CASE STUDY ON UNIX
What is UNIX?
UNIX is an operating system which was first developed in the 1960s, and has been under constant
development ever since. . It is a stable, multi-user, multi-tasking system for servers, desktops and laptops.
UNIX is highly portable across hardware since it is written in C language.
UNIX allows only needed modules to be loaded in memory (modularity).It has an inverted tree like file
structure, with files and directories created within the file structure. Each file can be protected using read,
write and execute permissions for the user, group and others(security).. UNIX uses TCP/IP protocol.
CAD/CAM applications best perform in a UNIX system, with its varied support for graphic cards.
UNIX systems also have a graphical user interface (GUI) similar to Microsoft Windows which provides an
easy to use environment. However, knowledge of UNIX is required for operations which are not covered
by a graphical program, or when there is no windows interface available, for example, in a telnet session.
Types of UNIX
There are many different versions of UNIX, although they share common similarities. The most popular
varieties of UNIX are Sun Solaris, GNU/Linux, and MacOS X.Here in the School, we use Solaris on our
servers and workstations, and Fedora Core Linux on theservers and desktop PCs.
History of UNIX
1969: Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie started working on a multi-user OS on PDP-7,Bell Labs.
1970: OS named as UNIX
1973: OS rewritten in C
1975: First Version of Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD)
1982: AT&T announced UNIX System III, first public release.
1983: AT&T announced UNIX System V, the first supported release. Installed base45,000.
1984: Berkeley releases 4.2BSD, includes TCP/IP. X/Open formed
1984: System V Release 2 introduced. 1, 00,000 installations worldwide.
1986: 4.3BSD released, including internet name server. Installed base 2, 50,000.
1987: System V Release 3 introduced. Around 7, 50,000 installations.
1988: Open Software Foundation formed.
1989: System V Release 4 ships unifying System V, BSD . 1.2 million installations.
its varied support for graphic cards.
Layered Architecture
UNIX is a layered operating system. The innermost layer is the hardware that provides the services for the
OS. The operating system, referred to in UNIX as the kernel, interacts directly with the hardware and
provides the services to the user programs. Most well written user programs are independent of the
underlying hardware, making them readily portable to new systems.
Fig 1.1
Layered Architecture of the UNIX System You can have many users logged into a system simultaneously,
each running many programs. It's the kernel's job to keep each process and user separate and to regulate
access to system hardware, including CPU, memory, disk and other I/O devices.
Aims and Objectives
To use an example of a real OS (UNIX) to give context to the course
UNIX is one of the most popular OSs on PCs to Mainframes
De Facto standard for Open Systems
The Shell
The shell is the interface between the command language user and the OS
The shell is a user interface and comes in many forms (Bourne Shell, sh; Berkeley C Shell, csh; Korn
Shell, ksh; Restricted Shell, rsh)
User allowed to enter input when prompted ($ or %)
System supports all shells running concurrently. Appropriate shell is loaded at login, but user can
usually (except in sh, rsh) dynamically change the shell
A UNIX command takes the form of
executable_file [-options] arguments
The shell runs a command interpretation loop
o accept command
o read command
o process command
o execute command
Executing the command involves creating a child process running in another shell (an environment
within which the process can run). This is done by Forking.
The parent process usually waits for the child to terminate before re-entering the command
interpretation loop
Programs can be run in the background by suffixing the command-line entry with an ampersand (&).
Parent will not wait for child to terminate
The Processing Environment
Input and Output
UNIX automatically opens three files for the process
STDIN - standard input (attached to keyboard)
STDOUT - standard output (attached to terminal)
STDERR - standard error (attached to terminal)
Because UNIX treats I/O devices as special types of files, STDIO can be easily redirected to other
devices and files
who > list _of _users
The Kernel
Central part of the OS which provides system services to application programs and the shell
The kernel manages processes, memory, I/O and the Timer - so this is not the same as the kernel that
we covered in Lecture 3!
UNIX supports multiprogramming
Processes have their own address space - for protection
Each process's process environment is composed of an unmodifiable re-entrant text (code) region, a
modifiable data region and a stack region.
The text region is shareable
Processes can modify their environment only through calls to the OS
The File System
UNIX uses HDS with root as its origin
A directory is a special UNIX file which contains file names and their i-nodes (index nodes)
Subdirectories appear as file entries
Directories cannot be modified directly, but can are changed by the operating system when files and
subdirectories are created and deleted
File and Directory names must be unique within a particular directory (i.e., the path name must be
unique)
The File System is a data structure that is resident on disk
It contains a super block (definition of the file system); an array of i-nodes (definition of the files in
the system); the actual file data blocks; and a collection of free blocks
Space allocation is performed in fixed-size blocks
The i-node
Contains
the file owner's user-id and group-id
protection bits for owner, group, and world
the block locator
file size
accounting information
number of links to the file
file type
The Block Locator
Consists of 13 fields
First 10 fields points directly to first 10 file blocks
11th field is an indirect block address
12th field is a double-indirect block address
13th field is a triple-indirect block address
Permissions
Each UNIX file and directory has 3 sets of permission bits associated with it
These give permissions for owner, group and world
System files (inc. devices) are owned by root, wizard, or superuser (terminology!)
Root has unlimited access to the entire installation - whoever owns the files!
Setuid
When you need to change your password, you need to modify a file called /etc/passwd. But this file
is owned by root and nobody other than root has write permission!
The passwd command (to change passwords) is owned by root, with execute permission for world.
The setuid is a bit which when set on an executable file temporarily gives the user the same
privileges as the owner of the file
This is similar in concept to some OS commands executing in Supervisor mode to perform a service
for an otherwise unauthorised process
Process Management
Description of Process Management in SunOS
Scheduling
Priority-based pre-emptive scheduling. Priorities in range -20 to 20. Default 0.
Priorities for runnable processes are recomputed every second
Allows for ageing, but also increases or decreases process's priority based on past behaviour
I/O-bound processes receive better service
CPU-bound processes do not suffer indefinite postponement because the algorithm `forgets' 90%
CPU usage in 5*n seconds (where n is the average number of runnable processes in the past 60
seconds)
Signals
Signals are software equivalents to hardware interrupts used to inform processes asynchronously of
the occurrence of an event
Interprocess Communication
UNIX System V uses semaphores to control access to shared resources
For processes to exchange data or communicate, pipes are used
A pipe is a unidirectional channel between 2 processes
UNIX automatically provides buffering, scheduling services and synchronisation to processes in a
pipe line
The presence of a pipe causes the processes in the pipe line to share STDIO devices
who | grep cstaff
The output from who is directed to a buffer. grep will take its input from this buffer. The output
from grep will be displayed on the terminal
Timers
UNIX makes 3 interval timers available to each process
Each counts down to zero and then generates a signal
The first runs continuously
The second runs while a process is executing process code
The third runs while the process executes process code or kernel code
Memory Management
Address Mapping (Virtual Storage) - Paged MMS
Virtual address V is dynamically translated to real address (P, D)
Direct Mapping is used, with the Page Map held in a high-speed RAM cache
Each Page Map Entry contains a modified bit, an accessed bit, a valid bit (if the page is resident in
PM) and protection bits
The system maintains 8 page maps - 1 for the kernel (not available to processes) and 7 for processes
(contexts)
2 context registers are used - one points to the running process's page map and the other to the
kernel's page map
The replacement strategy replaces the page that has not been active for longest (LRU)
Paging
SunOS maintains 2 data structures to control paging
The free list contains empty page frames
The loop contains an ordered list of all allocated page frames (except for the kernel)
The pager ensures that there is always free space in memory
When a page is swapped out (not necessarily replaced) the system judges whether the page is likely
to be used again
If the page contains a text region, the page is added to the bottom of the free list, otherwise it is
added to the top
When a page fault occurs, if the page is still in the free list it is reclaimed
I/O
Data
All data is treated as a byte stream
UNIX does not impose any structure on data - the applications do
So data can be manipulated in any way - but programmers must explicitly structure the data
Devices
A device is just a special type of file
These files can have protection bits, so that a printer, e.g., cannot be read
Permission to use sensitive devices, e.g., magnetic disk, is restricted to root and all other users have
to use system calls to executable files which have their setuid bit set
Summary
Explained how UNIX is constructed with reference to material we have covered in the course
The UNIX File System
Process Management in UNIX
UNIX Memory Management
UNIX I/O Device Independence
Command Interpretation Loop
