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 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.3 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Operating System Services (Cont.)
 One set of operating-system services provides functions that are helpful to the
user (Cont.):
 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.
 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 2.4 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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 - 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 2.5 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 A View of Operating System Services

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 User Operating System Interface - CLI

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 – 9th Edition 2.7 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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 in 1970s
 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 2.9 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 2.10 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 The Mac OS X GUI

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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)

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.12 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 How System Calls Work
 The Applications run in an area of memory known as user space. A system
call connects to the operating system's kernel, which executes in kernel
space. When an application creates a system call, it must first obtain
permission from the kernel. It achieves this using an interrupt request, which
pauses the current process and transfers control to the kernel.

 If the request is permitted, the kernel performs the requested action, like
creating or deleting a file. As input, the application receives the kernel's
output. The application resumes the procedure after the input is received.
When the operation is finished, the kernel returns the results to the
application and then moves data from kernel space to user space in memory.

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.13 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 How System Calls Work
 A simple system call may take few nanoseconds to
provide the result, like retrieving the system date
and time. A more complicated system call, such as
connecting to a network device, may take a few
seconds. Most operating systems launch a distinct
kernel thread for each system call to avoid
bottlenecks. Modern operating systems are multi-
threaded, which means they can handle various
system calls at the same time.

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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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 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
 create process, terminate process
 end, abort
 load, execute (Process loads another program and executes it)
 get process attributes, set process attributes ()
 wait for time (process waiting for time)
 wait event, signal event (wait for a certain amount of time to pass,
processes should then signal when that event has occurred )
 allocate and free memory
 Dump memory if error
 Locks for managing access to shared data between processes

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.20 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Types of System Calls

 File management
 create file, delete file
 open, close file
 read, write, reposition
 get and set file attributes
 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 2.21 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 using 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 2.22 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 2.23 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Examples of Windows and Unix System Calls

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 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 2.25 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

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 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

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 Traditional UNIX System Structure
Beyond simple but not fully layered

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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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.29 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, Increased level of inter module
communication degrades system performance.

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.30 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 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 2.32 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Solaris Modular Approach

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 System Boot
 The procedure of starting a computer by loading the kernel is known
as booting the system.
 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 2.34 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 End of Chapter 2

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