Chapter 1:
Introductio
n to
Operating
Systems
Smruti R Sarangi
IIT Delhi
(c) Smruti R. Sarangi, 2023 1
What is an Operating Systems (OS)?
It is a special program
Can control other programs
Exercises control over hardware
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Background Required for the Course
C/C++ programming proficiency
Computer Architecture
Data Structures
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Key Components Who manages these?
CPU
Memory Hard
Disk
I/0 devices
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Place of the 0S
Programs
P1 P2 P3 Between
application
software and
hardware
Operating System
CPUs
Hardware
Memory
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I/O & Storage
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Why do we need a special program,
the 0S?
• Many programs share common hardware (HW)
• The access to common hardware needs to be regulated
• Hardware: CPU, memory, I/0 and storage
• Schedule the CPU
• Interface with devices
• Manage storage
• Manage memory
Power, temperature
• Security
and security concerns
• Make it easy to build distributed systems
• Makes it easy to work with HW
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Basic Idea: Arbitration and Regulating
Accesses
• A process is an instance of a running program Arbitration
• At any point of time multiple processes are active
• The processes have different requirements
• The 0S arbitrates between the processes
• Accessing HW is very complex
Access
• Elaborate protocols
• Same code needs to run on multiple machines
• Provide a common interface: device derivers in the 0S
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Space of operating Systems
HPC and server
Desktop/laptop
Mobile
Even wearables
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History of Linux : Milestones
1991 Linus Torvalds started extending the MINIX 0S
1992 Released under the GPL license. Available on the web.
2000 – 2010 Takes over the server and HPC market
Android (Linux-based) becomes the most popular mobile
2012 – 2020 Operating System
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Why teach a real world 0S?
• Conveys a realistic picture
• Provides real-world skills
We will learn generic concepts in the context of Linux
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Open Source Design
Freely available source code
www.kernel.org
https://elixir.bootlin.com/linux/v6.2.12/source/kernel
Version 6.2.12
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Bane and Boon of the GPL License
• Freedom to use, modify and distribute • Quite restrictive in nature
• All derivative works are also under GPL • Need to disclose all modifications
• Fosters collaboration • Cannot build appliances (HW+SW)
• Prohibits tivoization: cannot restrict combos that involve kernel modifications
hardware to a given piece of GPL-protected
software that is protected with a key
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Some Kernel Source Code Statistics
• Roughly 25 million lines of source code
• Per version, 250k lines of code change Current version: 6.2.12
x y z -rc<num>
rc release candidate
(test release)
Major version
number Patch number
Minor version
number
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Details of the Linux Code Base
Most of the code
is drivers
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Major Subsystems in Linux
(Directory-wise)
init: boot code
All the code
Process manager
HW-dependent code
Memory
and I/O
kernel: process scheduler,
synchronization, time mm: physical and virtual arch: All the assembly code
management, event memory manager that is architecture
management, debugging dependent
fs: file systems
virt: Support for running a drivers: All the kernel
block: generic layer for
guest OS as a regular routines that run the
all block-based storage
program. devices. Translate generic
devices like hard disks
io_uring: data structures OS calls to HW-specific
for I/O support
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The arch Folder
• The Linux codebase has two parts: machine dependent and machine
independent
• Most of the code is machine independent. Otherwise, it will become
impossible to manage such a large codebase.
• We need a layer to abstract out details of the underlying machine.
• This is the job of the arch folder (machine dependent part) that:
• The kernel uses generic data types such as u32 or u64. They are defined
within files of the arch folder (for each architecture)
• Map high-level primitives to assembly-level code snippets (arch. specific)
• Provide other low-level services: booting the system, managing the memory
system, power management, etc.
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Factoid
Android, Chrome OS, Tizen (Samsung),
Web OS (LG) are all based on Linux.
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Fundamentals: cores, Processes,
registers, interrupts, synchronization,
virtual memory, I/O scheduling
OS
Communication: Memory system,
interrupts, system calls virtualization,
+ I/O system and security
device drivers
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[email protected]n
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