Chapter 2: Operating-System Structures

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Operating System Services
 Operating systems provide an environment for the execution of programs.
 Operating systems provides certain services to:
 Programs
 Users of those programs
 Basically two types of services:
 services provides functions that are helpful to the user.
 services provides functions for ensuring the efficient operation of the system
itself via resource sharing.

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.2 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 OS Services Helpful to the User
 User interface - Almost all operating systems have a user interface (UI). This interface can take
several forms:
 Command-Line (CLI) -- uses text commands.
 Graphics User Interface (GUI) -- the interface is a window system + Menus with a pointing
device.
 Batch Interface -- commands and directives to control those commands are entered into files,
and those files are executed.

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.3 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 OS Services for Ensuring Efficient Operation

 Resource allocation – When multiple users or multiple jobs are

running concurrently, resources must be allocated to each of them.
 Many types of resources - CPU, RAM, files, I/O devices.
 Accounting - To keep track of which users use how much and what
kinds of computer resources.
 Protection and security:
 Protection: Ensuring that all access to system resources is
controlled
 Security: of the system from outsiders requires user
authentication.

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.4 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 A View of Operating System Services

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.5 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 System Calls (API)
 System call is a 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).
 Three most common APIs are:
 Win32 API for Windows,
 POSIX API
Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX)
for POSIX-based systems (including UNIX, Linux, Mac OS X).
 Java API for the Java virtual machine (JVM)
Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.6 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 System Call Implementation
 The caller only need to know the API function name and understand
what the OS will do as a result call.
 Most details of OS interface hidden from programmer by API.
 For example here is a system call of getting the user name of
windows.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
us/windows/desktop/api/winbase/nf-winbase-getusernamea

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.7 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 System Call -- OS Relationship
 The handling of a user application invoking the open() system call

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.8 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Using Windows API with Python
 Install the package of
win32api and use it to
make any system call.

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.9 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Types of System Calls
 System calls can be grouped roughly into six major categories:
 Process control,
 File manipulation,
 Device manipulation,
 Information maintenance,
 Communications,

 Protection.

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.10 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Examples of
Windows and
Unix System
Calls

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.11 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 System Programs
 Programs are simply UI and GUI to system calls.
 Others are considerably more complex.

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.12 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 System Programs (Examples)
 File management
 e.g windows explorer, open/save window

 Status information
 date, time, available memory, disk space, number of users
 performance, logging, and debugging information.
 File modification
 Text editors (Notepad)
 Search contents of files.

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.13 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 System Programs (Examples)
 Programming-language support.
 Compilers, assemblers, debuggers
 Program loading and execution- Absolute loaders, debugging
systems for higher-level and machine language.
 Communications
 browse web pages (IE, Safari)
 send email (outlook)
 log in remotely (Remote Desktop)

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.14 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 System Programs (Examples)
 Background Services
 Launch at boot time
Some for system startup, then terminate.
Some from system boot until shutdown.
 Run in user context not kernel context
 Known as services, subsystems, daemons
 Application programs
 Run by users

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.15 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Performance Tuning
 Improve performance by removing
bottlenecks.
 OS must provide tools of displaying
the system behavior.
 For example,
Linux: “top” program
Win: "Windows Task Manager"

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.16 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Operating-System Debugging
 Debugging is finding and fixing errors, or bugs.
 OS generates log files containing error information.
 App Failure generates core dump file capturing memory of the
process.
 OS failure generates crash dump file containing memory of kernel.

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.17 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 System Boot
 When system is powered on, then Firmware (in ROM) used to hold
initial boot code.
 Small piece of code – bootstrap loader, stored in ROM loads it
into memory, and starts OS
 Sometimes two-step process, where boot block at fixed location
loaded by ROM code, which loads bootstrap loader from kernel (in
Disk)
 Common bootstrap loader, GRUB, allows selection of kernel from
multiple disks, versions, kernel options.

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.18 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Skip and Read
marks = -1
if(marks < 0 ):
print("less than zero-1")
print("less than zero-1")
We use DEC forprint("less
decimal andthan zero-2")
and HEX for hexadecimal in
MARIE's assembly
language

If you

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 2.19 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013