CASE STUDY- Symbian OS

Introduction
The operating system is usually the first software that is loaded into a computer’s memory when
that computer boots. The OS then continues the start-up process by loading device drivers and
applications. These, along with all the other software on the computer, depend on the operating
system to provide them with services such as disk access, memory management, task scheduling,
and interfacing with the user.

Symbian OS has a design that is more modular than many other operating systems. So, for
example, disk services are in the main performed by the file server, and screen and user input
services by the window server. However, there is one element that you can think of as the heart of
the operating system – the element that is responsible for memory management, task management
and task scheduling. That element is of course the kernel, EKA2.

Figure 1: Overview of Symbian OS

FEATURES
1. Symbian OS and EKA2 are modular.
2. EKA2 is single user.
3. EKA2 is multi-tasking.
4. EKA2 is a preemptively multi-tasking OS.
5. EKA2 is a priority-based multi-tasking OS with priority inheritance.
6. EKA2 is real-time.
7. EKA2 can be a ROM-based OS.
8. EKA2 is suitable for open but resource-constrained environments.
Design Goals and Architecture

Figure 2: Symbian OS layered system model

Processes in Symbian OS
The Symbian OS definition of a process is that it is a collection of threads that share a particular
address mapping. In other words, the particular mapping of virtual to physical memory at a
particular time depends on the process that is running. Each thread within a process can read and
write from any other thread’s memory, since they share an address space.
The Symbian OS kernel builds on Nanothreads to provide support for user mode threads that are
used by standard Symbian OS user applications. We represent these threads using the DThread
class.

Under Symbian OS, a process is both a single instantiation of an executable image file and a
collection of one or more threads that share a particular address space (or memory mapping). This
address space may, or may not, be different to that of other processes in the system – this depends
on whether the processor in the mobile phone has an MMU, and on which particular memory
model the phone manufacturer has chosen to use.
In most cases, designers will want to ensure that they protect processes from each other by
choosing the memory model appropriately. In this case, a thread in one process will not be able to
directly access the memory belonging to a thread in another process – although, it will of course
be able to directly access the memory of any thread in the same process. So you can see that, with
the appropriate choice of memory model, the process is the fundamental unit of memory protection
under Symbian OS.
Scheduling
EKA2 implements a priority-driven, preemptive scheduling scheme. The highest-priority ready
thread, or one of several ready threads of equal highest priority, will usually run. (The exception,
which I discussed earlier, is when a high-priority thread is waiting on a nanokernel fast mutex held
by a lower-priority thread – in this case, the lower-priority thread runs.)
Within Symbian OS, scheduling is the responsibility of the nanokernel. Threads that are eligible
for execution (that is, threads that are not waiting for an event) are called ‘‘ready’’ and are kept on
a priority-ordered list, the ready list.
Each nanothread has an integer priority between 0 and 63 inclusive. As we have said, the highest-
priority thread that is ready to run will run. If there are several threads at the same priority, then
one of two things may happen. Firstly, the threads may be executed in a round-robin fashion, with
the timeslice selectable on a thread-by-thread basis. Secondly, they may be executed in FIFO order
– that is the first thread to become ready at that priority will run until it blocks and other threads at
the same priority will not run until the first thread blocks. Which of these two methods is chosen
is a property of the thread itself, not the scheduler.

The scheduler is responsible both for running IDFCs (immediate deferred function calls) and for
selecting the next thread to run and switching to it. It does not do any page table manipulations to
switch processes – instead it provides a hook that the Symbian OS memory model uses to arrange
for such code to be called.

There are some different scheduling algorithms available in the Symbian OS, such as full scheduler
algorithm, Thread Priority Scheduling.
Threads and processes can be communicated with different inter-thread communication (ITC)
mechanis. Client-server is the original Symbian OS inter-thread communication (ITC)
mechanism, having been present from the earliest implementations of EPOC32 in the Psion Series
5 right up to the latest mobile phones deployed on the secure platform of Symbian OS v9.

Memory model (Memory Management)

At the application level – and to a large extent when writing kernelside software – the main use of
memory is for allocation from the free store using operator new or malloc. However, there are
some more fundamental memory services that are used to provide the foundation from which such
memory allocators can be built.
The kernel has the following responsibilities
related to memory management:
1. Management of the physical
memory resources: RAM, MMU and
caches
2. Allocation of virtual and physical
memory
3. Per-process address space
management
4. Process isolation and kernel memory
protection
5. The memory aspects of the software
loader. Figure 3: Memory Model

As well as providing these essential services, we wanted to ensure that the design of the memory
model does not impose hard or low limits on the operating system. In particular:
§ The number of processes should be limited by physical resources rather than the memory
model, and should certainly exceed 64
§ Each process should have a large dedicated address space of 1–2 GB
§ The amount of executable code that can be loaded by a process should be limited only by
available ROM/RAM.
EKA2 is a 32-bit operating system, which means that it assumes that all memory addresses can be
represented in a 32-bit register. This limits the amount of simultaneously addressable memory to
4 GB. In practice there is far less physical memory than this, typically between 16 MB and 32 MB
in the mobile phones available at the time of writing.
Virtual addresses and address translation
Perhaps the best way to understand how a virtual address is translated into a physical address

Figure 4: Algorithm for translating virtual addresses

through this structure would be to work through an example. To illustrate how address translation
works, we shall concentrate on how an ARM MMU translates an address that refers to memory in
a 4 KB page – this translation process is also called page table walking.
Page faults

The MMU allows us to map all of a device’s RAM, 16 MB say, into a much larger 4 GB virtual
address space. Clearly many of the virtual addresses cannot map onto physical memory. What
happens if we try to access one of these?
When walking through the page tables to translate an address, the MMU may find an entry that is
marked as empty, or not present (in the page directory or a page table). When this occurs, the
MMU raises a CPU pre-fetch or data abort exception, depending on whether the memory access
was trying to read code or data. Something very similar will occur if the MMU detects that the
CPU is not permitted to access the page because it does not currently satisfy the access policy for
the page. In EKA2, this will usually result in user-side thread terminating with KERN-EXEC 3
(unhandled exception) or the OS rebooting in the case of a kernel thread.

File Systems
The file server component,
also referred to as F32,
manages every file device on
a Symbian OS phone; it
provides services to access
the files, directories and
drives on those file devices.
This component also contains
the loader, which loads
executable files (DLLs and
EXEs).
We always designate the
main ROM drive as ‘‘Z:’’ on
a Symbian OS mobile phone.
This drive holds system
executables and data files and
its contents (known as the
ROM image) are created by Figure 5: F32 system architecture
the mobile phone manufacturer when building the device. Many Symbian OS phones support
removable media devices such as Multimedia Card (MMC), Secure Digital card (SD card),
Memory Stick or Compact Flash (CF).

Many types of media device, such as Multimedia Cards and SD cards, require every access to be
in multiples of a particular sector size, usually 512 bytes. Thus, the sector is the smallest unit that
can be accessed. Other types of media device, such as the ROM, don’t have this constraint and
allow access in any multiple of a byte.
The file server, like any other server in Symbian OS, uses the client/server framework. It receives
and processes file-related requests from multiple clients. The file server runs in its own process
and uses multiple threads to handle the requests from clients efficiently. Clients link to the F32
client-side library (EFSRV.DLL).
the file server handles requests from its clients for all mounted drives. It is a system server, which
means that if it panics, the whole OS is restarted. The main file server thread is always one of the
highest priority user threads running on the system.

The file server process contains a second server, the loader server, whose purpose is to load
executables (that is, DLLs and EXEs). It runs in a separate thread from the main file server and is
implemented using the Symbian OS client-server framework.
The window server (or WSERV) works in conjunction with almost every part of Symbian OS,
from the kernel to the applications, with the only real exception being the communications sub-
systems. Its two main responsibilities are screen management and event management. WSERV
receives events from the kernel and passes them to its clients (which are normally applications). It
receives commands from clients and updates the screen accordingly.

Device Management
The file server requires access to a
variety of media storage devices,
while the window server requires
access to the LCD display and touch
screen. We will discuss the
frameworks that exist to allow us to
provide support for such devices.
The role of a device driver is to give
a user-side application access to
peripheral resources without
exposing the operation of the
underlying hardware, and in such a
manner that new classes of devices
may be introduced without
Figure 6: Overview of the device driver architecture
modification of that user-side code.
Also, since access to hardware is usually restricted to supervisor-mode code, the device driver
(which runs kernel-side) is the means of access to these resources for user-mode client threads

The Symbian OS device driver model uses two types of kernel DLL – the logical device driver
(LDD) and the physical device driver (PDD). Since hardware interfaces vary across platforms, an
PDD is usually designed to perform generic functionality, using a PDD to implement the device-
specific code.
Peripheral Support
1. DMA: DMA hardware allows data to be transferred between a peripheral and system
memory without the intervention of the processor.
2. Shared chunks: chunks are the means by which memory is allocated and made available
to code outside of the memory model. Shared chunks are only available on EKA2. They
should not be confused with global chunks, (created for example using
RChunk::CreateGlobal()) which are also accessible by multiple user processes
3. Media drivers and the local media sub-system: Media drivers are a form of PDD
physical device driver) that are used almost exclusively by the file server to access local
media devices.
 4. USB device support: The standard Symbian OS USB software architecture provides
support for USB device (or client) functionality. Our implementation is designed to work
with a hardware USB Device Controller (UDC).
5. MultiMediaCard support: MultiMediaCards are miniature solid-state removable media
cards about the size of a postage stamp. There are two main types:
a. Read-only memory (ROM) cards
b. Read/write cards – which generally use Flash memory.
c. Both types support a common command interface.
6. Peripheral bus controllers: Symbian OS supports a number of peripheral bus standards
for removable memory and I/O cards:
a. Multimedia Card
b. SD card
c. PC card
d. Memory stick

Security and Privacy

Symbian Signed allows third-party application developers to certify their software and therefore
to get access to needed protected resources. Most software submitted to the Symbian signing
process is checked by an antivirus engine; only some samples are checked manually. As the
antivirus engine cannot guarantee detection of all potential malware, it is possible for evil codes
to pass the signing process and acquire a digital signature. Recently, a Trojan called Sexy Space
passed the security check of Symbian and obtained the digital signature. Thus, there is always a
possibility that malware can bypass the binary checks of Symbian Signed. Also, the Symbian
Signed process used to be quite painful for developers: it is slow, costly, and difficult. If your
application needed to be certified for the sales version, for example, it used to take at least seven
steps and one week to wait for the result. You also had to pay for the Publisher ID (200 USD/ year)
and the testing costs (at least 250 EUR) to get the signature. If the process of application
submission and certification is problematic, users and developers can always find a way to bypass
it. The last issue is that it is actually difficult for developers to know the exact capability set for
their applications. As there is no automatic tool for the developers to detect the capabilities needed
by their software, sometimes they just try to include as many capabilities as possible, whether or
not the capability is needed.

References:
1. “The Symbian OS Architecture Sourcebook: Design and Evolution of a Mobile Phone OS”
by Ben Morris, Symbian Press, ISBN: 978-0-470-01846-0
2. “Symbian OS Internals Real-time Kernel Programming” By Jane Sales, Symbian Press,
ISBN-13 978-0-470-02524-6
CASE STUDY: THE
LINUX SYSTEM
 THE LINUX SYSTEM

• Linux History
• Design Principles
• Kernel Modules
• Process Management
• Scheduling
• Memory Management
• File Systems
• Input and Output
• Interprocess Communication
• Network Structure
• Security
 OBJECTIVES

• To explore the history of the UNIX operating system from which Linux is
derived and the principles which Linux is designed upon
• To examine the Linux process model and illustrate how Linux schedules
processes and provides interprocess communication
• To look at memory management in Linux
• To explore how Linux implements file systems and manages I/O devices
 HISTORY

• Linux is a modern, free operating system based on UNIX standards

• First developed as a small but self-contained kernel in 1991 by Linus Torvalds,
with the major design goal of UNIX compatibility
• Its history has been one of collaboration by many users from all around the
world, corresponding almost exclusively over the Internet
• It has been designed to run efficiently and reliably on common PC hardware, but
also runs on a variety of other platforms
• The core Linux operating system kernel is entirely original, but it can run much
existing free UNIX software, resulting in an entire UNIX-compatible operating
system free from proprietary code
• Many, varying Linux Distributions including the kernel, applications, and management tools
 THE LINUX KERNEL

• Version 0.01 (May 1991) had no networking, ran only on 80386-compatible Intel
processors and on PC hardware, had extremely limited device-drive support,
and supported only the Minix file system
• Linux 1.0 (March 1994) included these new features:
• Support for UNIX’s standard TCP/IP networking protocols
• BSD-compatible socket interface for networking programming
• Device-driver support for running IP over an Ethernet
• Enhanced file system
• Support for a range of SCSI controllers for
high-performance disk access
• Extra hardware support
• Version 1.2 (March 1995) was the final PC-only Linux kernel
 LINUX 2.0

• Released in June 1996, 2.0 added two major new capabilities:

• Support for multiple architectures, including a fully 64-bit native Alpha port
• Support for multiprocessor architectures
• Other new features included:
• Improved memory-management code
• Improved TCP/IP performance
• Support for internal kernel threads, for handling dependencies between loadable
modules, and for automatic loading of modules on demand
• Standardized configuration interface
• Available for Motorola 68000-series processors, Sun Sparc systems, and for PC and
PowerMac systems
• 2.4 and 2.6 increased SMP support, added journaling file system, preemptive kernel, 64-
bit memory support
 THE LINUX SYSTEM

• Linux uses many tools developed as part of Berkeley’s BSD operating

system, MIT’s X Window System, and the Free Software Foundation's
GNU project
• The min system libraries were started by the GNU project, with
improvements provided by the Linux community
• Linux networking-administration tools were derived from 4.3BSD code;
recent BSD derivatives such as Free BSD have borrowed code from Linux
in return
• The Linux system is maintained by a loose network of developers
collaborating over the Internet, with a small number of public ftp sites
acting as de facto standard repositories
 LINUX DISTRIBUTIONS

• Standard, precompiled sets of packages, or distributions, include the basic

Linux system, system installation and management utilities, and ready-to-
install packages of common UNIX tools
• The first distributions managed these packages by simply providing a
means of unpacking all the files into the appropriate places; modern
distributions include advanced package management
• Early distributions included SLS and Slackware
• Red Hat and Debian are popular distributions from commercial and
noncommercial sources, respectively
• The RPM Package file format permits compatibility among the various
Linux distributions
 LINUX LICENSING

• The Linux kernel is distributed under the GNU General Public License
(GPL), the terms of which are set out by the Free Software Foundation

• Anyone using Linux, or creating their own derivative of Linux, may not
make the derived product proprietary; software released under the GPL
may not be redistributed as a binary-only product
 DESIGN PRINCIPLES

• Linux is a multiuser, multitasking system with a full set of UNIX-compatible

tools
• Its file system adheres to traditional UNIX semantics, and it fully
implements the standard UNIX networking model
• Main design goals are speed, efficiency, and standardization
• Linux is designed to be compliant with the relevant POSIX documents; at
least two Linux distributions have achieved official POSIX certification
• The Linux programming interface adheres to the SVR4 UNIX semantics,
rather than to BSD behavior
COMPONENTS OF A LINUX
SYSTEM
 COMPONENTS OF A LINUX SYSTEM (CONT)

• Like most UNIX implementations, Linux is composed of three main bodies

of code; the most important distinction between the kernel and all other
components
• The kernel is responsible for maintaining the important abstractions of the
operating system
• Kernel code executes in kernel mode with full access to all the physical resources
of the computer
• All kernel code and data structures are kept in the same single address space
 COMPONENTS OF A LINUX SYSTEM (CONT)

• The system libraries define a standard set of functions through which

applications interact with the kernel, and which implement much of the
operating-system functionality that does not need the full privileges of
kernel code

• The system utilities perform individual specialized management tasks

 MONOLITHIC KERNEL

• No claim that this is a micro-kernel architecture.

• The kernel is a single binary
• Interfaces between different components are simple C calls
• Not messages or inter-process communication, as in micro-kernels
 KERNEL MODULES

• Sections of kernel code that can be compiled, loaded, and unloaded

independent of the rest of the kernel
• A kernel module may typically implement a device driver, a file system,
or a networking protocol
• The module interface allows third parties to write and distribute, on
their own terms, device drivers or file systems that could not be
distributed under the GPL
• Kernel modules allow a Linux system to be set up with a standard,
minimal kernel, without any extra device drivers built in
 COMPONENTS OF MODULE SUPPORT

• Module management system:

• allows modules to be loaded into memory and communicate with the rest of the kernel
• Module loader and unloader:
• User mode utilities, work with the module management system to load and unload modules
• Driver registration system:
• Allows the modules to tell the rest of the kernel that a new driver is available
• Conflict-resolution mechanisms
• Reserving hardware resources and protecting them from accidental use by another driver.
 MODULE MANAGEMENT

• Supports loading modules into memory and letting them talk to the rest of
the kernel
• Module loading is split into two separate sections:
• Managing sections of module code in kernel memory
• Handling symbols that modules are allowed to reference
• The module requestor manages loading requested, but currently unloaded,
modules; it also regularly queries the kernel to see whether a dynamically
loaded module is still in use, and will unload it when it is no longer actively
needed
 DRIVER REGISTRATION

• Allows modules to tell the rest of the kernel that a new driver has become
available
• The kernel maintains dynamic tables of all known drivers, and provides a
set of routines to allow drivers to be added to or removed from these
tables at any time
• Registration tables include the following items:
• Device drivers
• File systems
• Network protocols
• Binary format
 CONFLICT RESOLUTION

• A mechanism that allows different device drivers to reserve hardware

resources and to protect those resources from accidental use by another
driver

• The conflict resolution module aims to:

• Prevent modules from clashing over access to hardware resources
• Prevent autoprobes from interfering with existing device drivers
• Resolve conflicts with multiple drivers trying to access the same hardware
 PROCESS MANAGEMENT

• UNIX process management separates the creation of processes and the

running of a new program into two distinct operations.
• The fork system call creates a new process
• A new program is run after a call to execve
• Under UNIX, a process encompasses all the information that the
operating system must maintain to track the context of a single execution
of a single program
• Under Linux, process properties fall into three groups: the process’s
identity, environment, and context
 PROCESS IDENTITY

• Process ID (PID). The unique identifier for the process; used to specify
processes to the operating system when an application makes a system call to
signal, modify, or wait for another process
• Credentials. Each process must have an associated user ID and one or more
group IDs that determine the process’s rights to access system resources and
files
• Personality. Not traditionally found on UNIX systems, but under Linux each
process has an associated personality identifier that can slightly modify the
semantics of certain system calls
• Used primarily by emulation libraries to request that system calls be compatible
with certain specific flavors of UNIX
 PROCESS ENVIRONMENT

• The process’s environment is inherited from its parent, and is composed of

two null-terminated vectors:
• The argument vector lists the command-line arguments used to invoke the running
program; conventionally starts with the name of the program itself
• The environment vector is a list of “NAME=VALUE” pairs that associates named
environment variables with arbitrary textual values
• Passing environment variables among processes and inheriting variables by a
process’s children are flexible means of passing information to components of
the user-mode system software
• The environment-variable mechanism provides a customization of the
operating system that can be set on a per-process basis, rather than being
configured for the system as a whole
 PROCESS CONTEXT

• The (constantly changing) state of a running program at any point in time

• The scheduling context is the most important part of the process context; it is
the information that the scheduler needs to suspend and restart the process
• The kernel maintains accounting information about the resources currently
being consumed by each process, and the total resources consumed by the
process in its lifetime so far
• The file table is an array of pointers to kernel file structures
• When making file I/O system calls, processes refer to files by their index into this
table
 PROCESS CONTEXT (CONT)

• Whereas the file table lists the existing open files, the
file-system context applies to requests to open new files
• The current root and default directories to be used for new file searches are stored
here
• The signal-handler table defines the routine in the process’s address space
to be called when specific signals arrive
• The virtual-memory context of a process describes the full contents of the
its private address space
 PROCESSES AND THREADS

• Linux uses the same internal representation for processes and threads; a
thread is simply a new process that happens to share the same address space
as its parent
• A distinction is only made when a new thread is created by the clone system
call
• fork creates a new process with its own entirely new process context
• clone creates a new process with its own identity, but that is allowed to share the
data structures of its parent
• Using clone gives an application fine-grained control over exactly what is
shared between two threads
 SCHEDULING

• The job of allocating CPU time to different tasks within an operating system

• While scheduling is normally thought of as the running and interrupting of

processes, in Linux, scheduling also includes the running of the various kernel tasks

• Running kernel tasks encompasses both tasks that are requested by a running
process and tasks that execute internally on behalf of a device driver
• As of 2.5, new scheduling algorithm – preemptive, priority-based
• Real-time range
• nice value
 RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN
PRIORITIES AND TIME-SLICE
LENGTH
LIST OF TASKS INDEXED BY
PRIORITY
 KERNEL SYNCHRONIZATION

• A request for kernel-mode execution can occur in two ways:

• A running program may request an operating system service, either explicitly via a
system call, or implicitly, for example, when a page fault occurs
• A device driver may deliver a hardware interrupt that causes the CPU to start
executing a kernel-defined handler for that interrupt
• Kernel synchronization requires a framework that will allow the kernel’s
critical sections to run without interruption by another critical section
 KERNEL SYNCHRONIZATION (CONT)

• Linux uses two techniques to protect critical sections:

1. Normal kernel code is nonpreemptible (until 2.4)
– when a time interrupt is received while a process is
executing a kernel system service routine, the kernel’s
need_resched flag is set so that the scheduler will run
once the system call has completed and control is
about to be returned to user mode
2. The second technique applies to critical sections that occur in an interrupt service
routines
– By using the processor’s interrupt control hardware to disable interrupts during a
critical section, the kernel guarantees that it can proceed without the risk of concurrent
access of shared data structures
 KERNEL SYNCHRONIZATION (CONT)

• To avoid performance penalties, Linux’s kernel uses a synchronization

architecture that allows long critical sections to run without having interrupts
disabled for the critical section’s entire duration
• Interrupt service routines are separated into a top half and a bottom half.
• The top half is a normal interrupt service routine, and runs with recursive interrupts
disabled
• The bottom half is run, with all interrupts enabled, by a miniature scheduler that
ensures that bottom halves never interrupt themselves
• This architecture is completed by a mechanism for disabling selected bottom halves
while executing normal, foreground kernel code
 INTERRUPT PROTECTION
LEVELS

• Each level may be interrupted by code running at a higher level, but

will never be interrupted by code running at the same or a lower
level
• User processes can always be preempted by another process when a
time-sharing scheduling interrupt occurs
 PROCESS SCHEDULING

• Linux uses two process-scheduling algorithms:

• A time-sharing algorithm for fair preemptive scheduling between multiple processes
• A real-time algorithm for tasks where absolute priorities are more important than
fairness
• A process’s scheduling class defines which algorithm to apply
• For time-sharing processes, Linux uses a prioritized, credit based algorithm
• The crediting rule
credits
credits :  priority
2
factors in both the process’s history and its priority
• This crediting system automatically prioritizes interactive or I/O-bound processes
 PROCESS SCHEDULING (CONT)

• Linux implements the FIFO and round-robin real-time scheduling classes; in

both cases, each process has a priority in addition to its scheduling class
• The scheduler runs the process with the highest priority; for equal-priority processes,
it runs the process waiting the longest
• FIFO processes continue to run until they either exit or block
• A round-robin process will be preempted after a while and moved to the end of the
scheduling queue, so that round-robing processes of equal priority automatically time-
share between themselves
 SYMMETRIC MULTIPROCESSING

• Linux 2.0 was the first Linux kernel to support SMP hardware; separate
processes or threads can execute in parallel on separate processors

• To preserve the kernel’s nonpreemptible synchronization requirements, SMP

imposes the restriction, via a single kernel spinlock, that only one processor at
a time may execute kernel-mode code
 MEMORY MANAGEMENT

• Linux’s physical memory-management system deals with allocating and freeing

pages, groups of pages, and small blocks of memory

• It has additional mechanisms for handling virtual memory, memory mapped

into the address space of running processes

• Splits memory into 3 different zones due to hardware characteristics

 RELATIONSHIP OF ZONES AND
PHYSIC AL ADDRESSES ON 80X86
SPLITTING OF MEMORY IN A
BUDDY HEAP
 MANAGING PHYSICAL
MEMORY

• The page allocator allocates and frees all physical pages; it can allocate
ranges of physically-contiguous pages on request
• The allocator uses a buddy-heap algorithm to keep track of available
physical pages
• Each allocatable memory region is paired with an adjacent partner
• Whenever two allocated partner regions are both freed up they are combined to
form a larger region
• If a small memory request cannot be satisfied by allocating an existing small free
region, then a larger free region will be subdivided into two partners to satisfy the
request
• Memory allocations in the Linux kernel occur either statically (drivers
reserve a contiguous area of memory during system boot time) or
dynamically (via the page allocator)
• Also uses slab allocator for kernel memory
21.07
 VIRTUAL MEMORY

• The VM system maintains the address space visible to each process: It creates
pages of virtual memory on demand, and manages the loading of those pages
from disk or their swapping back out to disk as required
• The VM manager maintains two separate views of a process’s address space:
• A logical view describing instructions concerning the layout of the address space
• The address space consists of a set of nonoverlapping regions, each representing a
continuous, page-aligned subset of the address space
• A physical view of each address space which is stored in the hardware page tables for
the process
 VIRTUAL MEMORY (CONT)

• Virtual memory regions are characterized by:

• The backing store, which describes from where the pages for a region come; regions
are usually backed by a file or by nothing (demand-zero memory)
• The region’s reaction to writes (page sharing or copy-on-write)

• The kernel creates a new virtual address space

1. When a process runs a new program with the exec system call
2. Upon creation of a new process by the fork system call
 VIRTUAL MEMORY (CONT)

• The VM paging system relocates pages of memory from physical memory out
to disk when the memory is needed for something else

• The VM paging system can be divided into two sections:

• The pageout-policy algorithm decides which pages to write out to disk, and when
• The paging mechanism actually carries out the transfer, and pages data back into
physical memory as needed
 VIRTUAL MEMORY (CONT)

• The Linux kernel reserves a constant, architecture-dependent region of the

virtual address space of every process for its own internal use

• This kernel virtual-memory area contains two regions:

• A static area that contains page table references to every available physical page of
memory in the system, so that there is a simple translation from physical to virtual
addresses when running kernel code
• The reminder of the reserved section is not reserved for any specific purpose; its
page-table entries can be modified to point to any other areas of memory
 STATIC AND DYNAMIC LINKING

• A program whose necessary library functions are embedded directly in the

program’s executable binary file is statically linked to its libraries

• The main disadvantage of static linkage is that every program generated must
contain copies of exactly the same common system library functions

• Dynamic linking is more efficient in terms of both physical memory and disk-
space usage because it loads the system libraries into memory only once
 FILE SYSTEMS

• To the user, Linux’s file system appears as a hierarchical directory tree obeying
UNIX semantics
• Internally, the kernel hides implementation details and manages the multiple
different file systems via an abstraction layer, that is, the virtual file system (VFS)
• The Linux VFS is designed around object-oriented principles and is composed of
two components:
• A set of definitions that define what a file object is allowed to look like
• The inode-object and the file-object structures represent individual files
• the file system object represents an entire file system
• A layer of software to manipulate those objects
 THE LINUX EXT2FS FILE
SYSTEM

• Ext2fs uses a mechanism similar to that of BSD Fast File System (ffs) for
locating data blocks belonging to a specific file
• The main differences between ext2fs and ffs concern their disk allocation
policies
• In ffs, the disk is allocated to files in blocks of 8Kb, with blocks being subdivided into
fragments of 1Kb to store small files or partially filled blocks at the end of a file
• Ext2fs does not use fragments; it performs its allocations in smaller units
• The default block size on ext2fs is 1Kb, although 2Kb and 4Kb blocks are also
supported
• Ext2fs uses allocation policies designed to place logically adjacent blocks of a file
into physically adjacent blocks on disk, so that it can submit an I/O request for
several disk blocks as a single operation
EXT2FS BLOCK-ALLOCATION
POLICIES
 THE LINUX PROC FILE SYSTEM

• The proc file system does not store data, rather, its contents are computed on
demand according to user file I/O requests
• proc must implement a directory structure, and the file contents within; it
must then define a unique and persistent inode number for each directory and
files it contains
• It uses this inode number to identify just what operation is required when a user tries
to read from a particular file inode or perform a lookup in a particular directory
inode
• When data is read from one of these files, proc collects the appropriate information,
formats it into text form and places it into the requesting process’s read buffer
 INPUT AND OUTPUT

• The Linux device-oriented file system accesses disk storage through two caches:
• Data is cached in the page cache, which is unified with the virtual memory system
• Metadata is cached in the buffer cache, a separate cache indexed by the physical disk block
• Linux splits all devices into three classes:
• block devices allow random access to completely independent, fixed size blocks of data
• character devices include most other devices; they don’t need to support the functionality of
regular files
• network devices are interfaced via the kernel’s networking subsystem
DEVICE-DRIVER BLOCK
STRUCTURE
 BLOCK DEVICES

• Provide the main interface to all disk devices in a system

• The block buffer cache serves two main purposes:

• it acts as a pool of buffers for active I/O
• it serves as a cache for completed I/O

• The request manager manages the reading and writing of buffer contents to and
from a block device driver
 CHARACTER DEVICES

• A device driver which does not offer random access to fixed blocks of data
• A character device driver must register a set of functions which implement the
driver’s various file I/O operations
• The kernel performs almost no preprocessing of a file read or write request to
a character device, but simply passes on the request to the device
• The main exception to this rule is the special subset of character device
drivers which implement terminal devices, for which the kernel maintains a
standard interface
 INTERPROCESS COMMUNICATION

• Like UNIX, Linux informs processes that an event has occurred via signals
• There is a limited number of signals, and they cannot carry information: Only
the fact that a signal occurred is available to a process
• The Linux kernel does not use signals to communicate with processes with are
running in kernel mode, rather, communication within the kernel is
accomplished via scheduling states and wait.queue structures
 PASSING DATA BETWEEN PROCESSES

• The pipe mechanism allows a child process to inherit a communication channel

to its parent, data written to one end of the pipe can be read a the other

• Shared memory offers an extremely fast way of communicating; any data

written by one process to a shared memory region can be read immediately
by any other process that has mapped that region into its address space

• To obtain synchronization, however, shared memory must be used in

conjunction with another Interprocess-communication mechanism
 SHARED MEMORY OBJECT

• The shared-memory object acts as a backing store for shared-memory regions

in the same way as a file can act as backing store for a memory-mapped
memory region

• Shared-memory mappings direct page faults to map in pages from a persistent

shared-memory object

• Shared-memory objects remember their contents even if no processes are

currently mapping them into virtual memory
 NETWORK STRUCTURE

• Networking is a key area of functionality for Linux.

• It supports the standard Internet protocols for UNIX to UNIX communications
• It also implements protocols native to nonUNIX operating systems, in particular, protocols
used on PC networks, such as Appletalk and IPX

• Internally, networking in the Linux kernel is implemented by three layers of

software:
• The socket interface
• Protocol drivers
• Network device drivers
 NETWORK STRUCTURE (CONT)

• The most important set of protocols in the Linux networking system is the
internet protocol suite
• It implements routing between different hosts anywhere on the network
• On top of the routing protocol are built the UDP, TCP and ICMP protocols
 SECURITY

• The pluggable authentication modules (PAM) system is available under Linux

• PAM is based on a shared library that can be used by any system component
that needs to authenticate users
• Access control under UNIX systems, including Linux, is performed through the
use of unique numeric identifiers (uid and gid)
• Access control is performed by assigning objects a protections mask, which
specifies which access modes—read, write, or execute—are to be granted to
processes with owner, group, or world access
 SECURITY (CONT)

• Linux augments the standard UNIX setuid mechanism in two ways:

• It implements the POSIX specification’s saved user-id mechanism, which allows a
process to repeatedly drop and reacquire its effective uid
• It has added a process characteristic that grants just a subset of the rights of the
effective uid

• Linux provides another mechanism that allows a client to selectively pass

access to a single file to some server process without granting it any other
privileges
THANK YOU
OS LAB EXPERIMENTS

Dr. V. Vijayarajan
Vellore Institute of Technology
 LAB EXPERIMENTS
Study of basic Linux commands and Process Creation, Parent Child, Orphan Process and Zombie Process.

Shell Programming

CPU Scheduling Algorithms: FCFS, SJF, Priority, RR, SRTF

IPC through Shared Memory.

Process Synchronization: Producer-Consumer Problem, Readers-Writers Problem, Dinning Philosophers

Problem (use Semaphore)

Banker's Algorithm: Deadlock Avoidance, Safe-state checking, Granting additional resource requests

Memory Placement Algorithms: First-fit, Best-fit, Worst-fit

Memory Replacement Algorithms: FIFO, LRU, Optimal

Disk Scheduling Algorithms: FCFS, SSTF, SCAN, LOOK, C-SCAN, C-LOOK

Thank you