CH 2

Chapter 2: Operating-System
Structures
Operating System Concepts – 10 th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne

Chapter 2: Operating-System Structures
 Operating System Services

 User and Operating System-Interface
 System Calls
 System Services
 Linkers and Loaders
 Why Applications are Operating System Specific
 Operating-System Design and Implementation
 Operating System Structure
 Building and Booting an Operating System
 Operating System Debugging
Operating System Concepts – 10 th Edition 2.2 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne

Objectives
 Identify services provided by an operating
system
 Illustrate how system calls are used to provide
operating system services
 Compare and contrast monolithic, layered,
microkernel, modular, and hybrid strategies for
designing operating systems
 Illustrate the process for booting an operating
system
 Apply tools for monitoring operating system
performance
 Design and implement kernel modules for
interacting with a Linux kernel

Operating System Services
 Operating systems provide an environment for execution
of programs and services to programs and users
 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), touch-screen, 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

Operating System Services (Cont.)
 One set of operating-system services provides functions that
are helpful to the user (Cont.):
 File-system manipulation - The file system is of particular
interest. Programs need to read and write files and
directories, create and delete them, search them, list file
Information, permission management.
 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
 Many types of resources - CPU cycles, main memory,
file storage, I/O devices.
 Logging - 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

A View of Operating System Services

User Operating System Interface - CLI
CLI or command interpreter allows direct command

entry
 Sometimes implemented in kernel, sometimes by
systems program
 Sometimes multiple flavors implemented – shells
 Primarily fetches a command from user and
executes it
 Sometimes commands built-in, sometimes just
names of programs
 If the latter, adding new features doesn’t
require shell modification

Bourne Shell Command Interpreter

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
 Microsoft Windows is GUI with CLI “command” shell
 Apple Mac OS X is “Aqua” GUI interface with UNIX
kernel underneath and shells available
 Unix and Linux have CLI with optional GUI
interfaces (CDE, KDE, GNOME)

Touchscreen Interfaces
 Touchscreen devices
require new interfaces
 Mouse not possible or not
desired
 Actions and selection based
on gestures
 Virtual keyboard for text
entry
 Voice commands

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 Programming 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)
Note that the system-call names used throughout

this text are generic

Example of System Calls
 System call sequence to copy the contents of one file to
another file

Example of Standard API

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 the 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

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
 create process, terminate process
 end, abort
 load, execute
 get process attributes, set process attributes
 wait for time
 wait event, signal event
 allocate and free memory
 Dump memory if error
 Debugger for determining bugs, single step execution
 Locks for managing access to shared data between
processes

Types of System Calls (cont.)
 File management
 create file, delete file
 open, close file
 read, write, reposition
 get and set file attributes
 Device management
 request device, release device
 read, write, reposition
 get device attributes, set device attributes
 logically attach or detach devices

Types of System Calls (Cont.)
 Information maintenance
 get time or date, set time or date
 get system data, set system data
 get and set process, file, or device attributes
 Communications
 create, delete communication connection
 send, receive messages if message passing
model to host name or process name
 From client to server
 Shared-memory model create and gain access to
memory regions
 transfer status information
 attach and detach remote devices

Types of System Calls (Cont.)
 Protection
 Control access to resources
 Get and set permissions
 Allow and deny user access

Examples of Windows and Unix System Calls

Standard C Library Example
 C program invoking printf() library call, which calls
write() system call

Example: Arduino
 Single-tasking
 No operating system
 Programs (sketch)
loaded via USB into
flash memory
 Single memory space
 Boot loader loads
program
 Program exit -> shell
reloaded
At system startup running a

program

Example: FreeBSD
 Unix variant
 Multitasking
 User login -> invoke user’s choice
of shell
 Shell executes fork() system call
to create process
 Executes exec() to load
program into process
 Shell waits for process to
terminate or continues with
user commands
 Process exits with:
 code = 0 – no error
 code > 0 – error code

System Services
 System programs provide a convenient environment
for program development and execution. They can be
divided into:
 File manipulation
 Status information sometimes stored in a file
 Programming language support
 Program loading and execution
 Communications
 Background services
 Application programs
 Most users’ view of the operation system is defined
by system programs, not the actual system calls

System Services (cont.)
 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 Services (Cont.)
 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

System Services (Cont.)
 Background Services
 Launch at boot time
 Some for system startup, then terminate
 Some from system boot to shutdown
 Provide facilities like disk checking, process
scheduling, error logging, printing
 Run in user context not kernel context
 Known as services, subsystems, daemons
 Application programs
 Don’t pertain to system
 Run by users
 Not typically considered part of OS
 Launched by command line, mouse click, finger poke

Linkers and Loaders
 Source code compiled into object files designed to be loaded into
any physical memory location – relocatable object file
 Linker combines these into single binary executable file
 Also brings in libraries
 Program resides on secondary storage as binary executable
 Must be brought into memory by loader to be executed
 Relocation assigns final addresses to program parts and
adjusts code and data in program to match those addresses
 Modern general purpose systems don’t link libraries into
executables
 Rather, dynamically linked libraries (in Windows, DLLs) are
loaded as needed, shared by all that use the same version of
that same library (loaded once)
 Object, executable files have standard formats, so operating
system knows how to load and start them

The Role of the Linker and Loader

Why Applications are Operating System Specific
 Apps compiled on one system usually not executable on

other operating systems
 Each operating system provides its own unique system
calls
 Own file formats, etc
 Apps can be multi-operating system
 Written in interpreted language like Python, Ruby, and
interpreter available on multiple operating systems
 App written in language that includes a VM containing
the running app (like Java)
 Use standard language (like C), compile separately on
each operating system to run on each
 Application Binary Interface (ABI) is architecture
equivalent of API, defines how different components of
binary code can interface for a given operating system on
a given architecture, CPU, etc

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 the design 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 (example
– timer)
 Specifying and designing an OS is highly creative
task of software engineering

Implementation
 Much variation
 Early OSes in assembly language
 Then system programming languages like Algol, PL/1
 Now C, C++
 Actually usually a mix of languages
 Lowest levels in assembly
 Main body in C
 Systems programs in C, C++, scripting languages like
PERL, Python, shell scripts
 More high-level language easier to port to other hardware
 But slower
 Emulation can allow an OS to run on non-native hardware

Operating System Structure
 General-purpose OS is very large program
 Various ways to structure ones
 Simple structure – MS-DOS
 More complex -- UNIX
 Layered – an abstraction
 Microkernel -Mach

Monolithic Structure – Original 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

Traditional UNIX System Structure
Beyond simple but not fully layered

Linux System Structure
Monolithic plus modular design

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

Microkernels
 Moves as much from the kernel into user space
 Mach example of microkernel
 Mac OS X kernel (Darwin) partly based on Mach
 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

Microkernel System Structure

Modules
 Many modern operating systems implement
loadable kernel modules (LKMs)
 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
 Linux, Solaris, etc

Hybrid Systems
 Most modern operating systems are actually not one

pure model
 Hybrid combines multiple approaches to address
performance, security, usability needs
 Linux and Solaris kernels in kernel address space,
so monolithic, plus modular for dynamic loading of
functionality
 Windows mostly monolithic, plus microkernel for
different subsystem personalities
 Apple Mac OS X hybrid, layered, Aqua UI plus Cocoa
programming environment
 Below is kernel consisting of Mach microkernel
and BSD Unix parts, plus I/O kit and dynamically
loadable modules (called kernel extensions)

macOS and iOS Structure

Darwin

Android
 Developed by Open Handset Alliance (mostly Google)
 Open Source
 Similar stack to IOS
 Based on Linux kernel but modified
 Provides process, memory, device-driver
management
 Adds power management
 Runtime environment includes core set of libraries and
Dalvik virtual machine
 Apps developed in Java plus Android API
 Java class files compiled to Java bytecode then
translated to executable than runs in Dalvik VM
 Libraries include frameworks for web browser (webkit),
database (SQLite), multimedia, smaller libc

Android Architecture

Building and Booting an Operating System
 Operating systems generally designed to run on a

class of systems with variety of perpherals
 Commonly, operating system already installed on
purchased computer
 But can build and install some other operating
systems
 If generating an operating system from scratch
 Write the operating system source code
 Configure the operating system for the system
on which it will run
 Compile the operating system
 Install the operating system
 Boot the computer and its new operating system

Building and Booting Linux
 Download Linux source code (http://www.kernel.org)
 Configure kernel via “make menuconfig”
 Compile the kernel using “make”
 Produces vmlinuz, the kernel image
 Compile kernel modules via “make modules”
 Install kernel modules into vmlinuz via “make
modules_install”
 Install new kernel on the system via “make install”

System Boot
 When power initialized on system, execution starts at a fixed

memory location
 Operating system must be made available to hardware so
hardware can start it
 Small piece of code – bootstrap loader, BIOS, stored in ROM or
EEPROM locates the kernel, loads it into memory, and starts it
 Sometimes two-step process where boot block at fixed
location loaded by ROM code, which loads bootstrap loader
from disk
 Modern systems replace BIOS with Unified Extensible
Firmware Interface (UEFI)
 Common bootstrap loader, GRUB, allows selection of kernel from
multiple disks, versions, kernel options
 Kernel loads and system is then running
 Boot loaders frequently allow various boot states, such as single
user mode

Operating-System Debugging
 Debugging is finding and fixing errors, or bugs
 Also performance tuning
 OS 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
 Sometimes using trace listings of activities, recorded for
analysis
 Profiling is periodic sampling of instruction pointer to look
for statistical trends
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.”

Performance Tuning
 Improve performance by removing bottlenecks

 OS must provide means of computing and displaying
measures of system behavior
 For example, “top” program or Windows Task Manager

Tracing
 Collects data for a specific event, such as steps involved

in a system call invocation
 Tools include
 strace – trace system calls invoked by a process
 gdb – source-level debugger
 perf – collection of Linux performance tools
 tcpdump – collects network packets

BCC
 Debugging interactions between user-level and kernel

code nearly impossible without toolset that understands
both and an instrument their actions
 BCC (BPF Compiler Collection) is a rich toolkit providing
tracing features for Linux
 See also the original DTrace
 For example, disksnoop.py traces disk I/O activity
 Many other tools (next slide)

Linux bcc/BPF Tracing Tools

End of Chapter 2
Operating System Concepts – 10 th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne

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Chapter 2: Operating-System

Operating System Concepts – 10 th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne

 Operating System Services

Operating System Concepts – 10 th Edition 2.2 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne

Operating System Concepts – 10 th Edition 2.3 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne

Operating System Concepts – 10 th Edition 2.4 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne

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Operating System Concepts – 10 th Edition 2.7 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne

CLI or command interpreter allows direct command

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Note that the system-call names used throughout

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At system startup running a

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Operating System Concepts – 10 th Edition 2.28 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne

 File management - Create, delete, copy, rename, print,

Operating System Concepts – 10 th Edition 2.29 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne

Operating System Concepts – 10 th Edition 2.30 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne

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Operating System Concepts – 10 th Edition 2.33 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne

 Apps compiled on one system usually not executable on

Operating System Concepts – 10 th Edition 2.34 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne

 Design and Implementation of OS not “solvable”, but

 Internal structure of different Operating Systems can

 Start the design by defining goals and specifications

 Affected by choice of hardware, type of system

 User goals and System goals

Operating System Concepts – 10 th Edition 2.35 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne

 Important principle to separate

Operating System Concepts – 10 th Edition 2.36 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne

Operating System Concepts – 10 th Edition 2.37 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne

Operating System Concepts – 10 th Edition 2.38 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne

UNIX – limited by hardware functionality, the

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Operating System Concepts – 10 th Edition 2.40 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne

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 The operating system is

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