Chapter 2: Operating-System

Structures

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Chapter 2: Operating-System Structures

 Operating System Services

 User Operating System Interface
 System Calls
 Types of System Calls
 System Programs
 Operating System Design and Implementation
 Operating System Structure
 Operating System Debugging
 Operating System Generation
 System Boot

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.2 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 2.3 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 A View of Operating System Services
Operating systems provide an environment for execution of programs and
services to programs and users

Various Operating-System
Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition Services 2.4 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Operating System Services
 One set of operating-system services provides functions
that are helpful to the user:

1. User interface - Almost all operating systems have a

user interface (UI).
 Command-Line (CLI), Graphics User Interface (GUI), Batch

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.5 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Operating System Services
2. 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)

3. I/O operations - A running program may require

I/O, which may involve a file or an I/O device

4. 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 – 9th Edition 2.6 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Operating System Services (Cont.)
5. Communications – Processes may exchange
information, on the same computer or between
computers over a network
 may be via shared memory or through message passing

6. 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 2.7 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Operating System Services (Cont.)

7. 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

8. Accounting - To keep track of which users use how

much and what kinds of computer resources

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.8 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Operating System Services (Cont.)
9. 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 – 9th Edition 2.9 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 User Operating System Interface - CLI

bash shell command interpreter in macOS.

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 MS DOS Command Interpreter

Windows command prompt

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 User Operating System Interface - GUI

The Mac OS X GUI The Windows GUI

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 User Operating System Interface - GUI

The Ubuntu GUI The Fedora GUI

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 Touchscreen Interfaces

The Windows touchscreen

The iPad touchscreen

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 Touchscreen Interfaces

Android touchscreen iPhone touchscreen

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.15 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Choice of Interface

• The choice of whether to use a command-line or

GUI interface is mostly one of personal preference.
System administrators who manage computers
and power users who have deep knowledge of a
system frequently use the command-line interface.

• The user interface can vary from system to system

and even from user to user within a system

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.16 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 use

 Three most common APIs are

 Win32 API for Windows
 POSIX API for POSIX-based systems (all versions of UNIX, Linux,
and Mac OS X)
 Java API for the Java virtual machine (JVM)

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.17 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 System Calls
 Why use APIs rather than system calls?

 Answer: Several Reasons

 One benefit concerns program portability

 The other can be Programming productivity
 Third can be Hidden complexity etc

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.18 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Example of System Calls
 System call sequence to copy the contents of one file to another file

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 API – System Call – OS Relationship

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 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
 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 2.21 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Some System Calls For Process
Management

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 Types of System Calls
 File management
 create file, delete file
 open, close file
 read, write, reposition
 get and set file attributes

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.23 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Types of 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
 Types of System Calls (Cont.)
 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 if message passing model to host name or
process name
 From client to server
 Shared-memory model create and gain access to memory regions
 transfer status information
 attach and detach remote devices

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.25 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Types of System Calls (Cont.)
 Protection
 Control access to resources
 Get and set permissions
 Allow and deny user access

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.26 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Standard C Library Example
 C program invoking printf() library call, which calls write() system call

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 Example: MS-DOS
 Single-tasking
 Shell invoked when system
booted
 Simple method to run
program
 No process created
 Single memory space
 Loads program into memory,
overwriting all but the kernel
 Program exit -> shell
reloaded

(a) At system startup (b) running a program

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.28 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 System Programs
 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 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 2.29 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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

 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.30 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 2.31 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 System Programs (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 – 9th Edition 2.32 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 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.33 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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
 Specifying and designing OS is highly creative task of
software engineering

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.34 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Implementation
 Much variation
 Early OSes in assembly language
 Then 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
 More 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 2.35 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Operating System Structure
 General-purpose OS is very large program
 Various ways to structure one as follows

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.36 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Simple Structure
 MS-DOS – written to provide
the most functionality in the
least space

 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 2.37 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.38 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Traditional UNIX System Structure
Beyond simple but not fully layered

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 OS: Monolithic Structure

The monolithic operating system is a very basic operating

system in which file management, memory
management, device management, and process
management are directly controlled within the kernel.
The kernel can access all the resources present in the
system.

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.40 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 OS: Layered Approach
 The monolithic approach is often known as a tightly coupled system because
changes to one part of the system can have wide-ranging effects on other parts.

 Alternatively, we could design a loosely coupled system. Such a system is

divided into separate, smaller components that have specific and limited
functionality. All these components together comprise the kernel

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.41 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.42 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 OS: Modules
 The main elements of a modular operating system are a
kernel and a set of dynamically loadable applications
with their own discrete memory spaces. The kernel is
protected from service and application failures.


Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.43 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 OS: Modules
 Most 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 2.44 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 macOS and iOS
 Apple’s macOS operating system is designed to run
primarily on desktop and laptop computer systems,
whereas iOS is a mobile operating system designed
for the iPhone smartphone and iPad tablet computer.

 Architecturally, macOS and iOS have much in

common, and so we present them together,
highlighting what they share as well as how they
differ from each other. The general architecture of
these two systems is shown in Figure 2.16. Highlights

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.45 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 macOS and iOS

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 Android Architecture

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 Operating-System Debugging
 Debugging is finding and fixing errors, or bugs
 OSes 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 2.48 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 2.49 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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 2.50 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 2.51 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Homework
 Write answers to the even numbered exercise
question from 2.1 to 2.22

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.52 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 End of Chapter 2

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