Operating Systems

Unit V
Disk Management, and
Case Study – Unix File System

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Structure of Magnetic Disk

• Magnetic disk is a storage device that is used to write, rewrite and access data.
• The entire disk is divided into platters.
• Each platter consists of concentric circles called as tracks.
• These tracks are further divided into sectors which are the smallest divisions in the disk.

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Structure of Magnetic Disk

• A cylinder is formed by combining the tracks at a given radius of a disk pack.

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Structure of Magnetic Disk

• There exists a mechanical arm called as Read /

Write head.

• It is used to read from and write to the disk.

• Head has to reach at a particular track and then

wait for the rotation of the platter.

• The rotation causes the required sector of the

track to come under the head.

• Each platter has 2 surfaces- top and bottom and

both the surfaces are used to store the data.

• Each surface has its own read / write head.

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Disk Performance Parameters

• The time taken by the disk to complete an I/O request is called as disk service time or disk access
time.
• Components that contribute to the service time are-

• Seek time
• Rotational latency
• Data transfer rate
• Controller overhead
• Queuing delay

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Disk Performance Parameters

• Seek Time:
• The time taken by the read / write head to reach the desired track is called as seek time.
• It is the component which contributes the largest percentage of the disk service time.
• The lower the seek time, the faster the I/O operation.

. Rotational Latency
• The time taken by the desired sector to come under the read / write head is called as rotational
latency.
• It depends on the rotation speed of the spindle.

Average rotational latency = 1 / 2 x Time taken for full rotation

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Disk Performance Parameters

• Data Transfer Rate:

• The amount of data that passes under the read / write head in a given amount of time is called as data
transfer rate.
• The time taken to transfer the data is called as transfer time.
• It depends on the following factors-

• Number of bytes to be transferred

• Rotation speed of the disk

• Density of the track

• Speed of the electronics that connects the disk to the computer

• Controller Overhead:
• The overhead imposed by the disk controller is called as controller overhead.
• Disk controller is a device that manages the disk.

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Disk Performance Parameters

• Queuing Delay:
• The time spent waiting for the disk to become free is called as queuing delay.

• Storage Density-
• All the tracks of a disk have the same storage capacity.
• This is because each track has different storage density.
• Storage density decreases as we move from one track to another track away from the center.

• Thus,
Innermost track has maximum storage density.
Outermost track has minimum storage density.

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Disk Scheduling Algorithms

• Disk scheduling is a technique used by the operating system to schedule multiple requests for
accessing the disk.
• The algorithms used for disk scheduling are called as disk scheduling algorithms.
• The purpose of disk scheduling algorithms is to reduce the total seek time.

• FCFS Algorithm
• SSTF Algorithm
• SCAN Algorithm
• C-SCAN Algorithm
• LOOK Algorithm
• C-LOOK Algorithm

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FCFS Scheduling

• It is the simplest disk scheduling algorithm, it entertains requests in order they arrive in the disk queue.
• It results in increased total seek time and it is inefficient.
• We illustrate scheduling algorithms with a request queue (0-199)

98, 183, 41, 122, 14, 124, 65, 67

Head pointer 53

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FCFS Example Problem

• Total head movements incurred while servicing these requests

= (98 – 53) + (183 – 98) + (183 – 41) + (122 – 41) + (122 – 14) + (124 – 14) + (124 – 65) + (67 – 65)

= 45 + 85 + 142 + 81 + 108 + 110 + 59 + 2

= 632

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SSTF Scheduling

• SSTF stands for Shortest Seek Time First.

• This algorithm services that request next which requires least number of head movements from its current position
regardless of the direction.
• It breaks the tie in the direction of head movement.

98, 183, 41, 122, 14, 124, 65, 67

Head pointer 53

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SSTF Scheduling

• Total head movements incurred while servicing these requests

= (65 – 53) + (67 – 65) + (67 – 41) + (41 – 14) + (98 – 14) + (122 – 98) + (124 – 122) + (183 – 124)
= 12 + 2 + 26 + 27 + 84 + 24 + 2 + 59
= 236

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SSTF Problem 2

• Consider a disk system with 100 cylinders. The requests to access the cylinders occur in following
sequence-
4, 34, 10, 7, 19, 73, 2, 15, 6, 20

• Assuming that the head is currently at cylinder 50, what is the time taken to satisfy all requests if it
takes 1 ms to move from one cylinder to adjacent one and shortest seek time first policy is used?

• 95 ms

• 119 ms

• 233 ms

• 276 ms

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SSTF Problem 2

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SSTF – Problem 2

• Total head movements incurred while servicing these requests

= (50 – 34) + (34 – 20) + (20 – 19) + (19 – 15) + (15 – 10) + (10 – 7) + (7 – 6) + (6 – 4) + (4 – 2) + (73 – 2)
= 16 + 14 + 1 + 4 + 5 + 3 + 1 + 2 + 2 + 71
= 119

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SCAN Scheduling

• As the name suggests, this algorithm scans all the cylinders of the disk back and forth.
• Head starts from one end of the disk and move towards the other end servicing all the requests in
between.
• After reaching the other end, head reverses its direction and move towards the starting end servicing
all the requests in between.
• The same process repeats.
•
SCAN Algorithm is also called as Elevator Algorithm.
• This is because its working resembles the working of an elevator.

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SCAN Scheduling – Example Problem

Consider a disk queue with requests for I/O to blocks on cylinders 98, 183, 41, 122, 14, 124, 65, 67.
The SCAN scheduling algorithm is used. The head is initially at cylinder number 53 moving towards
larger cylinder numbers on its servicing pass. The cylinders are numbered from 0 to 199. The total
head movement (in number of cylinders) incurred while servicing these requests is _______.

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SCAN

• Total head movements incurred while servicing these requests

= (65 – 53) + (67 – 65) + (98 – 67) + (122 – 98) + (124 – 122) + (183 – 124) + (199 – 183) + (199 – 41) +
(41 – 14)
= 12 + 2 + 31 + 24 + 2 + 59 + 16 + 158 + 27
= 331

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C SCAN Scheduling

• Circular-SCAN Algorithm is an improved version of the SCAN Algorithm.

• Head starts from one end of the disk and move towards the other end servicing all the requests in
between.
• After reaching the other end, head reverses its direction.
• It then returns to the starting end without servicing any request in between.
• The same process repeats.

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C SCAN Scheduling – Example Problem

Consider a disk queue with requests for I/O to blocks on cylinders 98, 183, 41, 122, 14, 124, 65, 67.
The SCAN scheduling algorithm is used. The head is initially at cylinder number 53 moving towards
larger cylinder numbers on its servicing pass. The cylinders are numbered from 0 to 199. The total
head movement (in number of cylinders) incurred while servicing these requests is _______.

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C - SCAN

• Total head movements incurred while servicing these requests

= (65 – 53) + (67 – 65) + (98 – 67) + (122 – 98) + (124 – 122) + (183 – 124) + (199 – 183) + (199 – 0) + (14
– 0) + (41 – 14)
= 12 + 2 + 31 + 24 + 2 + 59 + 16 + 199 + 14 + 27
= 386

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LOOK Scheduling

• LOOK Algorithm is an improved version of the SCAN Algorithm.

• Head starts from the first request at one end of the disk and moves towards the last request at the
other end servicing all the requests in between.
• After reaching the last request at the other end, head reverses its direction.
• It then returns to the first request at the starting end servicing all the requests in between.
• The same process repeats.

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LOOK Scheduling – Example Problem

Consider a disk queue with requests for I/O to blocks on cylinders 98, 183, 41, 122, 14, 124, 65, 67.
The SCAN scheduling algorithm is used. The head is initially at cylinder number 53 moving towards
larger cylinder numbers on its servicing pass. The cylinders are numbered from 0 to 199. The total
head movement (in number of cylinders) incurred while servicing these requests is _______.

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LOOK – Example Problem

• Total head movements incurred while servicing these requests

= (65 – 53) + (67 – 65) + (98 – 67) + (122 – 98) + (124 – 122) + (183 – 124) + (183 – 41) + (41 – 14)
= 12 + 2 + 31 + 24 + 2 + 59 + 142 + 27
= 299

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C LOOK Scheduling

• Circular-LOOK Algorithm is an improved version of the LOOK Algorithm.

• Head starts from the first request at one end of the disk and moves towards the last request at the
other end servicing all the requests in between.
• After reaching the last request at the other end, head reverses its direction.
• It then returns to the first request at the starting end without servicing any request in between.
• The same process repeats.

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C LOOK Scheduling – Example Problem

Consider a disk queue with requests for I/O to blocks on cylinders 98, 183, 41, 122, 14, 124, 65, 67.
The SCAN scheduling algorithm is used. The head is initially at cylinder number 53 moving towards
larger cylinder numbers on its servicing pass. The cylinders are numbered from 0 to 199. The total
head movement (in number of cylinders) incurred while servicing these requests is _______.

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C LOOK – Example Problem

Total head movements incurred while servicing these requests

= (65 – 53) + (67 – 65) + (98 – 67) + (122 – 98) + (124 – 122) + (183 – 124) + (183 – 14) + (41 – 14)
= 12 + 2 + 31 + 24 + 2 + 59 + 169 + 27
= 326

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Disk Management

Disk Management in Operating System

• Disk Format
• Booting from disk
• Bad block recovery
The low-level format or physical format:
Divides the disk into sectors before storing data so that the disk controller can
read and write Each sector can be:
It is conducted in two stages:
1. Divide the disc into multiple cylinder groups. Each is treated as a logical disk.
2. Logical format or “Create File System”.

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Boot Blocks

• When the computer is turned on or restarted, the program stored in the initial
bootstrap ROM finds the location of the OS kernel from the disk, loads the
kernel into memory, and runs the OS. start.

• To change the bootstrap code, you need to change the ROM and hardware chip.
Only a small bootstrap loader program is stored in ROM instead.

• The full bootstrap code is stored in the “boot block” of the disk.

• A disk with a boot partition is called a boot disk or system disk.

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Bad Blocks

• Disks are error-prone because moving parts have small tolerances.

• Most disks are even stuffed from the factory with bad blocks and are handled
in a variety of ways.

• The controller maintains a list of bad blocks.

• The controller can instruct each bad sector to be logically replaced with one of
the spare sectors. This scheme is known as sector sparing or transfer.

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Bad Blocks

• Disks are error-prone because moving parts have small tolerances.

• Most disks are even stuffed from the factory with bad blocks and are handled
in a variety of ways.

• The controller maintains a list of bad blocks.

• The controller can instruct each bad sector to be logically replaced with one of
the spare sectors. This scheme is known as sector sparing or transfer.

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 Disk Management Techniques

• Partitioning: This involves dividing a single physical disk into multiple logical partitions. Each
partition can be treated as a separate storage device, allowing for better organization and management
of data.

• Formatting: This involves preparing a disk for use by creating a file system on it. This process typically
erases all existing data on the disk.

• File system management: This involves managing the file systems used by the operating system to
store and access data on the disk. Different file systems have different features and performance
characteristics.

• Disk space allocation: This involves allocating space on the disk for storing files and directories. Some
common methods of allocation include contiguous allocation, linked allocation, and indexed allocation.

• Disk defragmentation: Over time, as files are created and deleted, the data on a disk can become
fragmented, meaning that it is scattered across the disk. Disk defragmentation involves rearranging the
data on the disk to improve performance.
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 Unix OS
UNIX is a powerful Operating System initially developed by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie at
AT&T Bell laboratories in 1970. It is prevalent among scientific, engineering, and academic
institutions due to its most appreciative features like multitasking, flexibility, and many more.
In UNIX, the file system is a hierarchical structure of files and directories where users can
store and retrieve information using the files.

Features of Unix OS:

Multitasking: A UNIX operating system is a multitasking operating system that allows you to
initiate more than one task from the same terminal so that one task is performed as a
foreground and the other task as a background process.
Multi-user: UNIX operating system supports more than one user to access computer resources
like main memory, hard disk, tape drives, etc. Multiple users can log on to the system from
different terminals and run different jobs that share the resources of a command terminal. It
deals with the principle of time-sharing. Time-sharing is done by a scheduler that divides the
CPU time into several segments also called a time slice, and each segment is assigned to
each user on a scheduled basis. This time slice is tiny. When this time is expired, it passes
control to the following user on the system. Each user executes their set of instructions
within their time slice.
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 Features of Unix OS
Portability: This feature makes the UNIX work on different machines and platforms with the easy transfer of code to any computer
system. Since a significant portion of UNIX is written in C language, and only a tiny portion is coded in assembly language for
specific hardware.

File Security and Protection: Being a multi-user system, UNIX makes special consideration for file and system security. UNIX has
different levels of security using assigning username and password to individual users ensuring the authentication, at the level
providing file access permission viz. read, write and execute and lastly file encryption to change the file into an unreadable format.

Command Structure: UNIX commands are easy to understand and simple to use. Example: "cp", mv etc. While working in the UNIX
environment, the UNIX commands are case-sensitive and are entered in lower case.

Communication: In UNIX, communication is an excellent feature that enables the user to communicate worldwide. It supports
various communication facilities provided using the write command, mail command, talk command, etc.

Open Source: UNIX operating system is open source it means it is freely available to all and is a community-based development
project.

Accounting: UNIX keeps an account of jobs created by the user. This feature enhances the system performance in terms of CPU
monitoring and disk space checking. It allows you to keep an account of disk space used by each user, and the disk space can be
limited by each other.
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Structure of Unix OS

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 Structure of Unix OS
Layer-1: Hardware -

This layer of UNIX consists of all hardware-related information in the UNIX

environment.

Layer-2: Kernel -

The core of the operating system that's liable for maintaining the full functionality is

named the kernel. The kernel of UNIX runs on the particular machine hardware and

interacts with the hardware effectively.

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Kernel Architecture

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 Kernel Architecture
• It also works as a device manager and performs valuable functions for the processes
which require access to the peripheral devices connected to the computer. The
kernel controls these devices through device drivers.

• The kernel also manages the memory. Processes are executed programs that have
owner's humans or systems who initiate their execution.

• The system must provide all processes with access to an adequate amount of
memory, and a few processes require a lot of it. To make effective use of main
memory and to allocate a sufficient amount of memory to every process. It uses
essential techniques like paging, swapping, and virtual storage.

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 Layer 3 - Shell
• The Shell is an interpreter that interprets the command submitted by the user at
the terminal, and calls the program you simply want
It also keeps a history of the list of the commands you have typed in.

• If you need to repeat a command you typed it, use the cursor keys to scroll up and
down the list or type history for a list of previous commands. There are various
commands like cat, mv, cat, grep, id, wc, and many more

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Types of Shells

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 Types of Shells

• Bourne Shell: This Shell is simply called the Shell. It was the first Shell for

UNIX OS. It is still the most widely available Shell on a UNIX system.

• C Shell: The C shell is another popular shell commonly available on a UNIX system.
The C shell was developed by the University of California at Berkeley and removed
some of the shortcomings of the Bourne shell.

• Korn Shell: This Shell was created by David Korn to address the Bourne Shell's
user-interaction issues and to deal with the shortcomings of the C shell's scripting
quirks.

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 Layer 4 – Application Programs Layer
• It is the outermost layer that executes the given external applications. UNIX
distributions typically come with several useful applications programs as standard.
For Example: emacs editor, StarOffice, xv image viewer, g++ compiler etc

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 Unix Filters
•
Filters in Unix are commands/programs that take input from standard input
(stdin), process it in some way, and send the result to standard output (stdout).
They're called "filters" because they filter or transform data as it passes through
them.

Common Unix Filters:

1. grep - Search for patterns - Searches for lines matching a pattern
# Find all lines containing "error" in logfile.txt
grep "error" logfile.txt

# Case-insensitive search for "warning"

grep -i "warning" /var/log/syslog
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Grep - Options
•

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 Unix Filters
•

2. sort - Sort lines of text

• Purpose: Sorts lines alphabetically or numerically

# Sort a list of names alphabetically

echo -e "banana\napple\ncherry" | sort

# Sort numbers numerically (-n)

echo -e "10\n2\n15" | sort -n

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Sort - Options
•

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 Unix Filters
•

3. cut - Extract columns/sections

• Purpose: Extracts specific columns or character positions

# Extract first column from CSV (comma-delimited)

echo -e "John,Doe,30\n Jane,Smith,25" | cut -d',' -f1

# Get first 5 characters of each line

echo -e "apple\n banana" | cut -c1-5

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 Unix Filters
•

4. tr - Translate or delete characters

• Purpose: Character translation or deletion

# Convert lowercase to uppercase

echo "hello world" | tr 'a-z' 'A-Z'

# Replace all spaces with underscores

echo "file name with spaces" | tr ' ' '_'

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 Unix Filters
•

5. head/tail - View beginning/end of file

• Purpose: Show first/last lines

# Show first 5 lines of a file

head -n 5 largefile.txt

# Monitor a growing log file

tail -f /var/log/syslog

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 Shell Programming
• Shell programming in the Unix operating system is a powerful way to automate
tasks, manipulate files, and manage system operations through scripts. The shell
acts as an interface between the user and the kernel, and shell scripts are written in
various shell languages such as Bourne Shell (sh), Bourne-Again Shell (bash), Korn
Shell (ksh), and others.

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 Basic Concepts
1. Shebang Line:

The first line of a shell script typically starts with a shebang (#!) followed by the path
to the interpreter, which tells the system which shell to use to execute the script.

sh

#!/bin/bas
2. Comments
Comments in shell scripts start with a # and extend to the end of the line.
sh
# This is a comment

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 Basic Concepts
3. Variables

• Variables store data that can be used later in the script.

sh

name="John"

echo "Hello, $name

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 Basic Concepts
4. Control Structures
• If-Else Statements
sh
if [ condition ]; then
# code to execute if condition is true else
# code to execute if condition is false
fi
Loops
o For Loop
sh
for i in 1 2 3 4 5; do echo "Number: $i"
done

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 Basic Concepts

While Loop
sh count=1
while [ $count -le 5 ];
do echo "Count: $count"
count=$((count + 1))
done

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 Basic Concepts

Functions
Functions allow you to encapsulate a block of code that you can reuse throughout your
script.
sh greet()
{
echo "Hello, $1"
}
greet "Alice”

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 Unix OS with Standard I/O
• Unix programming with standard input and output involves using the command

line to handle data streams efficiently.

Here’s a brief guide:

• Standard Input, Output, and Error

Standard Input (stdin): Typically the keyboard, accessed via file descriptor 0.

Standard Output (stdout): Usually the terminal, accessed via file descriptor 1.

Standard Error (stderr): For error messages, accessed via file descriptor 2.

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 Basic Commands
Redirecting Output

• Redirect stdout to a file:

sh command > file.txt

• Append stdout to a file:

sh command >> file.txt

• Redirect stderr to a file:

sh command 2 > error.txt

• Redirect both stdout and stderr:

sh command > alloutput.txt 2>&1

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 Basic Commands
Redirecting Input
• Redirect stdin from a file:
sh command < file.txt
Pipes
Pipes (|) connect the stdout of one command to the stdin of another.
sh command1 | command2

Example:

sh cat file.txt | grep "search_term“

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Example Script
Here’s a script demonstrating these concepts:
sh #!/bin/bash
# Read from stdin and redirect to stdout and stderr
echo "Enter your name: "
read name
# Output to stdout
echo "Hello, $name"

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Example Script

# Output to stderr
echo "This is an error message" >&2
# Redirecting input and output
echo "Writing to file" > output.txt <cat output.txt
# Piping commands
ls | grep ".txt“

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 Unix System Calls
• System calls in Unix are used for file system control, process control, interprocess
communication etc.
• Access to the Unix kernel is only available through these system calls.
• Generally, system calls are similar to function calls, the only difference is that they
remove the control from the user process.
• There are around 80 system calls in the Unix interface currently. Details about
some of the important ones are given as follows

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Unix System Calls

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