Unit-4: Device management

Device management in operating system known as the management of the

I/O devices such as a keyboard, magnetic tape, disk, printer, microphone,
USB ports, scanner, etc.as well as the supporting units like control channels.

Technique of device management in the operating system

An operating system or the OS manages communication with the devices

through their respective drivers. The operating system component provides a
uniform interface to access devices of varied physical attributes. For device
management in operating system:

 Keep tracks of all devices and the program which is responsible to perform
this is called I/O controller.
 Monitoring the status of each device such as storage drivers, printers and
other peripheral devices.
 Enforcing preset policies and taking a decision which process gets the device
when and for how long.
 Allocates and Deallocates the device in an efficient way.De-allocating them
at two levels: at the process level when I/O command has been executed and
the device is temporarily released, and at the job level, when the job is
finished and the device is permanently released.
 Optimizes the performance of individual devices.

Types of devices

The OS peripheral devices can be categorized into 3: Dedicated, Shared, and

Virtual. The differences among them are the functions of the characteristics
of the devices as well as how they are managed by the Device Manager.

Dedicated devices:-

Such type of devices in the device management in operating system are

dedicated or assigned to only one job at a time until that job releases them.
 Devices like printers, tape drivers, plotters etc. demand such allocation
scheme since it would be awkward if several users share them at the same
point of time. The disadvantages of such kind f devices s the inefficiency
resulting from the allocation of the device to a single user for the entire
duration of job execution even though the device is not put to use 100% of
the time.

Shared devices:-

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These devices can be allocated o several processes. Disk-DASD can be

shared among several processes at the same time by interleaving their
requests. The interleaving is carefully controlled by the Device Manager and
all issues must be resolved on the basis of predetermined policies.

Virtual Devices:-

These devices are the combination of the first two types and they are
dedicated devices which are transformed into shared devices. For example, a
printer converted into a shareable device via spooling program which re-
routes all the print requests to a disk. A print job is not sent straight to the
printer, instead, it goes to the disk(spool)until it is fully prepared with all the
necessary sequences and formatting, then it goes to the printers. This
technique can transform one printer into several virtual printers which leads
to better performance and use.

input/output devices
input/Output devices are the devices that are responsible for the input/output
operations in a computer system.

Basically there are following two types of input/output devices:

 Block devices
 Character devices

Block Devices

A block device stores information in block with fixed-size and own-address.

It is possible to read/write each and every block independently in case of

block device.

In case of disk, it is always possible to seek another cylinder and then wait
for required block to rotate under head without mattering where the arm
currently is. Therefore, disk is a block addressable device.

Character Devices

A character device accepts/delivers a stream of characters without regarding

to any block structure.

Character device isn’t addressable.

Character device doesn’t have any seek operation.

There are too many character devices present in a computer system such as
printer, mice, rats, network interfaces etc. These four are the common
character devices.

Input/Output Devices Examples

Here are the list of some most popular and common input/output devices:

 Keyboard
 Mouse
 Monitor
 Modem
 Scanner
 Laser Printer
 Ethernet
 Disk

Storage devices
There are two types of storage devices:-

 Volatile Storage Device –

It looses its contents when the power of the device is removed.
 Non-Volatile Storage device –
It does not looses its contents when the power is removed. It holds all the
data when the power is removed.

Secondary Storage is used as an extension of main memory. Secondary

storage devices can hold the data permanently.
Storage devices consists of Registers, Cache, Main-Memory, Electronic-
Disk, Magnetic-Disk, Optical-Disk, Magnetic-Tapes. Each storage system
provides the basic system of storing a datum and of holding the datum until it
is retrieved at a later time. All the storage devices differ in speed, cost, size
and volatility. The most common Secondary-storage device is a Magnetic-
disk, which provides storage for both programs and data.
 In this hierarchy all the storage devices are arranged according to speed and
cost. The higher levels are expensive, but they are fast. As we move down the
hierarchy, the cost per bit generally decreases, where as the access time
generally increases.

The storage systems above the Electronic disk are Volatile, where as those
below are Non-Volatile.
An Electronic disk can be either designed to be either Volatile or Non-
Volatile. During normal operation, the electronic disk stores data in a
large DRAM array, which is Volatile. But many electronic disk devices
contain a hidden magnetic hard disk and a battery for backup power. If
external power is interrupted, the electronic disk controller copies the data
from RAM to the magnetic disk. When external power is restored, the
controller copies the data back into the RAM.

The design of a complete memory system must balance all the factors. It
must use only as much expensive memory as necessary while providing as
much inexpensive, Non-Volatile memory as possible. Caches can be installed
to improve performance where a large access-time or transfer-rate disparity
exists between two components.

Buffering
A buffer is a memory area that stores data being transferred between two
devices or between a device and an application.

Uses of I/O Buffering :

 Buffering is done to deal effectively with a speed mismatch between the

producer and consumer of the data stream.
 A buffer is produced in main memory to heap up the bytes received from
modem.
 After receiving the data in the buffer, the data get transferred to disk from
buffer in a single operation.
 This process of data transfer is not instantaneous, therefore the modem needs
another buffer in order to store additional incoming data.
 When the first buffer got filled, then it is requested to transfer the data to
disk.
 The modem then starts filling the additional incoming data in the second
buffer while the data in the first buffer getting transferred to disk.
 When both the buffers completed their tasks, then the modem switches back
to the first buffer while the data from the second buffer get transferred to the
disk.
 The use of two buffers disintegrates the producer and the consumer of the
data, thus minimizes the time requirements between them.
 Buffering also provides variations for devices that have different data transfer
sizes.

Types of various I/O buffering techniques :

1. Single buffer :
A buffer is provided by the operating system to the system portion of the
main memory.

Block oriented device –

 System buffer takes the input.

 After taking the input, the block gets transferred to the user space by the
process and then the process requests for another block.
 Two blocks works simultaneously, when one block of data is processed by
the user process, the next block is being read in.
 OS can swap the processes.
 OS can record the data of system buffer to user processes.

Stream oriented device –

 Line- at a time operation is used for scroll made terminals. User inputs one
line at a time, with a carriage return signaling at the end of a line.
 Byte-at a time operation is used on forms mode, terminals when each
keystroke is significant.
 2. Double buffer :

Block oriented –

 There are two buffers in the system.

 One buffer is used by the driver or controller to store data while waiting for it
to be taken by higher level of the hierarchy.
 Other buffer is used to store data from the lower level module.
 Double buffering is also known as buffer swapping.
 A major disadvantage of double buffering is that the complexity of the
process get increased.
 If the process performs rapid bursts of I/O, then using double buffering may
be deficient.

Stream oriented –

 Line- at a time I/O, the user process need not be suspended for input or
output, unless process runs ahead of the double buffer.
 Byte- at a time operations, double buffer offers no advantage over a single
buffer of twice the length.

3. Circular buffer:
 When more than two buffers are used, the collection of buffers is itself
referred to as a circular buffer.
 In this, the data do not directly passed from the producer to the consumer
because the data would change due to overwriting of buffers before they had
been consumed.
 The producer can only fill up to buffer i-1 while data in buffer i is waiting to
be consumed.

Secondry storage structure

Secondary storage devices are those devices whose memory is non volatile,
meaning, the stored data will be intact even if the system is turned off. Here
are a few things worth noting about secondary storage.

 Secondary storage is also called auxiliary storage.

 Secondary storage is less expensive when compared to primary memory like
RAMs.
 The speed of the secondary storage is also lesser than that of primary storage.
 Hence, the data which is less frequently accessed is kept in the secondary
storage.
 A few examples are magnetic disks, magnetic tapes, removable thumb drives
etc.
Magnetic Disk Structure

In modern computers, most of the secondary storage is in the form of

magnetic disks. Hence, knowing the structure of a magnetic disk is necessary
to understand how the data in the disk is accessed by the computer.

Structure of a magnetic disk

A magnetic disk contains several platters. Each platter is divided into

circular shaped tracks. The length of the tracks near the centre is less than
the length of the tracks farther from the centre. Each track is further divided
into sectors, as shown in the figure.
 Tracks of the same distance from centre form a cylinder. A read-write head is
used to read data from a sector of the magnetic disk.

The speed of the disk is measured as two parts:

 Transfer rate: This is the rate at which the data moves from disk to the
computer.
 Random access time: It is the sum of the seek time and rotational latency.

Seek time is the time taken by the arm to move to the required
track. Rotational latency is defined as the time taken by the arm to reach the
required sector in the track.

Even though the disk is arranged as sectors and tracks physically, the data is
logically arranged and addressed as an array of blocks of fixed size. The size
of a block can be 512 or 1024 bytes. Each logical block is mapped with a
sector on the disk, sequentially. In this way, each sector in the disk will have
a logical address.

Disk Scheduling Algorithms

On a typical multiprogramming system, there will usually be multiple disk

access requests at any point of time. So those requests must be scheduled to
achieve good efficiency. Disk scheduling is similar to process scheduling.
Some of the disk scheduling algorithms are described below.

First Come First Serve

This algorithm performs requests in the same order asked by the system.
Let’s take an example where the queue has the following requests with
cylinder numbers as follows:

98, 183, 37, 122, 14, 124, 65, 67

Assume the head is initially at cylinder 56. The head moves in the given
order in the queue i.e., 56→98→183→…→67.

Shortest Seek Time First (SSTF)

Here the position which is closest to the current head position is chosen first.
Consider the previous example where disk queue looks like,

98, 183, 37, 122, 14, 124, 65, 67

Assume the head is initially at cylinder 56. The next closest cylinder
to 56 is 65, and then the next nearest one is 67, then 37, 14, so on.
SCAN algorithm

This algorithm is also called the elevator algorithm because of it’s behavior.
Here, first the head moves in a direction (say backward) and covers all the
requests in the path. Then it moves in the opposite direction and covers the
remaining requests in the path. This behavior is similar to that of an elevator.
Let’s take the previous example,

98, 183, 37, 122, 14, 124, 65, 67

Assume the head is initially at cylinder 56. The head moves in backward
direction and accesses 37 and 14. Then it goes in the opposite direction and
accesses the cylinders as they come in the path.
Disk management
The operating system is responsible for several aspects of disk management.

Disk Formatting

A new magnetic disk is a blank slate. It is just platters of a magnetic

recording material. Before a disk can store data, it must be divided into
sectors that the disk controller can read and write. This process is called low-
level formatting (or physical formatting).

Low-level formatting fills the disk with a special data structure for each
sector. The data structure for a sector consists of a header, a data area, and a
trailer. The header and trailer contain information used by the disk controller,
such as a sector number and an error-correcting code (ECC).

To use a disk to hold files, the operating system still needs to record its own
data structures on the disk. It does so in two steps. The first step is
to partition the disk into one or more groups of cylinders. The operating
system can treat each partition as though it were a separate disk. For instance,
one partition can hold a copy of the operating system’s executable code,
while another holds user files. After partitioning, the second step is logical
formatting (or creation of a file system). In this step, the operating system
stores the initial file-system data structures onto the disk.

Boot block

When a computer is powered up or rebooted, it needs to have an initial

program to run. This initial program is called the bootstrap program. It
initializes all aspects of the system (i.e. from CPU registers to device
controllers and the contents of main memory) and then starts the operating
system.

To do its job, the bootstrap program finds the operating system kernel on
disk, loads that kernel into memory, and jumps to an initial address to begin
the operating-system execution.

For most computers, the bootstrap is stored in read-only

memory (ROM). This location is convenient because ROM needs no
initialization and is at a fixed location that the processor can start executing
when powered up or reset. And since ROM is read-only, it cannot be infected
by a computer virus. The problem is that changing this bootstrap code
requires changing the ROM hardware chips.

For this reason, most systems store a tiny bootstrap loader program in the
boot ROM, whose only job is to bring in a full bootstrap program from disk.
The full bootstrap program can be changed easily: A new version is simply
written onto the disk. The full bootstrap program is stored in a partition (at a
fixed location on the disk) is called the boot blocks. A disk that has a boot
partition is called a boot disk or system disk.
Bad Blocks

Since disks have moving parts and small tolerances, they are prone to failure.
Sometimes the failure is complete, and the disk needs to be replaced, and its
contents restored from backup media to the new disk.

More frequently, one or more sectors become defective. Most disks even
come from the factory with bad blocks. Depending on the disk and controller
in use, these blocks are handled in a variety of ways.

The controller maintains a list of bad blocks on the disk. The list is initialized
during the low-level format at the factory and is updated over the life of the
disk. The controller can be told to replace each bad sector logically with one
of the spare sectors. This scheme is known as sector sparing or forwarding.

Swap-space management
Swapping is a memory management technique used in multi-programming to
increase the number of process sharing the CPU. It is a technique of
removing a process from main memory and storing it into secondary
memory, and then bringing it back into main memory for continued
execution. This action of moving a process out from main memory to
secondary memory is called Swap Out and the action of moving a process
out from secondary memory to main memory is called Swap In.

Swap-Space :
The area on the disk where the swapped out processes are stored is called
swap space.

Swap-Space Management :
Swap-Swap management is another low-level task pf the operating system.
Disk space is used as an extension of main memory by the virtual memory.
As we know the fact that disk access is much slower than memory access, In
the swap-space management we are using disk space, so it will significantly
 decreases system performance. Basically, in all our systems we require the
best throughput, so the goal of this swap-space implementation is to provide
the virtual memory the best throughput.

Swap-Space Use :
Swap-space is used by the different operating-system in various ways. The
systems which are implementing swapping may use swap space to hold the
entire process which may include image, code and data segments. Paging
systems may simply store pages that have been pushed out of the main
memory. The need of swap space on a system can vary from a megabytes to
gigabytes but it also depends on the amount of physical memory, the virtual
memory it is backing and the way in which it is using the virtual memory.

A swap space can reside in one of the two places –

1. Normal file system

2. Separate disk partition

Let, if the swap-space is simply a large file within the file system. To create
it, name it and allocate its space normal file-system routines can be used.
This approach, through easy to implement, is inefficient. Navigating the
directory structures and the disk-allocation data structures takes time and
extra disk access. During reading or writing of a process image, external
fragmentation can greatly increase swapping times by forcing multiple
seeks.

There is also an alternate to create the swap space which is in a separate raw
partition. There is no presence of any file system in this place. Rather, a
swap space storage manager is used to allocate and de-allocate the blocks.
from the raw partition. It uses the algorithms for speed rather than storage
efficiency, because we know the access time of swap space is shorter than the
file system. By this Internal fragmentation increases, but it is acceptable,
because the life span of the swap space is shorter than the files in the file
system. Raw partition approach creates fixed amount of swap space in case of
the disk partitioning.
Some operating systems are flexible and can swap both in raw partitions and
in the file system space, example: Linux.

Disk reliability

References:

Unit-4: Device management – B.C.A study (bcastudyguide.com)