OPERATING SYSTEMS CS F372

BIJU K RAVEENDRAN & TEAM

LECT #07: SYSTEM CALLS

 How to Communicate
• How to communicate between two modes?
– System calls have always been the means through which
user space programs can access kernel services. (Typically
written in a high-level language (C or C++)
– System call is the only legal entry point to the kernel
– System call provides an abstract hardware interface for
user space
• Application need not worry about type of disk, media and file
system in use
– System call ensures system stability and security.
– Kernel can keep track of application’s activity
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 System calls
• System call – the method used by a process to request
action by the operating system
– provide the interface between a running program
and the operating system
– It is the mechanism used by an application program
to request service from the operating system
– Often use a special machine code instruction (trap)
which causes the processor to transfer control to a
specific location in the interrupt vector (kernel code)
– Usually takes the form of a trap to a specific location
in the interrupt vector
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 System calls
• The process fills the registers with the appropriate
values and calls a special instruction which jumps to
a previously defined location in the kernel
– Under Intel CPUs, this is done by means of interrupt 0x80
• Control passes through the interrupt vector to a
service routine in the OS, and the mode bit is set to
monitor mode
• The monitor mode verifies that the parameters are
correct and legal, executes the request, and returns
control to the instruction following the system call
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 System call

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 System call

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 System calls
• Most of the system calls require one or more
parameter to be passed to them
– Parameters are stored in registers EBX, ECX,
EDX, ESI and EDI (if the parameters are less
than six)
– If number of parameters are more than five
(very rare) a single register is used to hold a
pointer to user space where all parameters
exist
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 System call Parameter Passing
• Three general methods used to pass parameters to the
OS
– Simplest: pass the parameters in registers
• In some cases, may be more parameters than registers
– Parameters stored in a block, or table, in memory,
and address of block passed as a parameter in a
register
• This approach is taken by Linux and Solaris
– Parameters placed, or pushed, onto the stack by the
program and popped off the stack by the operating
system
– Block and stack methods do not limit the number or
length of parameters being passed
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 Passing Parameter via Table

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 fscanf system call execution

Call to read()

read() in C program read() in the C library

read system call

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 Invoking System call handler & executing it

call read() read() wrapper system_call() sys_read()

Application C library System call handler sys_read()

read() wrapper
User Space Kernel Space

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 System call
/usr/src/linux-5.19.8/arch/x86/entry/syscalls/syscall_64.tbl
/usr/src/linux-5.19.8/include/asm-generic/syscalls.h
/usr/src/linux-5.19.8/include/linux/syscalls.h
• Each arrow in the figure represents a jump in CPU
instruction flow, and each jump may require flushing
the prefetch queue and possibly a “cache miss” event.
• Transitions between user and kernel space are
especially important(Mode switch), as they are the
most expensive in processing time and prefetch
behavior.
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 New System calls – Design Considerations
• What is the purpose of new system call?
– If possible it should have only one purpose
• What are the new system call’s arguments, return value and
error codes?
• Is it portable and robust?
• Verifying system call parameters
– Ensure it is valid and legal
• Important to check the validity of pointers a user gives
• Before following a pointer into user space, the system must ensure
– The pointer points to a region of memory in user space
– The pointer points to a region of memory in the process’s address space
– If reading, memory is marked readable. If writing memory is marked
writable.

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Diff between system call & function call
• System call typically accessed via function calls.
• System call involves mode switching (from user to
kernel and back) where as function call does not.
• Takes much longer time than function calls.
• Avoiding excessive system calls might be a wise
strategy for programs that need to be tightly
optimized.
• Most of the system calls return a value (error if
failed) where as it is not necessary for subroutine.
• If an error (return value –1) use perror (“Message”)
to print the error.
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 Pros and Cons of System calls
• Pros
– Simple to implement and easy to use
– In Linux it is very fast
• Cons
– Need a system call number, which needs to be officially
assigned to you during the developmental kernel series.
– Once stabilized, the interface can not change with out breaking
user space application
– Each architecture needs to separately register the system call
and support it.
– For simple exchanges of information, a system call is overkill
(overheads because of cache miss and context switch)
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 Types of System calls
• Process control
– fork, wait, waitpid, execl, execlp, execv, execvp, exit,
signal, kill, alarm, pause, getpid, getppid, nice
• File management
– creat, open, close, unlink, read, write, lseek
• Inter Process Communications
– Pipe - popen, pclose, pipe, dup, mkfifo, mknod
– Message Queues - msgctl, msgget, msgsnd, msgrcv
– Shared Memory - shmat, shmctl, shmdt, shmget
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 Examples of Windows System calls

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 System call Information
• Information about system calls and library
routines
– man 2 read (if read is a system call)
– man 3 read (if read is a library routine)

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