Chapter 2:

Operating-System Structures

Saminda Premaratne
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
 Virtual Machines
 Operating System Debugging
 Operating System Generation
 System Boot
Objectives
 To describe the services of 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 Services
 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. Obviously, programs need to read and write files and

directories, create and delete them, search them, list file
Information, permission management.
A View of Operating System
Services
 Operating System Services
(Cont)

 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

 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
 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
User Operating System
Interface - CLI
Command Line Interface (CLI) or command
interpreter allows direct command entry
 Sometimes implemented in kernel,

sometimes by systems program

 Primarily fetches a command from user and

executes it
 Sometimes commands built-in,

sometimes just names of programs

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

 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)
Shell Command Interpreter
The Mac OS X GUI
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?
Example of System Calls
 System call sequence to copy the
contents of one file to another file
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
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)

API – System Call – OS
Relationship
Standard C Library Example
 C program invoking printf() library call,
which calls write() system call
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
Parameter Passing via Table
Types of System Calls
 Process control
 File management
 Device management
 Information maintenance
 Communications
 Protection
Examples of Windows and Unix
System Calls
MS-DOS execution

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

FreeBSD Running Multiple
Programs
 System Programs
 System programs provide a convenient environment for
program development and execution. The can be divided
into:
 File manipulation

 Status information

 File modification

 Programming language support

 Program loading and execution

 Communications

 Application programs

 Most users’ view of the operation system is defined by

system programs, not the actual system calls
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
System Programs (cont’d)
 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
 Mode, Space and
Context
Privileged
mode user kernel
context
Application System calls
process
(user code) Exceptions
system X Interrupts
kernel
space not allowed System tasks

UNIX uses only two privilege levels

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 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
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
MS-DOS Layer Structure
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
Traditional UNIX System
Structure
 File and Directory
Organization
/
(hard) links

bin etc dev usr home

sh local etc

/usr/local/bin/bash
bin

bash
 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
Layered Operating System
Microkernel System Structure
 Moves as much from the kernel into “user” space
 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
Mac OS X Structure
Modules
 Most modern operating systems implement 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

Solaris Modular Approach
 Virtual Machines
 A virtual machine takes the layered approach
to its logical conclusion. It treats hardware
and the operating system kernel as though
they were all hardware
 A virtual machine provides an interface
identical to the underlying bare hardware
 The operating system host creates the illusion
that a process has its own processor and
(virtual memory)
 Each guest provided with a (virtual) copy of
underlying computer
Virtual Machines History and
Benefits
 First appeared commercially in IBM mainframes in 1972
 Fundamentally, multiple execution environments (different
operating systems) can share the same hardware
 Protect from each other
 Some sharing of file can be permitted, controlled
 Commutate with each other, other physical systems via
networking
 Useful for development, testing
 Consolidation of many low-resource use systems onto fewer
busier systems
 “Open Virtual Machine Format”, standard format of virtual
machines, allows a VM to run within many different virtual
machine (host) platforms
Virtual Machines (Cont)

Non-virtual Machine Virtual Machine

Solaris 10 with Two
Containers
VMware Architecture
The Java Virtual Machine
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
 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.”
 DTrace tool in Solaris, FreeBSD, Mac OS X allows live instrumentation
on production systems
 Probes fire when code is executed, capturing state data and
sending it to consumers of those probes
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
 Booting – starting a computer by loading the kernel
 Bootstrap program – code stored in ROM that is able
to locate the kernel, load it into memory, and start its
execution
End of Chapter 2