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 the servers 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 ar
e independent of the underlying hardware, making them readily portable to new
systems.
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
accept command
read command
process command
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
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, amodifiable 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 andsubdirectories are created and deleted
File and Directory names must be unique within a particular directory (i.e.,
the path name must beunique)
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 inthe system); the actual file data blocks; and a
collection of free blocks
Space allocation is performed in fixed-size blocksThe i-node
Containsthe file owner's user-id and group-id protection bits for owner,
group, and worldthe block locatorfile sizeaccounting informationnumber of
links to the filefile typeThe 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 fileis 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 servicefor 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 60seconds
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 inPM) and protection bits
The system maintains 8 page maps - 1 for the kernel (not available to
processes) and 7 for processes(contexts) context registers
are used - one points to the running process's page map and the other to
thekernel'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 likelyto be used again
If the page contains a text region, the page is added to the bottom of the free
list, otherwise it isadded 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
