Lecture 2

Operating System Services

Col. Genetu Yohannes (Lecturer)

Department of CIT, College of Engineering
Defence University
[email protected]

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Objectives
 Identify services provided by an operating system
 Illustrate how system calls are used to provide operating system services
 Compare and contrast monolithic, layered, microkernel, and modular
strategies for designing operating systems

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Operating System Services
 Operating systems provide an environment for execution of programs and
services to programs and users
 One set of operating-system services provides functions that are helpful to
the user:
• User interface - Almost all operating systems have a user interface
(UI).
 Varies between Command-Line (CLI), Graphics User Interface
(GUI), touch-screen, Batch
• 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
• File-system manipulation - The file system is of particular interest.
Programs need to read and write files and directories, create and delete
them, search them, list file Information, permission management.

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Operating System Services
 One set of operating-system services provides functions that are helpful to
the user (Cont.):
• 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

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Operating System Services
 Another set of OS functions exists for ensuring the efficient operation of the
system itself via resource sharing
• Resource allocation - When multiple users or multiple jobs running
concurrently, resources must be allocated to each of them
 Many types of resources - CPU cycles, main memory, file storage,
I/O devices.
• Logging - 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

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A View of Operating System
Services

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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 use
 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), and Java API for the Java virtual machine (JVM)

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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 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 know nothing about how the system call is implemented
• Just needs to obey API and understand what OS will do as a result call
• Most details of OS interface hidden from programmer by API
 Managed by run-time support library (set of functions built into
libraries included with compiler)

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API – System Call – OS Relationship

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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
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
 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

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 Types of System Calls
 Process control  File management
• create process, terminate • create file, delete file
process • open, close file
• end, abort • read, write, reposition
• wait for time  Device management
• allocate and free memory • request device, release device
• read, write, reposition
 Information maintenance
• get device attributes, set device
• get time or date, set time or date attributes
• get and set process, file, or device • logically attach or detach devices
attributes
 Communications  Protection
• create, delete communication • Control access to resources
connection
• Get and set permissions
• send, receive messages
• Allow and deny user access

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Examples of Windows and Unix System Calls

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Standard C Library Example
 C program invoking printf() library call, which calls write() system call

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System Services
 System programs provide a convenient environment for program
development and execution. They can be divided into:
• File manipulation
• Status information sometimes stored in a file
• 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

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System Services (Cont.)
 Provide a convenient environment for program development and execution
• Some of them are simply user interfaces to system calls; others are
considerably more complex

 File management - Create, delete, copy, rename, print, dump, list, and
generally manipulate files and directories

 Status information
• Some ask the system for info - date, time, amount of available memory,
disk space, number of users
• Others 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

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System Services (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

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System Services (Cont.)
 Background Services
• Launch at boot time
 Some for system startup, then terminate
 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

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Linkers and Loaders
 Source code compiled into object files designed to be loaded into any
physical memory location – relocatable object file
 Linker combines these into single binary executable file
• Also brings in libraries
 Program resides on secondary storage as binary executable
 Must be brought into memory by loader to be executed
• Relocation assigns final addresses to program parts and adjusts code
and data in program to match those addresses
 Modern general purpose systems don’t link libraries into executables
• Rather, dynamically linked libraries (in Windows, DLLs) are loaded
as needed, shared by all that use the same version of that same library
(loaded once)
 Object, executable files have standard formats, so operating system knows
how to load and start them

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The Role of the Linker and Loader

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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
 User goals and System 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

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Operating System Design and Implementation (Cont.)
 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)
 Specifying and designing an OS is highly creative task of software
engineering

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Operating System Structure
 General-purpose OS is very large program
 Various ways to structure ones
• Simple structure – MS-DOS
• More complex -- UNIX
• Layered – an abstraction
• Microkernel -Mach

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Monolithic Structure – Original
UNIX
 UNIX – limited by hardware functionality, the original UNIX operating system
had limited structuring. The UNIX OS consists of two separable parts
• Systems programs
• The kernel
 Consists of everything below the system-call interface and above the
physical hardware
 Provides the file system, CPU scheduling, memory management,
and other operating-system functions; a large number of functions
for one level

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Linux System Structure
Monolithic plus modular design

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Layered Approach
 The operating system is divided into a number of layers (levels), each built
on top of lower layers. The bottom layer (layer 0), is the hardware; the
highest (layer N) is the user interface.

 With modularity, layers are selected

such that each uses functions
(operations) and services of only lower-
level layers

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Microkernels
 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
(LKMs)
• 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

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