Operating-

System
2
CHAPTER

Structures
Practice Exercises
2.1 What is the purpose of system calls?
Answer: System calls allow user-level processes to request services of
the operating system.
2.2 What are the five major activities of an operating system with regard to
process management?
Answer: The five major activities are:
a. The creation and deletion of both user and system processes
b. The suspension and resumption of processes
c. The provision of mechanisms for process synchronization
d. The provision of mechanisms for process communication
e. The provision of mechanisms for deadlock handling
2.3 What are the three major activities of an operating system with regard
to memory management?
Answer: The three major activities are:
a. Keep track of which parts of memory are currently being used and
by whom.
b. Decide which processes are to be loaded into memory when mem-
ory space becomes available.
c. Allocate and deallocate memory space as needed.
2.4 What are the three major activities of an operating system with regard
to secondary-storage management?
Answer: The three major activities are:
• Free-space management.
• Storage allocation.
• Disk scheduling.
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6 Chapter 2 Operating-System Structures

2.5 What is the purpose of the command interpreter? Why is it usually

separate from the kernel?
Answer: It reads commands from the user or from a file of commands
and executes them, usually by turning them into one or more system
calls. It is usually not part of the kernel since the command interpreter
is subject to changes.
2.6 What system calls have to be executed by a command interpreter or shell
in order to start a new process?
Answer: In Unix systems, a fork system call followed by an exec system
call need to be performed to start a new process. The fork call clones the
currently executing process, while the exec call overlays a new process
based on a different executable over the calling process.
2.7 What is the purpose of system programs?
Answer: System programs can be thought of as bundles of useful
system calls. They provide basic functionality to users so that users do
not need to write their own programs to solve common problems.
2.8 What is the main advantage of the layered approach to system design?
What are the disadvantages of using the layered approach?
Answer: As in all cases of modular design, designing an operating
system in a modular way has several advantages. The system is easier
to debug and modify because changes affect only limited sections of
the system rather than touching all sections of the operating system.
Information is kept only where it is needed and is accessible only within
a defined and restricted area, so any bugs affecting that data must be
limited to a specific module or layer.
2.9 List five services provided by an operating system, and explain how each
creates convenience for users. In which cases would it be impossible for
user-level programs to provide these services? Explain your answer.
Answer: The five services are:

a. Program execution. The operating system loads the contents (or

sections) of a file into memory and begins its execution. A user-
level program could not be trusted to properly allocate CPU time.
b. I/O operations. Disks, tapes, serial lines, and other devices must be
communicated with at a very low level. The user need only specify
the device and the operation to perform on it, while the system
converts that request into device- or controller-specific commands.
User-level programs cannot be trusted to access only devices they
should have access to and to access them only when they are oth-
erwise unused.
c. File-system manipulation. There are many details in file creation,
deletion, allocation, and naming that users should not have to per-
form. Blocks of disk space are used by files and must be tracked.
Deleting a file requires removing the name file information and
freeing the allocated blocks. Protections must also be checked to
assure proper file access. User programs could neither ensure ad-
 Practice Exercises 7

herence to protection methods nor be trusted to allocate only free

blocks and deallocate blocks on file deletion.
d. Communications. Message passing between systems requires mes-
sages to be turned into packets of information, sent to the network
controller, transmitted across a communications medium, and re-
assembled by the destination system. Packet ordering and data
correction must take place. Again, user programs might not coor-
dinate access to the network device, or they might receive packets
destined for other processes.
e. Error detection. Error detection occurs at both the hardware and
software levels. At the hardware level, all data transfers must be
inspected to ensure that data have not been corrupted in transit. All
data on media must be checked to be sure they have not changed
since they were written to the media. At the software level, media
must be checked for data consistency; for instance, whether the
number of allocated and unallocated blocks of storage match the
total number on the device. There, errors are frequently process-
independent (for instance, the corruption of data on a disk), so there
must be a global program (the operating system) that handles all
types of errors. Also, by having errors processed by the operating
system, processes need not contain code to catch and correct all the
errors possible on a system.
2.10 Why do some systems store the operating system in firmware, while
others store it on disk?
Answer: For certain devices, such as handheld PDAs and cellular
telephones, a disk with a file system may be not be available for the
device. In this situation, the operating system must be stored in firmware.
2.11 How could a system be designed to allow a choice of operating systems
from which to boot? What would the bootstrap program need to do?
Answer: Consider a system that would like to run both Windows
XP and three different distributions of Linux (e.g., RedHat, Debian, and
Mandrake). Each operating system will be stored on disk. During system
boot-up, a special program (which we will call the boot manager) will
determine which operating system to boot into. This means that rather
initially booting to an operating system, the boot manager will first run
during system startup. It is this boot manager that is responsible for
determining which system to boot into. Typically boot managers must
be stored at certain locations of the hard disk to be recognized during
system startup. Boot managers often provide the user with a selection of
systems to boot into; boot managers are also typically designed to boot
into a default operating system if no choice is selected by the user.
Exercises
2.12 The services and functions provided by an operating system can be divided into
two main categories. Briefly describe the two categories and discuss how they differ.
Answer: One class of services provided by an operating system is to enforce
protection between different processes running concurrently in the system. Processes
are allowed to access only those memory locations that are associated with their
address spaces. Also, processes are not allowed to corrupt files associated with other
users. A process is also not allowed to access devices directly without operating
system intervention. The second class of services provided by an operating system is
to provide new functionality that is not supported directly by the underlying hardware.
Virtual memory and file systems are two such examples of new services provided by
an operating system.

2.13 Describe three general methods for passing parameters to the operating system.
Answer:
a. Pass parameters in registers
b. Registers pass starting addresses of blocks of parameters
c. Parameters can be placed, or pushed, onto the stack by the program, and popped off
the stack by the operating system.

2.14 Describe how you could obtain a statistical profile of the amount of time spent by
a program executing different sections of its code. Discuss the importance of obtaining
such a statistical profile.
Answer: One could issue periodic timer interrupts and monitor what instructions or
what sections of code are currently executing when the interrupts are delivered. A
statistical profile of which pieces of code were active should be consistent with the
time spent by the program in different sections of its code. Once such a statistical
profile has been obtained, the programmer could optimize those sections of code that
are consuming more of the CPU resources.

2.15 What are the five major activities of an operating system in regard to file
management?
Answer:
• The creation and deletion of files
• The creation and deletion of directories
• The support of primitives for manipulating files and directories
• The mapping of files onto secondary storage
• The backup of files on stable (nonvolatile) storage media

2.16 What are the advantages and disadvantages of using the same system call
interface for manipulating both files and devices?
Answer: Each device can be accessed as though it was a file in the file system. Since
most of the kernel deals with devices through this file interface, it is relatively easy to
add a new device driver by implementing the hardware-specific code to support this
abstract file interface. Therefore, this benefits the development of both user program
code, which can be written to access devices and files in the same manner, and device
driver code, which can be written to support a well-defined API. The disadvantage
with using the same interface is that it might be difficult to capture the functionality of
certain devices within the context of the file access API, thereby either resulting in a
loss of functionality or a loss of performance. Some of this could be overcome by the
use of ioctl operation that provides a general purpose interface for processes to invoke
operations on devices.

2.18 What are the two models of interprocess communication? What are the
strengths and weaknesses of the two approaches?
Answer: The two models of interprocess communication are message passing
model and the shared-memory model. The message-passing model controls the

2.19 Why is the separation of mechanism and policy desirable?

Answer: Mechanism and policy must be separate to ensure that systems are easy to
modify. No two system installations are the same, so each installation may want to
tune the operating system to suit its needs. With mechanism and policy separate, the
policy may be changed at will while the mechanism stays unchanged. This
arrangement provides a more flexible system.

2.20 It is sometimes difficult to achieve a layered approach if two components of the

operating system are dependent on each other. Identify a scenario in which it is
unclear how to layer two system components that require tight coupling of their
functionalities.
Answer: The virtual memory subsystem and the storage subsystem are typically
tightly-coupled and requires careful design in a layered system due to the following
interactions. Many systems allow files to be mapped into the virtual memory space of
an executing process. On the other hand, the virtual memory subsystem typically uses
the storage system to provide the backing store for pages that do not currently reside in
memory. Also, updates to the file system are sometimes buffered in physical memory
before it is flushed to disk, thereby requiring careful coordination of the usage of
memory between the virtual memory subsystem and the file system.

2.21 What is the main advantage of the microkernel approach to system design? How
do user programs and system services interact in a microkernel architecture? What are
the disadvantages of using the microkernel approach?
Answer: Benefits typically include the following (a) adding a new service does not
require modifying the kernel, (b) it is more secure as more operations are done in user
mode than in kernel mode, and (c) a simpler kernel design and functionality typically
results in a more reliable operating system. User programs and system services interact
in a microkernel architecture by using interprocess communication mechanisms such
asmessaging. These messages are conveyed by the operating system. The primary
disadvantage of the microkernel architecture are the overheads associated with
interprocess communication and the frequent use of the operating system’s messaging
functions in order to enable the user process and the system service to interact with
each other.

2.22 In what ways is the modular kernel approach similar to the layered approach? In
what ways does it differ from the layered approach?
Answer: The modular kernel approach requires subsystems to interact with each other
through carefully constructed interfaces that are typically narrow (in terms of the
functionality that is exposed to external modules). The layered kernel approach is
similar in that respect. However, the layered kernel imposes a strict ordering of
subsystems such that subsystems at the lower layers are not allowed to invoke
operations corresponding to the upper-layer subsystems. There are no such restrictions
in the modular-kernel approach, wherein modules are free to invoke each other
without any constraints.

2.23 What is the main advantage for an operating-system designer of using virtual-
machine architecture? What is the main advantage for a user?
Answer: The system is easy to debug, and security problems are easy to solve. Virtual
machines also provide a good platform for operating system research since many
different operating systems may run on one physical system.
2.24 Why is a just-in-time compiler useful for executing Java programs?
Answer: Java is an interpreted language. This means that the JVM interprets the
bytecode instructions one at a time. Typically, most interpreted environments are
slower than running native binaries, for the interpretation process requires converting
each instruction into native machine code. A just-in-time (JIT) compiler compiles the
bytecode for a method into native machine code the first time the method is
encountered. This means that the Java program is essentially running as a native
application (of course, the conversion process of the JIT takes time as well but not as
much as bytecode interpretation.) Furthermore, the JIT caches compiled code so that it
may be reused the next time the method is encountered. A Java program that is run by
a JIT rather than a traditional interpreter typically runs much faster.

2.25 What is the relationship between a guest operating system and a host operating
system in a system like VMware? What factors need to be considered in choosing the
host operating system?
Answer: A guest operating system provides its services by mapping them onto the
functionality provided by the host operating system. A key issue that needs to be
considered in choosing the host operating system is whether it is sufficiently general in
terms of its system-call interface in order to be able to support the functionality
associated with the guest operating system.

2.26 The experimental Synthesis operating system has an assembler incorporated

within the kernel. To optimize system-call performance, the kernel assembles routines
within kernel space to minimize the path that the system call must take through the
kernel. This approach is the antithesis of the layered approach, in which the path
through the kernel is extended to make building the operating system easier. Discuss
the pros and cons of the Synthesis approach to kernel design and to system-
performance optimization.
Answer: Synthesis is impressive due to the performance it achieves through on-the-fly
compilation. Unfortunately, it is difficult to debug problems within the kernel due to
the fluidity of the code. Also, such compilation is system specific; making Synthesis
difficult to port (a new compiler must be written for each architecture).