failed login attempts, login

attempts outside of designated schedules, locked accounts, port sweeps, network

activity levels, memory utilization, key file/data access, etc.

Problem Detection

In the same way that log data can be used to identify security events, it can be used

to identify problems that need to be addressed.

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Access control verification

Access control is the selective restriction of access to a place or other resource. The

act of accessing may mean consuming, entering, or using. Permission to access a

resource is called authorization. Each file management system has its own method to

control file access.

Types of Access Control Verification Module

a) Access control matrix

In computer science, an Access Control Matrix or Access Matrix is an abstract,

formal security model of protection state in computer systems that

characterize the rights of each subject with respect to every object in the

system

Advantages

i. Easy to implement

ii. Works well for systems with few files & few users

iii. Results in space wastage because of null entries

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b) Access control lists

An access control list is a table that tells a computer operating system which

access rights each user has to a particular system object, such as a file

directory or individual file. Each object has a security attribute that identifies

its access control list. The list has an entry for each system user with access

privileges. The most common privileges include the ability to read a file, to

write to the file or files, and to execute the file

Contains the name of only those users who may use file; those denied any

access are grouped under “WORLD”. List is shortened by putting users into

categories:

SYSTEM: personnel with unlimited access to all files

OWNER: Absolute control over all files created in own account

GROUP: All users belonging to appropriate group have access

WORLD: All other users in system

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Advantages

i. Modification of access control matrix technique

ii. Each file is entered in list & contains names of users who are allowed

access to it and type of access permitted

c) Capability lists

Lists all the access rights or capabilities that a user has. A row of an access

matrix that contains the access rights of a given user to various files and other

resources of a computer system.

Examples

Fred --> /dev/console(RW)--> fred/prog.c(RW)--> fred/letter(RW) -->

/usr/ucb/vi(X) Jane --> /dev/console(RW)--> fred/prog.c(R)--> fred/letter() --

> /usr/ucb/vi(X)

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When a process tries to gain access to an object, the operating system can

check the appropriate capability list.

Advantages

i. Lists every user and the files to which each has access

ii. Can control access to devices as well as to files

Disadvantages

i. If each capability list has an entry for all objects, many entries will indicate

that no access is allowed. The set of objects accessible by one user,

specially privileged users, may be very large.

ii. It can be expensive to search capability lists for such users, unless we use

capability-based addressing, presented later when we discuss capabilities

in more detail.

iii. An initial capability list must be generated for a new user. It is not clear

what the initial list should look like.

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d) Lockword control

It is similar to a password but protects a single file

Advantages

i. Requires smallest amount of storage for file protection

Disadvantages

ii. Can be guessed by hackers or passed on to unauthorized users

iii. Generally doesn’t control type of access to file

iv. Anyone who knows lockword can read, write, execute, or delete file

Data Compression

A technique used to save space in files

Methods for data compression

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Records with repeated characters

Repeated characters are replaced with a code

Examples

ADAMSbbbbbbbbbb => ADAMSb10

300000000 => 3#8

Repeated terms

Compressed by using symbols to represent most commonly used words

Examples

In a university’s student database common words like student, course, grade, &

department could each be represented with single character.

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Device I/O Management

Objectives of device I/O management

The objectives of the I/O Management module are as follows

Generality and Device Independence

I/O devices are typically quite complex mechanically and electronically. Much of

this complexity is related to the electronic engineering and is of no interest to the

user or the programmer. The average user is not aware of the complexities of

positioning the heads on a disk drive, reading the signal from the disk surface,

waiting for the required sector to rotate into position etc.

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Users and programmers may be unaware of this complexity. The I/O management

module must try to treat all external devices uniformly. This is achieved by virtual

device. A virtual device is a special kind of file that is associated with a particular

external device. Users create a virtual device of a given type, and operating system

associates a physical device with it when the device is required for the first time. All

virtual devices in a system are stored in a liked list.

Efficiency

Perhaps the most significant characteristic of the I/O system is. the speed disparity

between it and the processor. I/O devices involve mechanical operations. They

cannot compete with the microsecond or nanosecond speed of the processor and

memory. The I/O management module must try to minimize the disparity by the use

of techniques like buffering and spooling.

Uniform naming

i. Name of a file or device is a string or an integer

ii. Doesn’t depend on the machine (underlying hardware)

Error handling

i. Done as close to the hardware as possible

ii. Isolate higher-level software

Synchronous vs. asynchronous transfers

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i. Blocked transfers vs. interrupt-driven

Buffering

i. Data coming off a device cannot be stored in final destination

ii. Sharable vs. dedicated devices

Device independence

Device independence is the process of making a software application be able to

function on a wide variety of devices regardless of the local hardware on which the

software is used. The process should not depend on one particular device.

The principle of device independence works very well with respect to random

access information storage devices. Essentially no level of software, from the OS

upward cares what kind of storage device it's reading from/ writing to.

Device independence functions

i. Perform I/O functions common to all devices

ii. Provide a uniform interface to the user-level software

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Efficiency

The speed disparity between it and the processor. I/O devices involve mechanical

operations. They cannot compete with the microsecond or nanosecond speed of the

processor and memory. The I/O management module must try to minimize the

disparity by the use of techniques like buffering and spooling.

Uniform treatment of devices

 So users of Peripherals can use a standard way of interacting with different

devices.

 OS needs to smooth out all the differences between devices.

 This is achieved by the Virtual Device. Users interact with Virtual Devices

called streams. User creates a stream of a given type, and OS associates it

with a physical device the first time the device is required.

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 Info about stream, and physical device, needs to be held in Process

Descriptor - PD points to a stream descriptor list.

 Stream is opened when OS associates stream with Phy. Device. Stream is

closed either explicitly by process or when process terminates

Advantages

 User can interact with devices using standard set of instructions.

 User does not need to know which specific Phy. Device will be used by a

process

 Easy to change device from, say, Tape to Disk, without having to rewrite large

chunks of code.

Principles of device I/O hardware

I/O Devices

An input/output (I/O) device is a hardware device that has the ability to accept

inputted, outputted or other processed data. It also can acquire respective media

data as input sent to a computer or send computer data to storage media as storage

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output. Input devices provide input to a computer, while output devices provide a

way for a computer to output data for communication with users or other computers.

An I/O device is a device with both functionalities.

Input Devices

 Graphics Tablets

 Cameras

 Video Capture Hardware

 Trackballs

 Barcode reader

 Digital camera

 Gamepad

 Joystick

 Keyboard

 Microphone

 MIDI keyboard

 Mouse (pointing device)

 Scanner

 Webcam

 Touchpads

 Pen Input

 Microphone

 Electronic Whiteboard

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Output devices

 Monitor

 Printers (all types)

 Plotters

 Projector

 LCD Projection Panels

 Computer Output Microfilm (COM)

 Speaker(s)

Both Input–Output Devices

 Modems

 Network cards

 Touch Screen

 Headsets

 Facsimile (FAX)

 Audio Cards / Sound Card

Block Devices

Block devices usually behave a lot like ordinary files: they are an array of bytes, and

the value that is read at a given location is the value that was last written there. Data

from block device can be cached in memory and read back from cache; writes can

be buffered. Block devices are normally searchable. The name block device comes

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from the fact that the corresponding hardware typically reads and writes a whole

block at a time.

Unit of data transfer: a block of bytes Example: disk drives

Operations: read, write, and seek

Usually accessed via a file system interface raw I/O: OS, DBMS may directly access

device as a linear array of blocks.

Character devices

Character devices behave like pipes, serial ports, etc. Writing or reading to them is

an immediate action. What the driver does with the data is its own business. Writing

a byte to a character device might cause it to be displayed on screen, output on a

serial port, converted into a sound. Reading a byte from a device might cause the

serial port to wait for input, might return a random byte. The name “character

device” comes from the fact that each character is handled individually.

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Device controllers

A device controller is a part of a computer system that makes sense of the signals

going to, and coming from the CPU.

A device controller is a part of a computer system that makes sense of the signals

going to, and coming from the CPU processor. There are many device controllers in

a computer system. Any device connected to the computer is connected by a plug

and socket, and the socket is connected to a device controller. Device controllers

use binary and digital codes.

There are many device controllers in a computer system. Any device connected to

the computer is connected by a plug and socket, and the socket is connected to a

device controller. A computer system contains a many types of I/O devices and their

respective controllers.

 Network card

 Graphics adapter

 Disk controller

 DVD-ROM controller

 Serial port

 USB

 Sound card

Functions of Device Controller

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Types of device controllers

Device drivers

A device driver is a program that controls a particular type of device that is attached

to your computer. There are device drivers for printers, displays, CD-ROM readers,

diskette drives, and so on. When you buy an operating system, many device drivers

are built into the product. However, if you later buy a new type of device that the

operating system didn't anticipate, you'll have to install the new device driver. A

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device driver essentially converts the more general input/output instructions of the

operating system to messages that the device type can understand.

A device driver is a program routine that links a peripheral device to an operating

system of a computer. It is essentially a software program that allows a user to

employ a device, such as a printer, monitor, or mouse. It is written by programmers

who comprehend the detailed knowledge of the device’s command language and

characteristics and contains the specific machine language necessary to perform the

functions requested by the application. When a new hardware device is added to the

computer, such as a CD-ROM drive, a printer, or a sound card, its driver must be

installed in order to run it. The operating system calls the driver, and the driver

drives the device.

A device driver is a kernel module responsible for managing low-level I/O

operations for a particular hardware device. Device drivers can also be software-

only, emulating a device that exists only in software, such as a RAM disk or a

pseudo-terminal.

A device driver contains all the device-specific code necessary to communicate with

a device and provides a standard set of interfaces to the rest of the system. This

interface protects the kernel from device specifics just as the system call interface

protects application programs from platform specifics. Application programs and

the rest of the kernel need little (if any) device-specific code to address the device.

In this way, device drivers make the system more portable and easier to maintain.

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Types of Device Drivers

There are several kinds of device drivers, each handling a different kind of I/O.

Block device drivers manage devices with physically addressable storage media,

such as disks. All other devices are considered character devices. Two types of

character device drivers are standard character device drivers and STREAMS

device drivers.

Block Device Drivers

Devices that support a file system are known as block devices. Drivers written for

these devices are known as block device drivers. Block device drivers can also

provide a character driver interface that allows utility programs to bypass the file

system and access the device directly. This device access is commonly referred to

as the raw interface to a block device.

Character Device Drivers

Character device drivers normally perform I/O in a byte stream. They can also

provide additional interfaces not present in block drivers, such as I/O control (ioctl)

commands, memory mapping, and device polling.

Byte-Stream I/O

The main task of any device driver is to perform I/O, and many character device

drivers do what is called byte-stream or character I/O. The driver transfers data to

and from the device without using a specific device address. This is in contrast to
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block device drivers, where part of the file system request identifies a specific

location on the device.

Memory Mapped Devices

For certain devices, such as frame buffers, it is more efficient for application

programs to have direct access to device memory. Applications can map device

memory into their address.

STREAMS Drivers

STREAMS are a separate programming model for writing a character driver. Devices

that receive data asynchronously (such as terminal and network devices) are suited

to a STREAMS implementation. STREAMS device drivers must provide the loading

and auto configuration support.

Functions of device drivers

 The driver is the link between the operating system and the peripheral

device.

 A device driver sets the direct memory access control registers to use

appropriate source and destination addresses, and transfer length.

Direct Memory Access (DMA)

Direct memory access (DMA) is a method that allows an input/output (I/O) device to

send or receive data directly to or from the main memory, bypassing the CPU to

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speed up memory operations. The process is managed by a chip known as a DMA

controller (DMAC).

DMA channels are used to communicate data between the peripheral device and the

system memory. All four system resources rely on certain lines on a bus. Some lines

on the bus are used for IRQs, some for addresses (the I/O addresses and the

memory address) and some for DMA channels.

A DMA channel enables a device to transfer data without exposing the CPU to a work

overload. Without the DMA channels, the CPU copies every piece of data using a

peripheral bus from the I/O device. Using a peripheral bus occupies the CPU during

the read/write process and does not allow other work to be performed until the

operation is completed.

With DMA, the CPU can process other tasks while data transfer is being performed.

The transfer of data is first initiated by the CPU. During the transfer of data between

the DMA channel and I/O device, the CPU performs other tasks. When the data

transfer is complete, the CPU receives an interrupt request from the DMA controller.

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Advantages of DMA

• DMA allows a peripheral device to read from/write to memory without going

through the CPU

• DMA allows for faster processing since the processor can be working on

something else while the peripheral can be populating memory.

Disadvantages of DMA

• DMA transfer requires a DMA controller to carry out the operation, hence cost

of the system increases.

• Cache Coherence problems.

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Principles of I/O software

Goals of I/O software

Device independence

The principle of device independence works very well with respect to random

access information storage devices. Essentially no level of software, from the OS

upward cares what kind of storage device it's reading from/ writing to.

Uniform naming

Recall that we discussed the value of the name space implemented by file systems.

There is no dependence between the name of the file and the device on which it is

stored.

Device independence

i. Programs can access any I/O device

ii. without specifying device in advance (floppy, hard drive, or CD-ROM)

Uniform naming

i. name of a file or device a string or an integer

ii. not depending on which machine

Error handling

i. Handle as close to the hardware as possible.

Interrupt Handler

An interrupt handler is used to handle high-priority conditions that require the

interruption of the current code the processor is executing. Interrupt handlers have

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a multitude of functions, which vary based on the reason the interrupt was generated

and the speed at which the interrupt handler completes its task. An interrupt

handler is a low-level counterpart of event handlers. These handlers are initiated by

either hardware interrupts or interrupt instructions in software, and are used for

servicing hardware devices and transitions between protected modes of operation

such as system calls.

Types of Interrupts

External Interrupt

The external interrupt occurs when any input and output device request for any

operation and the CPU will execute that instructions first for example when a

program is executed and when we move the mouse on the screen then the CPU will

handle this external interrupt first and after that he will resume with his operation.

Internal interrupt

The internal interrupts are those which are occurred due to some problem in the

execution for example when a user performing any operation which contains any

error and which contains any type of error. So that internal interrupts are those

which are occurred by the some operations or by some instructions and the

operations those are not possible but a user is trying for that operation.

Software interrupt

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Software interrupts are those which are made some call to the system for example

while we are processing some instructions and when we want to execute one more

application programs.

Device-independent I/O software

Functions

i. uniform interfacing for device drivers

ii. Buffering

iii. error reporting

iv. providing a device-independent block size

Uniform interfacing

Make all I/O devices look more or less the same, so that the O/S doesn’t need to be

hacked every time a new device comes along.

Buffering

Memory area that stores data in kernel space while transferred between device and

application. Buffering allows the I/O devices to cope with a speed mismatch

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between producers and consumers. Allows adaption between services with different

data-transfer sizes.

User-level I/O system calls

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Disk hardware

Physical geometry of a disk with two zones

A possible virtual geometry for this disk

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Raid levels 0 through 2

Backup and parity drives are shaded

Disk Scheduling

Servicing the disk I/O requests. Disk scheduling is the problem of deciding which

particular request for data by your computer from your hard drive should be

serviced first. In other words, when several programs are trying to pull data from

your hard drive at once, which one gets the data first? It is a fundamental problem in

operating system scheduling in terms of minimizing the wait for the user when he or

she simply wants to do some things that require information from the hard drive.

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I/O request issues a system call to the OS. If desired disk drive or controller is

available, request is served immediately. If busy, new request for service will be

placed in the queue of pending requests. When one request is completed, the OS

has to choose which pending request to service next.

Type of Disk Scheduling

FCFC or First Come First Serve

In this jobs or processes are executed in the manner in which they are entered into

the computer. In this operating system creates a queue which contains the sequence

order in which they are to be executed and the sequence in which the CPU will

execute the process. In this all the jobs are performed according to their sequence

order as they have entered. In this the job which had requested first will firstly

performed by the CPU and the jobs those are entered later will be executed in to

their entering order.

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SSTF or Shortest Seek Time First

In this technique the operating system will search for the shortest time means this

will search which job will takes a less time of CPU for running. After examining all

the jobs, all the jobs are arranged in the sequence wise or they are organized into

the priority order. The priority of the process will be the total time which a process

will use for execution. The shortest seek time will include all the time means time to

enter and time to completion of the process. Means the total time which a process

will take for execution.

C-Scan Scheduling

In the c-scan all the processes are arranged by using some circular list. Circular list

is that in which there is no start and end point of the list means the end of the list is

the starting point of the list. In the c-scan scheduling the cpu will search for the

process from start to end and if an end has found then this again start from the

starting process. Because many times when a CPU is executing the processes then

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may a user wants to enter some data means a user wants to enter some data so that at

that situation the CPU will again execute that process after the input operation. So

that c-scan scheduling is used for processing same processes again and again.

Look Scheduling

In the Look Scheduling the CPU Scans the List from Starting to End of the Disk in

which the various processes are running and in the Look Scheduling the CPU will

Scan the Entire Disk from one End to the Second end.

Round Robin

In the Round Robin Scheduling the Time of CPU is divided into the Equal Numbers

which is also called as Quantum Time. Each Process which is Request for Execution

will Consumes the Equal Number of Times of the CPU and after the Quantum Time of

First Process, the CPU will automatically goes to the Next Process. But the Main

Problem is that after the Completion of the Process the Time Will also be Consumed

by the Process. Means if a Process either or not have Some Operations To perform
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the Time of CPU will also be Consume by the CPU , So this is the Wastage of the Time

of the CPU.

Priority Scheduling

In this Each Process have Some Priorities Assign to them, Means each and Every

Process will be examined by using the Total Time Which will be consumed by the

Process. The Total Time of the Process, and Number of times a Process needs Some

Input and Output and Number of Resources will be Examines to set the Priorities of

the Processes. So that all the Processes are arranged into the Form of these Criteria’s

and after that they will be processed by the CPU.

Multilevel Queue

The multilevel queue is used when there are multiple queues for the various

different processes as we know that there are many different types of works those

are to be performed on the computers at a time. So that for organizing the various or

different types of queues the CPU maintains the queues by using this technique. In

this all the queues are collected and organized in the form of some functions which

they are requesting to perform. So that the various types of queues are maintained

this contains all the processes which have same type.

SCAN

Go from the outside to the inside servicing requests and then back from the outside

to the inside servicing requests.

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i. Repeats this over and over

ii. Reduces variance compared to SSTF

The drive head sweeps across the entire surface of the disk, visiting the

outermost cylinders before changing direction and sweeping back to the

innermost cylinders. It selects the next waiting requests whose location it will

reach on its path backwards and forwards across the disk. Thus, the movement

time should be less than FCFS but the policy is clearly fairer than SSTF.

C-LOOK

i. Moves inwards servicing requests until there are no more requests in that

direction, then it jumps to the outermost outstanding requests.

ii. Repeats this over and over.

iii. Variant: service requests from inside to outside, then skip back to the

innermost request.

Based on C-SCAN, C-LOOK involves the drive head sweeping across the disk

satisfying requests in one direction only. As in LOOK the drive makes use of the

location of waiting requests in order to determine how far to continue a sweep, and

where to commence the next sweep. Thus it may curtail a sweep towards the outer

edge when there are locations requested in cylinders beyond the current position,

and commence its next sweep at a cylinder which is not the innermost one, if that is

the most central one for which a sector is currently requested.

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Disk performance Parameters

Disk bandwidth

Is the total number of bytes transferred, divided by the total time between the first

request for service and the completion of the last transfer.

Seek time

Is the time for the disk are to move the heads to the cylinder containing the desired

sector.

Rotational latency

This is the additional time waiting for the disk to rotate the desired sector to the disk

head.

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SCAN Scheduling

The disk arm starts at one end of the disk, and moves toward the other end,

servicing requests until it gets to the other end of the disk, where the head

movement is reversed and servicing continues. Sometimes called the elevator

algorithm.

Error handling

There are several aspects to error handling including: detection, correction (if

possible) and reporting.

i. Detection should be done as close to where the error occurred as possible

before more damage is done (fault containment). This is not trivial.

ii. Correction is sometimes easy, for example ECC (error correcting code)

memory does this automatically (but the OS wants to know about the error so

that it can schedule replacement of the faulty chips before unrecoverable

double errors occur).

a. Other easy cases include successful retries for failed Ethernet

transmissions. In this example, while logging is appropriate, it is quite

reasonable for no action to be taken.

iii. Error reporting tends to be awful. The trouble is that the error occurs at a low

level but by the time it is reported the context is lost. Unix/Linux in particular

is horrible in this area.

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Primary handling is by the drivers. It can often react and repair the error before the

software layer above notices. Only when, after several tries, repairing fails, the

higher layers are informed. Error handling at higher levels depends on the

environment in which the software is functioning.

Error handling examples

Programming errors (non-existing sector)

 User program needs debugging

Volatile checksum error (dust particle)

 Controller tries again

Permanent checksum error (bad block)

 Block will be marked “bad” and replaced by a spare block (this my interfere

with the optimisation algorithm)

Seek error (arm moves to the wrong sector)

 Mechanical problem, perform RECALIBRATE or ask for maintenance

Controller error

 Controller is a parallel system, can get confused, driver may perform a reset

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Track at a time caching

Caching is a very general technique for improving computer system performance.

Based on the principle of locality of reference, it is used in a computer's primary

storage hierarchy, its operating system, networks, and databases. Caching improves

access time and reduces data traffic to data sources that have limited throughput. For

most of this web page only reads are considered. A section at the end deals with

issues that arise when writes are considered.

RAM Disks

Refers to RAM that has been configured to simulate a disk drive. You can access files

on a RAM disk as you would access files on a real disk. RAM disks, however, are

approximately a thousand times faster than hard disk drives. They are particularly

useful, therefore, for applications that require frequent disk accesses. Because they

are made of normal RAM, RAM disks lose their contents once the computer is turned

off. To use a RAM disk, therefore, you need to copy files from a real hard disk at the

beginning of the session and then copy the files back to the hard disk before you

turn the computer off. Note that if there is a power failure, you will lose whatever

data is on the RAM disk. A RAM disk is also called a virtual disk or a RAM drive.

Computer clocking system

Clock hardware

50 Hz clocks (1 interrupt (clock tic) per voltage cycle)

• Simple, cheap, not very accurate, not very functional

High precision clocks (5-100 MHz, or higher),

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• Contain a quarts oscillator

• Steers a counter counting down

• Generates an interrupt when counter reaches 0

• Counter is eventually reloaded from a programmable register

• One chip normally implements multiple clocks

• One shot mode: clock counts down from register value once and

waits for software to start it again

• Block wave mode: counter is automatically reloaded (generates

clock tics)

• Ranges: e.g. 1000 MHz clock with a 16 bits register can fix time

intervals between 1 nanosecond and 65,535 microseconds.

Clock software

 Software is responsible for the semantics behind the clock tics:

 Shows time of the day.

 Calculate the exact time between two tics and adjust the clock on each

interrupt.

 Administration of process time slices

 Administration of CPU usage

• Counter starts when process starts

• Counter is part of the “Process environment”

• Is stopped while handling an interrupt

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• Field in the process table can be used directly (through pointer

to running process)

• Interrupts cause problems

Watchdog timers

– Watchdog timers start user specified routine after the time has elapsed

within the code of the caller

Profiling

– For program performance analysis

– Information where the CPU time is spent on

Exploration of computer terminals

Terminal hardware

Serial RS232 terminals

– Industrial applications

• Memory-mapped interfaces

– character oriented

– Bitmapped

• Network computers

• Serial interfaces: 25 pins connector (RS232 or V24), needed are 3 pins

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• From 50 up to 19200 bits/sec

• Interface: UART (Universal Asynchronous Receiver Transmitter) on RS232

interface cards

• Driver writes characters to interface card which transforms them into a bit

sequence

• Slow, interrupt will wake up the driver

• Interface cards may have a CPU on board, and be able to serve more

terminals

• Intelligent terminals may be able to perform complicated operations on the

screen (e.g. X-terminals) while still connected through a prehistoric device as

the RS UART

Memory mapped terminals

– Integrated into the computer

– Communicate through a special memory, the video RAM, embedded into

the address space of the CPU

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• Monitor talks pixels, video controller modulates the electron ray or steers the

lc’s

• Speed is obtained through the memory and the electronics

• The ram can be in characters or in bits

– Characters will typically be read 14 times, for each line on the screen in

which part of the character is displayed

– Bits will be stored per pixel

• Input through the keyboard

– Normally passes only a code for the key touched

Input software

• Keyboard driver caches keyboard input

– Raw mode:

• Driver passes characters unchanged to software

• Buffering is limited to speed differences

• Application receives characters immediately

– Cooked mode

• Driver buffers one line until it is finished

• Driver handles corrections made by the user while typing a line

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– Often applications have the choice

• Nowadays, window driven applications use raw mode at the lowest level and

perform buffering at the window level

• Keyboard driver catches characters after

– Interrupts: handles character during interrupt

– Messages: message may contain the character or refer to a small

buffer (problem with real time level of the driver, safer if the

messaging is not fail proof)

• Keyboard driver transforms the key number into a character according to a

table

• Keyboard buffering: buffer pool (buffers of equal size, e.g. 16 characters) or a

separate buffer for each terminal (typically 200 characters)

• Echoing is (was) done by the OS, or the shell. May be confusing for the user.

• Handling of tabs, backspaces,… were typical problems with terminals

• One problem survived: end of line

– Logically (from the typist’s viewpoint) one needs a CR to bring the

cursor back to the beginning of the line and a LF to go to the next one

– These two characters are hidden behind the ENTER key

– The OS can decide how to represent end of line

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• UNIX: Line feed only

• DOS: Carriage return and line feed

– LF is ASCII 10, CR is ASCII 13, ^M

• -> problems with file transfer

• Other problems with terminals:

– Timing of CR and LF

– Padding

– Definition of the erase character

– Kill character: @ (\@ and \\ conventions)

– Stop output (^S) and start output (^Q)

– DEL, ^C, stop process (sent SIGINT)

– ^\ force core dump (SIGQUIT)

– ^D, ^Z end of file

• Implementation was (is) not straightforward

UNIX telinfo database contains descriptions of thousands of terminals (famous

example vt100)

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Output software

• Serial (RS-232) and memory mapped approaches differ

• Serial terminals have an output buffer to which characters are sent until it is

full or until a line ends. Once full, the real output is initiated and the driver

sleeps until interrupted.

• Memory mapped terminals can be accessed through normal memory

addressing procedures. Some characters receive a special treatment. The

driver is doing more screen manipulation.

• Special functions such as scrolling and animation may be done through

special registers (e.g. register with the position of the top line)

UNIX/LINUX

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Buffer Cache

Virtual Devices

Alternatively referred to as a virtual peripheral, a virtual device mimics a physical

hardware device by tricking the computer into thinking something exists when it

really doesn't. Virtual device is a simulation of an actual device. This improves

efficiency by printing to a file and the actual print off can take place when system is

quiet.

Most common example is print spooler; fax software can act as a virtual printer.

When print is selected, the document is sent to a fax/modem, which then sends

information to another fax/modem or fax machine instead of a printer.

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Objectives of virtual devices

History of virtual devices

Spooling

Spooling is a process in which data is temporarily held to be used and executed by a

device, program or the system. Data is sent to and stored in memory or other

volatile storage until the program or computer requests it for execution.

Spooling refers to as a process that putting jobs in a buffer or say spool, or

temporary storage area, a special area in memory or on a disk where a device can

access them when it is ready. Spooling is useful because devices access data at

different rates.

The buffer provides a waiting station where data can rest while the slower device

catches up. However, unlike a spool of thread, the first jobs sent to the spool are the

first ones to be processed (FIFO, not LIFO).

The most common spooling application is print spooling. When you choose to print a

document, the computer sends the document information to the printer very quickly,

but the printer can't accept it at the same rate. The printer can only handle a chunk of

information at a time, and it pauses to process and print that chunk before it's ready

for more. Meanwhile, you have to wait until the printer has accepted the whole

document, piece by piece, before you can use your computer again because the

computer has to hang around and feed the information through.

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Spooling Technique

• A high speed device like a disk is interposed between a running program and

a low speed device involved with the program input/output

• Communication between a high speed device and low speed device is

isolated

• High speed device transfers the data to the spool

• Low speed device gets the data from the spool

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Advantages

• Performance of the system is increased

• CPU and I/O devices work more efficiently

• Leads naturally to multiprogramming

• Also used for processing data at remote sites

Buffering

Small amount of memory used for temporary storage of data, usually to compensate

for differences in processing or transmitting speeds of two connected devices, such

as a computer and a printer. It serves as a reservoir in which the higher speed

device (computer) dumps the data which is then 'trickled' to the slower one (printer).

Buffering is also required where a constant high bit rate has to be maintained, such

as in compress-decompression process used in transmission or playing of

audio/video files.

A buffer is an area of main memory for holding data during input and output data

transfers. A temporary storage area, usually in RAM. The purpose of most buffers is

to act as a holding area, enabling the CPU to manipulate data before transferring it to

a device. Because the processes of reading and writing data to a disk are relatively

slow, many programs keep track of data changes in a buffer and then copy the

buffer to a disk. For example, word processors employ a buffer to keep track of

changes to files. Then when you save the file, the word processor updates the disk

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file with the contents of the buffer. This is much more efficient than accessing the file

on the disk each time you make a change to the file.

• Overlaps the I/O of job with that of its own computation

• After the data have been read and the CPU is about to start the operation, the

input device is instructed to begin the next input operation

• Both the CPU and I/O device are busy

• By the time CPU is ready for next operation, the input device would have

finished reading it

• CPU creates data and puts into a buffer until an output device can accept it

Output Buffering

• Processor stores the data in a buffer

• Output device takes the data from the buffer

Input Buffering

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• Data transferred by an input channel is stored in the buffer

• After the data transfer, the processor access the data from the buffer

Advantages

• To cope with a speed mismatch between the producer and consumers of a

data streams

• To adopt between devices that have different data-transfer sizes

• To support copy semantics for application I/O

Caching

Portion of a computer's random access memory (RAM) reserved for temporary

storage of data for processing or the data frequently requested from the computer's

hard disk. Since data stored in RAM can be accessed much faster than the data

stored on a hard disk, a cache speeds up computing.

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Process management

Describe process model

Process levels

Process states/models

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