SWENG3106

Operating Systems

Software Engineering Department

AASTU
Chapter One
Introduction

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 Objectives
At the end of this chapter you should be able to:
 Define operating system
 Explain services provided by operating system
 Describe evolution of operating system
 Describe various types of operating systems and their services
 Understand the structure of operating system

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 Outline
Definition of an Operating System
History of Operating Systems
Operating System Services
Types of Operating Systems
Operating System Structure

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 What is an Operating System?
 A program that acts as an intermediary between a user of
a computer and the computer hardware.
 It is an extended machine
 Hides the messy details which must be performed
 Presents user with a virtual machine, easier to use

 It is a resource manager
 Each program gets time with the resource
 Each program gets space on the resource

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 Computer System Components
1. Hardware – provides basic computing resources
(CPU, memory, I/O devices).
2. Operating system – controls and coordinates the
use of the hardware among the various application
programs for the various users.
3. Applications programs – define the ways in which
the system resources are used to solve the computing
problems of the users (database systems, video
games, business programs).
4. Users (people, machines, other computers).

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Computer System Components(cont’d)

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 Operating System Objectives
 Convenience – Top Down View – Virtual Machine
 Extending the real hardware and acting as a Virtual Machine
 Hiding the truth about the hardware from the user
 Providing the user a convenient interface which is easier to program
 Efficiency – Bottom Up View – Resource Manager
 Providing an orderly and controlled allocation of resources
 Improving resource utilization
 Ability to Evolve
 Permit effective development, testing, and introduction of new system
functions without interfering with existing services
 Protection
 allow only authorised access to data, computation, services, etc.

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 Operating System Services
A) Process Management
 A process is a program in execution. A process needs certain
resources, including CPU time, memory, files, and I/O devices,
to accomplish its task.
 Process is active entity, while program is passive entity
 The operating system is responsible for the following activities
in connection with process management:
 Process creation and deletion.
 process suspension and resumption.
 Provision of mechanisms for:
 process synchronization
 process communication

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Operating System Services(cont’d)
B) Memory Management
 The operating system is responsible for the following activities
in connections with memory management:
 Keep track of which parts of memory are currently being used and
by whom.
 Decide which processes to load when memory space becomes
available.
 Allocate and deallocate memory space as needed.

C) File Management

 A file is a collection of related information defined by its
creator.
 Responsibility of operating system includes:
 File creation and deletion.
 Directory creation and deletion.
 Mapping files onto secondary storage.
 File backup on stable (nonvolatile) storage media. 10
Operating System Services(cont’d)
 D) Secondary-Storage Management
 The operating system is responsible for the following activities in
connection with disk management:
 Free space management
 Storage allocation
 Disk scheduling

 E) I/O Management
 since user programs cannot execute I/O operations directly, the
operating system must provide some means to perform I/O.
 F) Protection System
 Protection refers to a mechanism for controlling access by programs,
processes, or users to both system and user resources.
 The protection mechanism must:
 distinguish between authorized and unauthorized usage.
 specify the controls to be imposed.
 provide a means of enforcement.
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A View of Operating System Services

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 Modes of Operation
 Dual-mode operation allows OS to protect itself and other system components
 User mode: when the computer system is executing on behalf of a user application.
 Kernel/privileged/supervisor/system mode: OS gains control of the computer.
 At system boot time, the hardware starts in kernel mode. The operating system is
then loaded and starts user applications in user mode.

 Dual mode provides protection. How?

 The hardware allows privileged instructions- instructions that causes harm
(E.g. instruction to switch to kernel mode, I/O control, timer management) to
be executed only in kernel mode.

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 System Calls
 System calls provide an interface to the services made available by an
operating system
 System calls mostly accessed by programs via a high-level Application
Programming Interface (API) rather than direct system call use
 E.g. how system calls are used: a program to read data from one file and
copy them to another file

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 System Calls(cont’d)
 Three most common APIs available to application programmers are:
 Windows API for Windows,
 POSIX API(for UNIX, Linux, and Mac OS X), and
 Java API for the Java virtual machine
 API – System Call – OS Relationship

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 Standard C Library Example
 C program invoking printf() statement, the C library intercepts this call and
invokes write() system call. The C library takes the value returned by write() and
passes it back to the user program.

Read about system call parameter passing

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Examples of Windows and Unix
System Calls

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Operating System Structure
General-purpose OS is very large program, therefore
need to be structured well.
 Partition the task into small components, or modules.

Various ways:
 Simple structure (monolithic)
 Layered
 Microkernel
 Module
 Hybrid

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Monolithic/Simple Structure -- MS-DOS

 Do not have well-defined structures

 has no distinction between user and kernel modes,
allowing all programs direct access to the underlying
hardware

 Advantage
 Having the operating system in a single address space
provides very efficient performance

 Disadvantage
 Difficult to maintain
 Base hardware is accessible by application programs:
vulnerable to malicious programs.

 MS-DOS is one example

 written to provide the most functionality in the least
space
 Although MS-DOS has some structure, its interfaces
and levels of functionality are not well separated

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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.
 Each layer provides a different type of
functionality.
 With modularity, layers are selected such
that each uses functions (operations) and
services of only lower-level layers
 Advantage
 Easy for debugging

 Disadvantage
 Difficult to define the various layers
 Layer can use only lower-level layers, careful planning is
necessary.
 Less efficient than other types
 Each layer adds overhead to the system call

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Microkernel System Structure
 Structures the operating system by removing all nonessential
components from the kernel and implementing them in user space.
 Communication takes place between user modules using message
passing
 E.g. Mac OS X kernel (Darwin) partly based on Mach
 Benefits:
 Easier to extend a microkernel
 new services are added to user space, do not require modification of the
kernel
 Easier to port the operating system to new architectures
 Requires fewer modification
 More reliable and secure (less code is running in kernel mode)
 Detriments:
 Performance overhead of user space to kernel space communication

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Microkernel System Structure

Application File Device user

Program System Driver mode

messages messages

Interprocess memory CPU kernel

Communication managment scheduling mode

microkernel

hardware

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 Modules
 Many modern operating systems implement loadable kernel
modules: the kernel has a set of core components and links in
additional services via modules
 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- because any module
can call any other module
 Linux, Solaris, etc.
 Advantage and Disadvantage?

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Solaris Modular Approach

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Hybrid Systems
 Most modern operating systems are actually not one pure model
 Hybrid combines multiple approaches to address performance, security,
and usability issues
 Linux and Solaris are monolithic(for performance reasons) in kernel
address space, plus modular for dynamic loading of functionality
 Windows mostly monolithic, has behavior of microkernel, and also
provide support for dynamically loadable kernel modules
 Apple Mac OS X uses hybrid structure, a layered system :
 Top layer: Aqua- GUI; Cocoa programming environment
 Below is kernel consisting of:
 Mach microkernel: for memory management, RPCs and IPC
 BSD Unix component: for networking and file systems
 I/O kit: for development of device drivers
 dynamically loadable modules (called kernel extensions)

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 Mac OS X Structure
graphical user interface
Aqua

application environments and services

Java Cocoa Quicktime BSD

kernel environment
BSD

Mach

I/O kit kernel extensions

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 Reading Assignments

 A. History of operating systems

 B. Types of operating systems.
 Mainframe operating systems
 Distributed operating systems
 Personal computer operating systems
 Real-time operating systems
 Embedded operating systems

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