Web Based Operating System

Prepared By:
Parth D Patel(07bit062)
Utkarsh A Thakkar(07bit051)

Abstract—The central idea presented in In the present scenario, the basic needs of
this paper is to show the architecture and the humans have changed drastically
working of an Operating System which consists of speed, portability,
running over the network, thus leading to mobility and security. Our effort is to
global computing. "PROS", as it is named, present an innovation which would give
provides transparency meaning it would people an environment to access and
work same as a real operating system on manage their work all round the globe and
the PC without need of static installation. provide a very high security to their work
PROS would load up on thus giving
the user's PC irrespective of the location them a flavor of pervasive computing.
along with user’s personalized settings The paper, initially introduces the concept
providing with the feel of pervasive of accessing the virtual net-based
computing. By real operating system, we Operating System that would be lively
mean that it would provide all the features available all over the globe. It further
such as memory management, gives a glimpse of the various features that
scheduling, on demand loading etc, thus would be made available to the users of
making it different from the prevailing this operating system. Secondly, it
WEB OS's which are a collection of provides information about the various
several Web Services clubbed together, components required by the clients and the
and require a browser and a base servers. It then goes deeply into the
operating system to work on. PROS will explanation of the architecture and the
be able to work independently of other design issues to provide the in-core
existing operating systems and thereby information about the methodologies and
would be the only operating system functionalities to be used in the
that the host machine has to interact with. development and for the deployment of the
Such an operating system will be much Operating System. The design issues are
more economical and will also help the followed by the customizations
client machine to be less hardware that will be provided to the PROS users.
dependent. In addition to operating system Further it presents the comparison and the
services on a local machine, it provides advantages of PROS over the prevailing
mobility to run operating system from any WEBOSes and LIVE CD technology
computer system with configured settings. while the practical implication of the
project forms the concluding part of paper.
Index Terms—PROS, virtual net-based
OS, WEB OS, WEB FS, Operating II. OBJECTIVE
System, RAC, Live CD, SOA, SaaS.
Taking Concept of Web OS closer to “real
I. INTRODUCTION OS”.
The objective of our project is to develop a
network based virtual operating system
that the user would be able to access on the (preferably 512 M), thereby facilitating use
network, independent of any other of low-cost "diskless" computers.
browser or operating system. It would
provide a virtual OS environment for any Reduced Cost for large number of
machine configuration without the need of computers used in organization for
storage media. Today, various applications some specific purpose in distributed
are provided on the web, which serve the environment: PROS will be suitable
purpose of the operating system to some option for an organization, wherein a
extent. Such web applications, using number of systems are used for only a
HTTP+JavaScript+XHTML+CSS+Flash specific set of applications, so that clients
technology, provide some of the with minimal hardware configuration can
conventional OS services and the be effectively used. Use of PROS will
create a virtual net-based OS framework
Graphical User Interface. for systems running in the distributed
environment.
Current WEB OS’s being web applications
require a browser and an operating system Cache memory and Reserved memory
on the h st machine on configurations: Cache memory
the top of which it works. PROS would be configurations will be provided for getting
the sole operating system dealing directly the frequently used applications loaded
with the host machine. faster when required. Reserved memory
area is meant for providing better
III. FEATURES performance during the use of real time
and memory intensive applications.
Dynamic OS: PROS can be made
available with required customization even On demand software: Various
when accessed from different machines. applications will be installed on the servers
Generic drivers required for the client and made available to clients on demand
machine will be loaded dynamically using using the concept of SaaS (Software as a
the bootable disk provided to the user. Service) and SOA (Service Oriented
Architecture).
On demand File System: PROS will
provide the user with an immediate access Maximum application resource
to his/her personal data store from any utilization with minimum user licensing:
machine around the globe. As software packages are installed on the
server, they will be made available to users
Host Machine-independent processing on loading the OS which eliminates the
to a large extent: PROS can be used over need for purchasing the individual licensed
any client machine irrespective of its local copy for various applications or same
resources as the main functioning application for several machines.
of the operating system is handled on
server side. Crash safe Transaction: This feature will
be achieved with the support of multiple
Minimal hardware configurations at the online server and efficient log managers.
client machine: No storage devices such Moreover, Real Application Clusters
as hard drives will be required on client (RAC) will be used to make the system 24
machine as data will be stored on servers. * 7 live and persistent with the help of
So hardware requirements of the client regular backups.
machine comes down to primary memory
with minimal configuration of 128 M
Seamless portability/mobility: PROS On the network, all the conventional
will provide boundless portability and protocols like TCP/IP, UDP, ARP, DHCP,
mobility as its user will be required to and TFTP etc. would be necessary for
posses only a bootable disk drive and an connection and communication.
internet connection to access his
personalized system from anywhere in the V.METHOLOGY AND
globe. FUNCTIONALITY

Customization: PROS will provide A. ARCHITECTURE

support for customizations regarding the PROS is an operating system which would
personal settings of user. It will also be consist of a minimal configured client
possible to customize PROS as per the terminal on the user side and highly
needs of distributed environment. configured and efficient servers as its
working environment. Hence it is required
External Device Interface: Mounting of to be implemented using multi-tier Client-
external devices can be done locally by Server Architecture to make it highly
downloading the required components in efficient and robust
the reserved memory on the local machine. Client Tier

IV. COMPONENTS INVOLVED The CLIENT TIER, comprising of a thin

client, consists of minimal components
A. Hardware Components both with respect to storage capacity and
The servers would consist of large amount processing power. Server side Cache
of data storage devices such as tape drives memory is used to provide better and fast
and hard drives on repository servers. In interaction with the frequently used
case of the application and transaction components. The boot loader (provided on
servers, due to very high amount of the bootable disk) will download OS
processing, large amount of the active image (specific to each client) which
memory and efficient hardware would be consisting of the necessary
components would be required. On the components such as the generic drivers,
client side the hardware requirements some components for the temporary
would be minimal. The client would processing, memory management, GUI
fundamentally require a network card, components, and network manager [2].
main memory, cache support (for high The Interfacing Application would be a
performance), and the external drive GUI component which would provide an
support like CD and USB drives. He may interface between the server and the client
opt for static disk drives on the machine at for further interactions once the OS image
his will and may also use client side cache has been loaded. The Client tier will
so as to get faster access to his frequently consist of the reserved memory which can
used applications. be used at the time of execution of real
time and computation intensive
B. Software Components applications.
TFTP/DHCP Server.
Generic Device Drivers. Transaction Tier
File System. Components in Client tier interface with
Interfacing Application. TRANSACTION Tier. This is the most
Memory Manager. vital tier in the whole architecture as this
Application specific components. tier is responsible for carrying out various
Network Manager. interactions of each user with PROS and
for validating users. It also consists of the
transaction manager which implements tasks. The request/response manager is
scheduling algorithms to transfer request responsible for delivering the request to
to the application tier for load balancing, the various other tiers as required and
RAC and session management The delivers the response from these tiers to
Transaction tier primarily consists of the the CCM which in turn will send this
Client Communication Module (CCM) response to the client. The failure handler
which will communicate with each of the module consists of user log and recovery
users on the network independently and mechanism. Whenever a failure occurs
will provide them with an interface that either in into the log files which will later
will make them feel of having their own be used for recovery.
operating system running locally. This tier Repository Tier
also consists of three other modules viz.
transaction manager, request/response This tier consists of the file system
manager and failure handler. The structures, the physical and logical data
transaction manager is responsible to pass storage, data structures, file system and
requests to appropriate transaction servers location manager, backup handler and
in addition to carrying out its above cited modules to communicate with the
Application tier. Whenever the
Transaction/Application server sends the
request for the required file to this tier, File
Locator retrieves the required file and
sends back to the requesting tier. The file
system structure consists of a root
directory which is the root for all the users
of the system and will contain the
information of all the users and a log to
maintain their track. Next in the hierarchy
will be the root directory of each user that
is registered to access the system. The
system root will also consist of the server
configuration files. Each user directory
will consist of the data files, the user
profile which will consist of the saved
personalized settings of its owner and the
log files which will keep the track of user’s
transactions and data storage. The data is
identified with the help of URI (Universal
Resource Identifier) thus giving rise to
(Network File System) NFS structure. The
Repository Tier also consists of the
module for handling backups which are
most crucial for recovering from the
failures and also for maintaining the
consistency of the data. Moreover, the tier
consists of the store of Generic Drivers for
various devices. The Application
Figure 1. Architecture of PROS (Arrows
depict communication path)
client/server or the network, the failure
handler will store the user’s transactions
 memory protection. Inter-process
communication — required to invoke
servers running in their own address
spaces. On the server side, the
conventional monolithic kernel
would work on the network comprising of
the different tiers as described in the
architecture. This kernel would provide all
the services such as scheduling, memory
management, IPC, RPC and file
management.

Figure 2. File System Structure

Communication Module (ACM) in this tier
is responsible for communicating with the
Application Tier which accesses file
system of this tier.
Application Tier
The Application Tier is the heart of PROS.
The Application Tier consists of the
Application Specific Components (ASC) Figure 3. WEBFS Architecture
and Generic Components (GC). The ASC
includes various components necessary for File Management
the functioning of different applications. PROS will use WEBFS which is a global
The Generic Components will include the file system used for the management of the
components like framework and runtime files for all users. The WebFS system
environment required for supporting architecture (as shown in Fig. 3)
various applications. PROS will use Real consists of two parts: A user-level
Application Clusters to keep the system 24 daemon and a loadable vnode module.
* 7 live and persistent with the help of When an application makes the read
regular backups. system call requesting a WebFS file, the
operating system translates the call into a
B. DESIGN OF PROS vnode read operation. The vnode operation
Kernel checks to see if the read can be satisfied in
On the client side, the OS image the kernel (i.e., if the page being requested
downloaded from the network will consist is cached in the kernel). If the operation
of the microkernel. A microkernel is a cannot be satisfied in the kernel, the vnode
minimal computer operating system kernel operation fills in a structure requesting a
which provides no operating-system read of the file page in question and wakes
services at all, only the mechanisms up one of the sleeping threads in the work
needed to implement such services, viz., queue. The user level daemon is then
low-level address space management, responsible for retrieving the page, by
thread management, and inter-process contacting a remote HTTP or WebFS
communication (IPC) are provided [6]. daemon. Once the page is retrieved
The microkernel of PROS will provide remotely, the reverse path is followed into
some core functionalities which include: the kernel [1].
Mechanisms for dealing with address
spaces — this is required for managing Process Management
In PROS, there will be multiple processes
running on the different tiers of its
architecture. The various processes will be
distributed among the multiple servers so
as to get high throughput, performance and
optimal resource utilization. PROS will
provide the conventional process
management services that include:
Suspension and resumption of processes.
Mechanism for process synchronization
and deadlock handling. Mechanism for
IPC and RPC. In PROS, RPC will be
implemented for communication among Figure 4. Generic Flow diagram - Working
processes residing on different tiers. The of PROS. Here b, c, d are
context switching between various the modules for invoking applications,
processes will occur according to the saving files and playing media
requirements and the requests made by respectively.
various tiers or the user processes.
VI. FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS
Scheduling A. Proposed Models
The scheduling of the various processes is User customized settings stored on client
a very crucial step. The scheduling module machine: If user uses the same client
consists of three major components: a machine most of the time, the customized
resource state information database, a settings related to Generic GUI can be
module which computes request (object saved as a file by client onto any local
mapping to resources (hosts and vaults), storage device and used every time the OS
and an activation agent boots.
responsible for implementing the Frequently used Application Image stored
computed schedule [5]. onto client machine: Application specific
C. Working of PROS components for the frequently used
applications can be stored onto the client
machines so that it is not required to be
downloaded every time the application is
initiated.

Load balancing by shifting some processes

to client:
Using an algorithmic approach some
specific processes can be carried out
locally on client machine for performance
tuning whereby processing power of client
may be utilized [1]. The second approach
of providing frequently used application
image stored onto the client machine is
ideally suited for efficient working of
PROS.

B. Cost Analysis and Resource Utilization

Whenever a user buys a PC, he has to
spend a lot more money as compared to his B. Pitfalls in Prevalent WEB-OS
utilization. The utilization of a normal The Web Operating System prevailing at
home user would be approximately 5 hrs a present is basically a web application
day or even less than that. Now the better known as Web Desktop rather than a
lifetime of a normal PC would be real operating system.
approximately around 5 yrs. According to HTTP+JavaScript+XHTML+CSS+Flash
a statistics, this results into 20 % technology is not as robust in providing
utilization of the system by the user. functionality and user interaction as true
During this 20% utilization also, the actual desktop applications. Scripting Errors and
resource utilization turns out to Cross browser compatibility issues have
be only around 4%. Considering the always been there. Not 100% secure.
normal prevalent costs of the resources Resource Utilization is not proper.
available and comparing it with the Software Applications are not available on
configurations of the components required demand. For most of the applications,
to be present in the system which will use software is required to be installed.
PROS, the cost is estimated to get reduced
by 50%. This estimation includes the C. Benefits over Live CD
consideration of the cost required for Live CD requires storage media on the
developing and maintaining servers. With client machine to store the data and run
this cost we will move a step closer various applications. Moreover, the
towards the ‘$99’ computer. performance of various services depends
on the local resources. In PROS, servers
VII. SECURITY are used for both storage and processing,
PROS will consist of various modules for making it highly economical and efficient
providing security and performs the to use as compared to Live CD. Updates
following steps for the same: for services that will be offered by PROS
Authentication Using Passwords. can be easily incorporated while it is
Maintaining Sessions using Kerberos difficult to update the operating system
protocol. Periodic relocation of critical and provided on Live CD.
confidential data. Digital Certificates to
identify genuine clients and servers. CD
piracy not an issue: As the operating
system can IX. IMPLICATIONS
be loaded only after passing various The practical implication of PROS would
Authentication steps, even if the CD is be on a
pirated the User would not get access very broad line. First of all the
unless and until user registers and validates development of the client side software
himself viz., boot loader is to be carried out. This
. will be provided to the user on a small
VIII. COMPARISIONS storage device through which he would be
able to login and get access to the file
A. Advantages system and personalized settings stored
Optimal Resource Utilization. under his profile [4].
No compatibility issues for various On booting, the necessary components of
software applications.Data access available PROS would be downloaded in the form
all around the world. Client Resource of OS image from the server. After this
Independence. Highly Economical. download, a connection will be maintained
Minimum Client Hardware requirement. for the data transfer. On the server various
On demand software available from server. operating system services like file system
management, process management, etc Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA'97),
will be handled in an efficient way using pp.85,
1997.
optimal algorithms for each of them. There [4] P. Miller, TCP/IP Explained, Chapter 9,
might be issues regarding the cost for "Booting Internet
bandwidth required and speed but that can Hosts with BootP and TFTP," pp. 343-359.
be overcome with lapse of time and with [5] Legion World Wide virtual computer,
suitable tools for getting committed “Philosophy of
Legion Scheduling and Resource Management,”
Bandwidth [3]. University of Virginia, 1993.
[6] Andrew S. Tannenbaum, “Modern Operating
CONCLUSION Systems,” 2nd
PROS will provide OS services to wide- edition, 2001.
area applications, including mechanisms
for resource discovery, a global
namespace, and remote process execution,
on demand file system, on demand
applications, resource management,
authentication, and security. Thus our
paper is an effort towards providing the
three basic necessities of user’s viz., speed,
portability and security in an innovative
way along with providing them the feel of
pervasive computing.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
We are greatly thankful to Mr Ankit
Thakkar Department of Institute of
Technology , Nirma University, for
guiding us in the exploration of our work
and providing us all the required aids.

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