Chapter 2: Operating-System

Structures

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Objectives
● To describe the services an operating system provides to users,
processes, and other systems
● To discuss the various ways of structuring an operating system
● To explain how operating systems are installed and customized and
how they boot

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.2 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Operating System Services

● Operating systems provide an environment for the execution of

programs.
● Operating systems provides certain services to:
● Programs
● Users of those programs
● Basically two types of services:
● Set of operating-system services provides functions that are
helpful to the user:
● Set of operating-system functions for ensuring the efficient
operation of the system itself via resource sharing

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.3 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 OS Services Helpful to the User
● User interface - Almost all operating systems have a user interface
(UI). This interface can take several forms:
● Command-Line (CLI) -- uses text commands and a method for
entering them (say, a keyboard for typing in commands in a specific
format with specific options).
● Graphics User Interface (GUI) -- the interface is a window system
with a pointing device to direct I\O, choose from menus, and make
selections and a keyboard to enter text..
● Batch Interface -- commands and directives to control those
commands are entered into files, and those files are executed
Some systems provide two or all three of these variations.
● Program execution - The system must be able to load a program into
memory and to run that program, end execution, either normally or
abnormally (indicating error)
● I/O operations - A running program may require I/O, which may
involve a file or an I/O device

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.4 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 OS Services Helpful to the User (Cont.)
● File-system manipulation - Programs need to read and write files and directories,
create and delete them, search them, list file Information, permission management.
● Communications – Processes may exchange information, on the same computer or
between computers over a network
● Communications may be via shared memory or through message passing
(packets moved by the OS)
● Error detection – OS needs to be constantly aware of possible errors
● May occur in the CPU and memory hardware, in I/O devices, in user program
● For each type of error, OS should take the appropriate action to ensure correct
and consistent computing
● Debugging facilities can greatly enhance the user’s and programmer’s abilities
to efficiently use the system

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.5 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 OS Services for Ensuring Efficient Operation

● Resource allocation - When multiple users or multiple jobs are

running concurrently, resources must be allocated to each of them
● Many types of resources - CPU cycles, main memory, file
storage, I/O devices.
● Accounting - To keep track of which users use how much and what
kinds of computer resources
● Protection and security - The owners of information stored in a
multiuser or networked computer system may want to control use of
that information, concurrent processes should not interfere with each
other
● Protection involves ensuring that all access to system resources
is controlled
● Security of the system from outsiders requires user
authentication, extends to defending external I/O devices from
invalid access attempts

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.6 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 A View of Operating System Services

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.7 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Command Interpreters (CLI)

CLI allows users to directly enter commands to be

performed by the operating system.

● Some operating systems include the command interpreter in the

kernel.
● Some operating systems, such as Windows and UNIX, treat the
command interpreter as a special program that is running when a
job is initiated or when a user first logs on.
● On systems with multiple command interpreters to choose from,
the interpreters are known as shells.
● The main function of the command interpreter is to get and
execute the next user-specified command.
● Sometimes commands built-in, sometimes just names of programs
● If the latter, adding new features doesn’t require shell
modification

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 The Bourne shell command interpreter in Solaris

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 Bourne Shell Command Interpreter

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 Graphical User Interfaces (GUI)

● User-friendly desktop metaphor interface

● Usually mouse, keyboard, and monitor
● Icons represent files, programs, actions, etc
● Various mouse buttons over objects in the interface cause various
actions (provide information, options, execute function, open
directory (known as a folder)
● Invented at Xerox PARC
● Many systems now include both CLI and GUI interfaces
● Microsoft Windows is GUI with CLI “command” shell
● Apple Mac OS X is “Aqua” GUI interface with UNIX kernel
underneath and shells available
● Unix and Linux have CLI with optional GUI interfaces (CDE, KDE,
GNOME)

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.11 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Touchscreen Interfaces

● Touchscreen devices require new

interfaces
● Mouse not possible or not desired
● Actions and selection based on
gestures
● Virtual keyboard for text entry
● Voice commands.

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.12 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 The Mac OS X GUI

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.13 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 System Calls
● Programming interface to the services provided by the OS
● Typically written in a high-level language (C or C++)
● Mostly accessed by programs via a high-level Application
Programming Interface (API) rather than direct system call
● Three most common APIs are:
● Win32 API for Windows,
● POSIX API for POSIX-based systems (including virtually all
versions of UNIX, Linux, and Mac OS X),
● Java API for the Java virtual machine (JVM)

Note that the system-call names used throughout this

text are generic

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 Example of System Calls

● System call sequence to copy the contents of one file to another file

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 Example of Standard API

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 System Call Implementation
● Typically, a number is associated with each system call
● System-call interface maintains a table indexed according to these
numbers
● The system call interface invokes the intended system call in OS kernel
and returns status of the system call and any return values
● The caller need not know a thing about how the system call is
implemented
● Just needs to obey the API and understand what the OS will do as a
result call
● Most details of OS interface hidden from programmer by API
4 Managed by run-time support library (set of functions built
into libraries included with compiler)

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 System Call -- OS Relationship
The handling of a user application invoking the open()
system call

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 System Call Parameter Passing
● Often, more information is required than simply identity of desired
system call
● Exact type and amount of information vary according to OS and
call
● Three general methods used to pass parameters to the OS
● Simplest: pass the parameters in registers
4 In some cases, may be more parameters than registers
● Parameters stored in a block, or table, in memory, and address of
block passed as a parameter in a register
4 This approach taken by Linux and Solaris
● Parameters placed, or pushed, onto the stack by the program and
popped off the stack by the operating system
● Block and stack methods do not limit the number or length of
parameters being passed

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 Parameter Passing via Table
x points to a block of parameters. x is loaded into a
register

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 Types of System Calls
● System calls can be grouped roughly into six major categories:
● Process control,
● File manipulation,
● Device manipulation,
● Information maintenance,
● Communications,
● Protection.
● The figure in the slide # 28 summarizes the types of system calls
normally provided by an operating system.

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.21 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 System Calls – Process Control
● create process, terminate process
● end, abort
● load, execute
● get process attributes, set process attributes
● wait for time
● wait event, signal event
● allocate and free memory
● Dump memory if error
● Debugger for determining bugs, single step execution
● Locks for managing access to shared data between processes

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.22 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 System Calls – File Management
● Create file
● Delete file
● Open and Close file
● Read, Write, Reposition
● Get and Set file attributes

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.23 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 System Calls – Device Management

● request device, release device

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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.24 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 System Calls -- Information Maintenance

● get time or date,

● set time or date
● get system data,
● set system data
● get and set process, file, or device attributes

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.25 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 System Calls – Communications

● create, delete communication connection

● if message passing model:
● send, receive message
4 To host name or process name
4 From client to server
● If shared-memory model:
● create and gain access to memory regions
● transfer status information
● attach and detach remote devices

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.26 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 System Calls -- Protection

● Control access to resources

● Get and set permissions
● Allow and deny user access

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 Examples of Windows and Unix System Calls

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.28 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Example -- Standard C Library
C program invoking printf() library call, which calls write() system call

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.29 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 System Programs
● System programs provide a convenient environment for program
development and execution.
● Some of them are simply user interfaces to system calls. Others are
considerably more complex.
● They can be divided into:
● File manipulation
● Status information sometimes stored in a File modification
● Programming language support
● Program loading and execution
● Communications
● Background services
● Application programs
● Most users’ view of the operation system is defined by system programs,
not the actual system calls

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.30 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 System Programs
● File management
● Create, delete, copy, rename, print, dump, list, and generally
manipulate files and directories

● Status information
● Some programs ask the system for information - date, time,
amount of available memory, disk space, number of users
● Others programs provide detailed performance, logging, and
debugging information
● Typically, these programs format and print the output to the
terminal or other output devices
● Some systems implement a registry - used to store and retrieve
configuration information

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.31 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 System Programs (Cont.)
● File modification
● Text editors to create and modify files
● Special commands to search contents of files or perform
transformations of the text
● Programming-language support - Compilers, assemblers, debuggers
and interpreters sometimes provided
● Program loading and execution- Absolute loaders, relocatable
loaders, linkage editors, and overlay-loaders, debugging systems for
higher-level and machine language
● Communications - Provide the mechanism for creating virtual
connections among processes, users, and computer systems
● Allow users to send messages to one another’s screens, browse web
pages, send electronic-mail messages, log in remotely, transfer files
from one machine to another

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.32 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 System Programs (Cont.)
● Background Services
● Launch at boot time
4 Some for system startup, then terminate
4 Some from system boot to shutdown
● Provide facilities like disk checking, process scheduling, error
logging, printing
● Run in user context not kernel context
● Known as services, subsystems, daemons

● Application programs
● Don’t pertain to system
● Run by users
● Not typically considered part of OS
● Launched by command line, mouse click, finger poke

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.33 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Operating System Design and Implementation

● Design and Implementation of OS not “solvable”, but some

approaches have proven successful
● Internal structure of different Operating Systems can vary widely
● Start the design by defining goals and specifications
● Affected by choice of hardware, type of system – batch, time sharing,
single user, multiuser, distributed, real-time
● Two groups in terms of defining goals:
● User goals – operating system should be convenient to use, easy
to learn, reliable, safe, and fast
● System goals – operating system should be easy to design,
implement, and maintain, as well as flexible, reliable, error-free,
and efficient
● Specifying and designing an OS is highly creative task of software
engineering

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.34 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Mechanisms and Polices

● Important principle to separate

Policy: What will be done?
Mechanism: How to do it?
● Mechanisms determine how to do something, policies decide
what will be done
● The separation of policy from mechanism is a very important
principle, it allows maximum flexibility if policy decisions are to
be changed later (example – timer)

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.35 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Implementation

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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.36 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Operating System Structure
● Various ways to structure an operating system:
● Monolithic structure
4 Simple structure – MS-DOS
4 More complex – UNIX
4 More complex – Linux
● Layered – An abstraction
● Microkernel - Mach

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.37 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 MS-DOS

● MS-DOS – written to provide the

most functionality in the least
amount of space
● MS-DOS was limited by hardware
funcionality.
● Not divided into modules
● Although MS-DOS has some
structure, its interfaces and
levels of functionality are not
well separated

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.38 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 UNIX

● UNIX – the original UNIX operating system had limited

structuring and was limited by hardware functionality.
● The UNIX OS consists of two separable parts
● Systems programs
● The kernel
4 Consists of everything below the system-call interface
and above the physical hardware
4 Provides the file system, CPU scheduling, memory
management, and other operating-system functions; a
large number of functions for one level

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.39 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Traditional UNIX System Structure

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.40 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Linux System Structure

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 Modularity

● The monolithic approach results in a situation where changes to

one part of the system can have wide-ranging effects to other parts.
● Alternatively, we could design system where the operating system
is divided into separate, smaller components that have specific and
limited functionality. The sum of all these components comprises
the kernel.
● The advantage of this modular approach is that changes in one
component only affect that component, and no others, allowing
system implementers more freedom when changing the inner
workings of the system and in creating modular operating systems.

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.42 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Layered Approach

● A system can be made modular in many ways. One method is the

layered approach, in which the operating system is broken into a
number of layers (levels). The bottom layer (layer 0) is the hardware;
the highest (layer N) is the user interface.

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.43 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Layered Approach (Cont.)
● A typical operating-system layer -- say, layer M -- consists of data
structures and a set of routines that can be invoked by higher-level layers.
Layer M in turn, can invoke operations on lower-level layers.
● Each layer is implemented only with operations provided by lower-level
layers. A layer does not need to know how these operations are
implemented; it needs to know only what these operations do.
● The main advantage of the layered approach is simplicity of construction
and debugging. The layers are selected so that each uses functions
(operations) and services of only lower-level layers.
● This approach simplifies debugging and system verification. The first layer
can be debugged without any concern for the rest of the system. Once the
first layer is debugged, its correct functioning can be assumed while the
second layer is debugged, and so on. If an error is found during the
debugging of a particular layer, the error must be on that layer.

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.44 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Microkernel System Structure
● Moves as much from the kernel into user space
● Mach example of microkernel
● Mac OS X kernel (Darwin) partly based on Mach
● Communication takes place between user modules using message
passing
● Benefits:
● Easier to extend a microkernel
● Easier to port the operating system to new architectures
● More reliable (less code is running in kernel mode)
● More secure
● Detriments:
● Performance overhead of user space to kernel space
communication

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 Microkernel System Structure

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 Modules
● Many modern operating systems implement loadable kernel
modules
● Uses object-oriented approach
● Each core component is separate
● Each talks to the others over known interfaces
● Each is loadable as needed within the kernel
● Overall, similar to layers but with more flexible
● Linux, Solaris, etc

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.47 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Hybrid Systems
● In practice, very few operating systems adopt a single, strictly
defined structure.
● Instead, they combine different structures, resulting in hybrid
systems that address performance, security, and usability issues.
● For example, Linux is monolithic, because having the
operating system in a single address space provides very
efficient performance. However, Linux are also modular, so
that new functionality can be dynamically added to the
kernel.
● We cover the structure of three hybrid systems:
● Apple Mac operating system (laptop)
● iOS (mobile operating systems)
● Android (mobile operating systems)

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.48 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Architecture of Mac OS X and iOS

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.49 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Darwin
● Darwin uses a hybrid structure, and is shown Darwin is a layered
system which consists primarily of the Mach microkernel and the BSD
UNIX kernel.

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

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 Android Architecture

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 Operating-System Debugging
● Debugging is finding and fixing errors, or bugs
● OS generate log files containing error information
● Failure of an application can generate core dump file capturing memory of
the process
● Operating system failure can generate crash dump file containing kernel
memory
● Beyond crashes, performance tuning can optimize system performance
● Sometimes using trace listings of activities, recorded for analysis
● Profiling is periodic sampling of instruction pointer to look for statistical
trends

Kernighan’s Law: Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.
Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not
smart enough to debug it.”

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.53 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Performance Tuning

● Improve performance by
removing bottlenecks
● OS must provide means of
computing and displaying
measures of system behavior
● For example, “top” program or
Windows Task Manager

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.54 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 DTrace

● DTrace tool in Solaris,

FreeBSD, Mac OS X allows
live instrumentation on
production systems
● Probes fire when code is
executed within a provider,
capturing state data and
sending it to consumers of
those probes

● Example of following
XEventsQueued system call
move from libc library to
kernel and back

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.55 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Dtrace (Cont.)

● DTrace code to record amount

of time each process with
UserID 101 is in running mode
(on CPU) in nanoseconds

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 Operating System Generation

● Operating systems are designed to run on any of a class of machines;

the system must be configured for each specific computer site
● SYSGEN program obtains information concerning the specific
configuration of the hardware system
● Used to build system-specific compiled kernel or system-tuned
● Can general more efficient code than one general kernel

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.57 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 System Boot
● When power initialized on system, execution starts at a fixed memory
location
● Firmware ROM used to hold initial boot code
● Operating system must be made available to hardware so hardware can
start it
● Small piece of code – bootstrap loader, stored in ROM or EEPROM
locates the kernel, loads it into memory, and starts it
● Sometimes two-step process where boot block at fixed location
loaded by ROM code, which loads bootstrap loader from disk
● Common bootstrap loader, GRUB, allows selection of kernel from
multiple disks, versions, kernel options
● Kernel loads and system is then running

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.58 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 End of Chapter 2

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013