Apas, Marc Neil M.
BS CPE 4
OPERATING SYSTEM REPORT
Written Report: Windows vs Unix 
(I/O and File Management) 
Organization of the I/O Function
Windows
- Windows I/O model is its support for
asynchronous I/O. The I/O manager
presents a consistent interface to all
kernel-mode drivers, including lowest-level,
intermediate, and file system drivers. All
I/O requests to drivers are sent as I/O
request packets (IRPs).
- The I/O manager defines a set of standard
routines, some required and others
optional, that drivers can support. All
drivers follow a relatively consistent
implementation model, given the
differences among peripheral devices and
the differing functionality required of bus,
function, filter, and file system drivers.
- Windows drivers are object-based. Drivers
and system hardware are represented as
objects. The I/O manager and other
operating system components export
kernel-mode support routines that drivers
can call to get work done by manipulating
the appropriate objects.
3:00 - 4:30 PM TTh
UNIX
- Unix uses a different kind of I/O Function
Organization ​the SAS/C library provides a
large set of input/output functions. These
functions are divided into two groups,
standard I/O functions and UNIX style I/O
functions. The library provides several I/O
techniques to meet the needs of different
applications. To achieve the best results,
you must make an informed choice about
the techniques to use. The criterias are
portability, capabilities, efficiency and
intended use of the files.
- UNIX also ​ implements sockets using
streams.​ Streams mechanism in UNIX
provides a bi-directional pipeline between a
user process and a device driver, onto
which additional modules can be added.
The device driver must respond to
interrupts from its device - If the adjacent
module is not prepared to accept data and
the device driver's buffers are all full, then
data is typically drop​ped. Streams are
widely used in UNIX, and are the preferred
approach for device drivers.
Apas, Marc Neil M. BS CPE 4
OPERATING SYSTEM REPORT
Design of the OS's I/O Management
Windows
- The design goals for the Windows I/O
system are to provide an abstraction of
devices, both hardware (physical) and
software (virtual or logical). It has uniform
security and naming across devices to
protect shareable resources and ​services
that allow drivers to be written in a
high-level language and easily ported
between different machine
architectures.​ ​Dynamic loading and
unloading of device drivers so that
drivers can be loaded on demand and
not consume system resources when
unneeded. It Support for Plug and Play,
where the system locates and installs
drivers for newly detected hardware,
assigns them hardware resources they
require, and also allows applications to
discover and activate device interfaces.
It has power management so that the
system or individual devices can enter
low power states.
File Organization and Access
Windows
- Windows organizes files by using a File
System that manages how files are
stored and accessed on your computer.
The part we can see when we interact
with the records that we create on our
computers, such as documents, audio
files, pictures​, and videos is the File
M​anager. Windows has a root directory
is called "drive:\". The directory
separator is usually a "\", but the
operating system also internally
recognizes a "/". Physical and virtual
drives are named by a drive letter, as
opposed to being combined as one.
This means that there is no "formal" root
directory, but rather that there are
independent root directories on each
drive. However, it is possible to combine
two drives into one virtual drive letter, by
setting a hard drive into a RAID setting
of 0.
3:00 - 4:30 PM TTh
UNIX
- The basic model of the UNIX I/O system is a
sequence of bytes that can be accessed either
randomly or sequentially. There are no access
methods and no control blocks in a typical UNIX
user process. UNIX processes use descriptors to
reference I/O streams. Descriptors are small
unsigned integers obtained from the open and
socket system calls. Descriptors represent
underlying objects supported by the kernel, and
are created by system calls specific to the type
of object. These descriptors are 0, 1, 2, more
commonly known as standard input,standard
output, and standard error, respectively. The
open, pipe, and socket system calls produce new
descriptors with the lowest unused number
usable for a descriptor. Hardware devices have
filenames, and may be accessed by the user via
the same system calls used for regular files. The
kernel can distinguish a device special file or
special file, and can determine to what device it
refers, but most processes do not need to make
this determination.
UNIX
- Unix​ operating systems use the
Filesystem Hierarchy Standard as the
common form for their directory
structures. All files and directories
appear under the root directory "/", even
if they are stored on different physical
d​evices. The boot block in UNIX or the
partition boot sector in Windows
contains information about how to boot
the system off of this disk. This will
generally be the first sector of the
volume if there is a bootable system
loaded on that volume, or the block will
be left vacant otherwise. UNIX treats all
files as sequences of bytes, with no
further consideration of the internal
structure. With the exception of
executable binary programs, which it
must know how to load and find the first
executable statement, etc.
Apas, Marc Neil M. BS CPE 4
OPERATING SYSTEM REPORT
File Directories
Windows
- In windows directories are referred to as
folders. However, a directory and folder
are synonymous. A file system or file
directory enables applications to store
and retrieve files on storage devices.
Files are placed in a hierarchical
structure. The file system specifies
naming conventions for files and the
format for specifying the path to a file in
the tree structure. Each file system
consists of one or more drivers and
dynamic-link libraries that define the
data formats and features of the file
system. File systems can exist on many
different types of storage devices,
including hard disks, jukeboxes,
removable optical disks, tape back-up
units, and memory cards. ​The only
constraint on the number of files that
can be contained in a single directory is
the physical size of the disk on which
the directory is located
Secondary Storage Management
Windows
- Windows uses ​disk management is a
system utility in Windows that enables
you to perform advanced storage tasks
and make use for the secondary
storage efficiently. To setup a new
drive, to extend a volume into space
that's not already part of a volume on
the same drive, to shrink a partition,
usually so that you can extend a
neighboring partition. Windows also
uses data clustering it maintains data
integrity and provides failover support,
Addresses bottlenecks resulting from
front-end Web services, Addresses the
unique scalability and availability needs
of middle-tier applications.
3:00 - 4:30 PM TTh
UNIX
- UNIX file and directory paths in UNIX
use the forward slash "/" to separate
directory names in a path. A hierarchical
structure for organizing files and
directories. This structure is often
referred to as a directory tree.​Picture
this tree as growing upside down, with
the root at the top and the leaves
toward the bottom. The leaves are all
text and executable files, while the root,
trunk, limbs, branches, and twigs are all
directories.​ The tree has a single root
node, the slash character (/), and all
other directories are contained below
it.If you are using a server your shell will
start from /home/yourUserName/
directory. ​Unix system can store
information in files so that other
programs can read them, although
pipes complemented it in this role
starting with the Third Edition.
UNIX
- UNIX secondary storage is divided into
blocks or sectors. Blocks are the unit of
I/O transfer with secondary storage.
Provides persistent storage and
facilities for managing data.
-
- Disk partition divided into cylinder
groups. Cylinder group contains
summary info such as free inodes and
free block. Superblocks restructured
and replicated across partition. It
support block fragments, long file
names, and disk block allocation.
- It also uses free space management
that every block is assigned an ID in
sequential order, reserves part of the
disk, a list of the IDs of free blocks is
maintained and number of blocks
required to hold the IDs depends on
how many blocks are free.
Apas, Marc Neil M. BS CPE 4 3:00 - 4:30 PM TTh
OPERATING SYSTEM REPORT