Chapter 2: Operating-System

Structures

Operating System Concepts Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 Acknowledgement

Acknowledgement: The contents of these slides are copyright and

origin Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne, 2018.

Operating System Concepts 2 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 Chapter 2:Outline

Operating System Services

User and Operating System Interface

System Calls
System Services
Linkers and Loaders

Why Applications are Operating System Specific

Operating-System Design and Implementation
Operating System Structure
Building and Booting an Operating System
Operating System Debugging

Operating System Concepts 3 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 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, modular, and

hybrid strategies for designing operating systems
Illustrate the process for booting an operating system
Apply tools for monitoring operating system performance

Design and implement kernel modules for interacting with a Linux

kernel

Operating System Concepts 4 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 Operating System Services

Operating systems provide an environment for execution of programs

and services to programs and users
A 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 Interface (CLI), Graphical User Interface
(GUI), Touch-screen

Program execution - The system must be able to load a program into

memory, to run that program, and 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 5 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 Operating System Services (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 6 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 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.

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

Operating System Concepts 7 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 A View of Operating System Services

Operating System Concepts 8 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 User Operating System Interface - CLI

CLI or command interpreter allows direct command entry

Sometimes implemented in kernel, sometimes by system programs

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 9 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 Bourne Shell Command Interpreter

Operating System Concepts 10 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 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 providing information, options, execute function, open directory

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 (e.g., CDE, KDE,
GNOME)
Operating System Concepts 11 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 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 12 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 The Mac OS X GUI

Operating System Concepts 13 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 System Calls

Programming interface to the services provided by the OS

Typically written in a high-level language (e.g., 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)
(Note that the system-call names used throughout this text are generic)

Operating System Concepts 14 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 Example of System Calls

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

Operating System Concepts 15 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 Example of Standard API

Operating System Concepts 16 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 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 are hidden from programmer by API

 Managed by run-time support library (set of functions built into libraries
included with compiler)

Operating System Concepts 17 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 API – System Call – OS Relationship

Index of open()

Index table

Operating System Concepts 18 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 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 (see Memory structure) 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 19 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 Parameter Passing via Table

Operating System Concepts 20 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 Types of System Calls

Process control
create process, terminate process

end, abort process execution

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 21 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 Types of System Calls (cont.)

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 22 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 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 using message passing model to host name or

process name

Shared-memory model create and gain access to memory regions

transfer status information

attach and detach remote devices

Operating System Concepts 23 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 Types of System Calls (Cont.)

Protection
Control access to resources

Get and set permissions

Allow and deny user access

Operating System Concepts 24 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 Examples of Windows and Unix System Calls

Operating System Concepts 25 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 Standard C Library Example

C program invoking printf() library call, which calls write()

system call

Operating System Concepts 26 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 Example: Arduino

Single-tasking
No operating system

Programs (sketch) loaded

via USB into flash memory
Single memory space
Boot loader loads program

Program exit ⇢ shell

reloaded
At system startup running a program

Operating System Concepts 27 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 Example: FreeBSD

Unix variant
Multitasking

User login -> invoke user’s choice of shell

Shell executes fork() system call to
create process
Executes exec() to load program into
process

Shell waits for process to terminate or

continues with user commands

Process exits with:

code = 0 – no error
code > 0 – error code

Operating System Concepts 28 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 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

Operating System Concepts 29 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 System Services (Cont.)

Some of system services 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 information (e.g., 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 30 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 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 are 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 31 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 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 32 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Linkers and Loaders

Source code compiled into object files designed to be loaded into any
physical memory location – relocatable object file
Linker combines these (also, brings in libraries) into single binary
executable file

Program resides on secondary storage as binary executable and

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

Object, executable files have standard formats, so

operating system knows how to load and start them
Operating System Concepts 33 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 The Role of the Linker and Loader

Operating System Concepts 34 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 Why Applications are Operating System Specific

Apps compiled on one system usually not executable on other

operating systems
Each operating system provides its own unique system calls, own file
formats, etc.

Apps can be multi-operating system

Written in interpreted language like Python, Ruby, and interpreter
available on multiple operating systems
App written in language that includes a VM containing the running app
Use standard language (like C), compile separately on each operating
system to run on each
Application Binary Interface (ABI) is an architecture equivalent of
API, defines how different components of binary code can interface
for a given operating system on a given architecture, CPU, etc.

Operating System Concepts 35 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 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

Operating System Concepts 36 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 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 (e.g., timer)
Specifying and designing an OS is highly creative task of software
engineering

Operating System Concepts 37 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 OS Implementation

Much variation
Early, OSes in assembly language

Then, system programming languages like Algol, PL/1, and 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 38 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 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

Operating System Concepts 39 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 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

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 40 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 Traditional UNIX System Structure

Beyond simple but not fully layered

Operating System Concepts 41 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 Linux System Structure

Monolithic plus modular design

Operating System Concepts 42 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 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 43 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 Microkernels

Moves as much from the kernel into user space

Mach is an example of microkernel
Mac OS X kernel (i.e., Darwin) partly based on Mach

Communication takes place between user modules using message

passing model
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

Operating System Concepts 44 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 Microkernel System Structure

Operating System Concepts 45 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 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.

Operating System Concepts 46 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 Hybrid Systems

Most modern operating systems are actually not one pure model
Hybrid combines multiple approaches to address performance, security,
usability needs

Linux and Solaris kernels in kernel address space, so monolithic, plus

modular for dynamic loading of functionality

Windows mostly monolithic, plus microkernel for different subsystem

personalities

Apple Mac OS X hybrid, layered, Aqua UI plus Cocoa programming

environment
Below is kernel consisting of Mach microkernel and BSD Unix parts, plus
I/O kit and dynamically loadable modules (called kernel extensions)

Operating System Concepts 47 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 macOS and iOS Structure

Operating System Concepts 48 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 Darwin

Operating System Concepts 49 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 iOS

Apple mobile OS for iPhone, iPad

Structured on Mac OS X, added functionality

Does not run OS X applications natively

 Also runs on different CPU architecture (ARM
vs. Intel)

Cocoa Touch Objective-C API for

developing apps

Media services layer for graphics, audio,

video

Core services provides cloud computing,

databases

Core operating system, based on Mac OS

X kernel
Operating System Concepts 50 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 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
 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
Operating System Concepts 51 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Android Architecture

Operating System Concepts 52 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 Building and Booting an Operating System

Operating systems generally designed to run on a class of systems

with variety of peripherals
Commonly, operating system already installed on purchased
computer
But can build and install some other operating systems

If generating an operating system from scratch

 Write the operating system source code

 Configure the operating system for the system on which it will run

 Compile the operating system

 Install the operating system

 Boot the computer and its new operating system

Operating System Concepts 53 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 Building and Booting Linux

Download Linux source code (http://www.kernel.org)

Configure kernel via “make menuconfig”
Compile the kernel using “make”
Produces vmlinuz, the kernel image

Compile kernel modules via “make modules”

Install kernel modules into vmlinuz via “make modules_install”

Install new kernel on the system via “make install”

Operating System Concepts 54 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 System Boot

When power on system, execution starts at a fixed memory location

Operating system must be made available to hardware so hardware
can start it
 Small piece of code – bootstrap loader, BIOS, 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

 Modern systems replace BIOS with Unified Extensible Firmware Interface

(UEFI)

Common bootstrap loader, GRUB, allows selection of kernel from

multiple disks, versions, kernel options
Kernel loads and system is then running
Boot loaders frequently allow various boot states
Operating System Concepts 55 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Operating-System Debugging

Debugging is finding and fixing errors, or bugs

Also performance tuning

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 56 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Performance Tuning

Improve performance by removing bottlenecks

OS must provide means of computing and displaying measures of
system behavior
For example, “top” Linux program or Windows Task Manager

Operating System Concepts 57 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 Tracing

Collects data for a specific event, such as steps involved in a system

call invocation
Tools include
strace – trace system calls invoked by a process

gdb – source-level debugger

perf – collection of Linux performance tools

tcpdump – collects network packets

Operating System Concepts 58 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 BCC

Debugging interactions between user-level and kernel code nearly

impossible without toolset that understands both and instrument their
actions
BPF Compiler Collection (BCC) is a rich toolkit providing tracing
features for Linux
See also the original DTrace

For example, disksnoop.py traces disk I/O activity

Many other tools (next slide)

Operating System Concepts 59 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 Linux BCC/BPF Tracing Tools

Operating System Concepts 60 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 Summary

An operating system provides an environment for the execution of

programs by providing services to users and programs.
The three primary approaches for interacting with an operating
system are (1) command interpreters, (2) graphical user interfaces,
and (3) touch-screen interfaces.

System calls provide an interface to the services made available by

an operating system. Programmers use a system call’s application
programming interface (API) for accessing system-call services.
System calls can be divided into six major categories: (1) process
control, (2) file management, (3) device management, (4) information
maintenance, (5) communications, and (6) protection.
The standard C library provides the system-call interface for UNIX
and Linux systems.

Operating System Concepts 61 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 Summary (Cont.)

Operating systems also include a collection of system programs

that provide utilities to users.
A linker combines several relocatable object modules into a single
binary executable file. A loader loads the executable file into
memory, where it becomes eligible to run on an available CPU.

There are several reasons why applications are operating-system

specific. These include different binary formats for program
executables, different instruction sets for different CPUs, and system
calls that vary from one operating system to another.
An operating system is designed with specific goals in mind. These
goals ultimately determine the operating system’s policies. An
operating system implements these policies through specific
mechanisms.

Operating System Concepts 62 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 Summary (Cont.)

A monolithic operating system has no structure; all functionality is

provided in a single, static binary file that runs in a single address
space. Although such systems are difficult to modify, their primary
benefit is efficiency.
A layered operating system is divided into a number of discrete
layers, where the bottom layer is the hardware interface and the
highest layer is the user interface.
Although layered software systems have had some success, this
approach is generally not ideal for designing operating systems due to
performance problems.

The microkernel approach for designing operating systems uses a

minimal kernel; most services run as user-level applications.
Communication takes place via message passing.

Operating System Concepts 63 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 Summary (Cont.)

A modular approach for designing operating systems provides

operating-system services through modules that can be loaded and
removed during run time. Many contemporary operating systems are
constructed as hybrid systems using a combination of a monolithic
kernel and modules.
A boot loader loads an operating system into memory, performs
initialization, and begins system execution.

The performance of an operating system can be monitored using

either counters or tracing. Counters are a collection of system-wide or
per-process statistics, while tracing follows the execution of a
program through the operating system.

Operating System Concepts 64 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018

 End of Chapter 2

Operating System Concepts Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018