Chapter 1: Introduction and System

Structures

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Operating-System Structures
 Operating System Services
 User Operating System Interface
 System Calls
 Types of System Calls

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 2.2 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 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),
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.

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 2.3 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Operating System Services (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

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 2.4 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Operating System Services (Cont.)
 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 - Some (such as CPU cycles, main memory,
and file storage) may have special allocation code, others (such as I/O
devices) may have general request and release code
 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
 If a system is to be protected and secure, precautions must be
instituted throughout it. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 2.5 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 A View of Operating System Services

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 2.6 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 User Operating System Interface - CLI

 Command Line Interface (CLI) or command interpreter allows direct

command entry
 Sometimes implemented in kernel, sometimes by systems
program
 Sometimes multiple flavors implemented – shells
 Primarily fetches a command from user and executes it
 Sometimes commands built-in, sometimes just names of
programs
» If the latter, adding new features doesn’t require shell
modification

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 2.7 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 User Operating System Interface - 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 as “Aqua” GUI interface with UNIX kernel underneath
and shells available
 Solaris is CLI with optional GUI interfaces (Java Desktop, KDE)

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 2.8 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Bourne Shell Command Interpreter

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 2.9 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 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 Program
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)

Why use APIs rather than system calls?


(Note that the system-call names used throughout this text are
generic)

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 2.10 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Example of System Calls
 System call sequence to copy the contents of one file to another file

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 2.11 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Example of Standard API
 Consider the ReadFile() function in the
 Win32 API—a function for reading from a file









 A description of the parameters passed to ReadFile()

 HANDLE file—the file to be read
 LPVOID buffer—a buffer where the data will be read into and written from
 DWORD bytesToRead—the number of bytes to be read into the buffer
 LPDWORD bytesRead—the number of bytes read during the last read
 LPOVERLAPPED ovl—indicates if overlapped I/O is being used

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 2.12 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 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 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)

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 2.13 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 API – System Call – OS Relationship

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 2.14 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Standard C Library Example
 C program invoking printf() library call, which calls write() system call

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 2.15 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 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

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 2.16 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Parameter Passing via Table

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 2.17 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Types of System Calls
 Process control
 end, abort
 load, execute
 create process, terminate process
 get process attributes, set process attributes
 wait for time
 wait event, signal event
 allocate and free memory
 File management
 create file, delete file
 open, close file
 read, write, reposition
 get and set file attributes

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 2.18 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 Types of System Calls (Cont.)
 Device management
 request device, release device
 read, write, reposition
 get device attributes, set device attributes
 logically attach or detach devices
 Information maintenance
 get time or date, set time or date
 get system data, set system data
 get and set process, file, or device attributes
 Communications
 create, delete communication connection
 send, receive messages
 transfer status information
 attach and detach remote devices

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 2.19 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 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 operating system is
defined by system programs, not the actual
system calls
Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 2.20 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 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 operating system is defined by
system programs, not the actual system calls

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 2.21 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 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

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 2.22 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 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

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 2.23 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 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

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 2.24 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 The Role of the Linker and Loader

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 2.25 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009
 THANK YOU

Operating System Concepts – 8th Edition 2.26 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2009