Chapter Nine

Operating System Concepts and

Other useful softwares.
What is Operating System (OS)?
• An OS is a software program that manages the hardware and
software resources of a computer
• OS is the system that run the computer at its basic level.
• An OS is a program that acts as an interface between the user and the
computer hardware and controls the execution of all kinds of
programs
• OS are responsible for everything from starting up the computer
when you push the "on" button to high level system security
• The type of operating system a computer has also determines what
types of software can be run on it.
 History of Operating System
• Historically operating systems have been tightly related to the
computer architecture
• History of operating systems depends on the evolution architecture of
the computers on which they run
• OS have evolved through a number of distinct phases or generations
 The 1940's - First Generations
• The earliest electronic digital computers had no operating systems
• Machines of the time were so primitive that programs were often
entered one bit at time on rows of mechanical switches (plug boards).
Programming languages were unknown (not even assembly languages
 The 1950's - Second Generation
• The introduction of punch cards.
• The General Motors Research Laboratories implemented the first
operating systems in early 1950's for their IBM 701.
• The system of the 50's generally ran one job at a time.
• These were called single-stream batch processing systems because
programs and data were submitted in groups or batches.
 The 1960's - Third Generation
• Also batch processing systems, but they were able to take better
advantage of the computer's resources by running several jobs at
once
• So operating systems designers developed the concept of
multiprogramming in which several jobs are in main memory at
once;
• A processor is switched from job to job as needed to keep several jobs
Fourth Generation
• The development of LSI (Large Scale Integration) circuits, chips
• Microprocessor technology evolved to the point that it becomes
possible to build desktop computers as powerful as the mainframes of
the 1970s
• Two operating systems have dominated the personal computer
scene:
• MS-DOS, written by Microsoft, Inc. for the IBM PC and other
machines using the Intel 8088 CPU and its successors, and
• UNIX, which is dominant on the large personal computers using the
Motorola 6899 CPU family
Types of Operating System
Batch Processing Operating System
• Interaction between the user and processor is limited or
• There is no interaction at all during the execution of work
• Batch processing is execution of a series of programs on a computer
without human interaction
• Batch processing operating systems are ideal in situations where:
• There are large amounts of data to be processed.
• Similar data needs to be processed.
• Similar processing is involved when executing the data.
• Processing is all performed automatically without any user intervention.
Real-time Operating System:
• A real-time system is a computer system where a timely response by the
computer to external stimuli is vital
• Often used as a control device in a dedicated application such as
controlling scientific experiments, medical imaging systems, industrial
control systems, and some display systems
• Real-Time systems may have either hard or soft real-time
• Hard real-time system:
• The system has failed if a timing constraint, e.g. deadline, is not met.
• All delays in the system must be bounded.
• Many advanced features are absent.
• Soft real-time system: Missing a timing constraint is serious, but does not
necessarily result in a failure unless it is excessive
Real-Time Systems
Applications • Nuclear power plant
• Games
• Air traffic control
• User interface
• Space shuttle
• Vision and speech recognition
• Navigation (approx. 100 ~ 200ms)
• Multimedia systems • PDA, telephone system
• Industrial control systems • And more
• Home appliance controller
Single User Operating System:
• A single user OS as the name suggests is designed for one user to
effectively use a computer at a time
Multi-Tasking Operating System
• In this type of OS several applications maybe simultaneously loaded
and used in the memory.
• While the processor handles only one application at a particular time
it is capable of switching between the applications effectively to
apparently simultaneously execute each application.
• This type of operating system is seen everywhere today and is the
most common type of OS, the Windows operating system would be
an example.
• Single-user, single task
• This operating system is designed to manage the computer so that
one user can effectively do one thing at a time.
• The Palm OS for Palm handheld computers is a good example of a
modern single-user, single-task operating system
• Single-user, multi-tasking
• This is the type of operating system most people use on their desktop
and laptop computers today.
• Microsoft's Windows and Apple's Mac OS platforms are both
examples of OS that will let a single user have several programs in
operation at the same time.
Multi-User Operating System
• This type of OS allows multiple users to simultaneously use the
system,
• While here as well, the processor splits its resources and handles one
user at a time, the speed and efficiency at which it does this makes it
apparent that users are simultaneously using the system
• Some network systems utilize this kind of operating system
• The operating system must make sure that the requirements of the
various users are balanced, and that each of the programs they are
using has sufficient and separate resources so that a problem with
one user doesn't affect the entire community of users
Distributed Operating System
• In a distributed system, software and data may be distributed around
the system, programs and files maybe stored on different storage
devices which are located in different geographical locations and
maybe accessed from different computer terminals
The purpose of an OS (Function)
• The OS allows the computer programs to function correctly by
allowing them to communicate with other programs and the
computer
• Security
• Memory Management • Control over system performance
• Processor Management • Job accounting
• Device Management • Error detecting aids
• File Management • Coordination between other
software and users
Cont...

• The operating system must try to satisfy these requests in a

multiuser, multi-process environment while managing.
• Resource allocation
• Error Detection
• Protection
File systems
• In a computer, a file system is the way in which files are named and
where they are placed logically for storage and retrieval
• The DOS, Windows, OS/2, Macintosh, and UNIX-based operating
systems all have file systems in which files are placed somewhere in a
hierarchical (tree) structure.
• A file is placed in a directory (folder in Windows) or subdirectory at
the desired place in the tree structure
• File systems specify conventions for naming files
• These conventions include the maximum number of characters in a
name, which characters can be used and, in some systems, how long
the file name suffix can be. A file system also includes a format for
specifying the path to a file through the structure of directories.
FAT (File Allocation Table)
• The FAT file system is simple yet robust. It offers reasonable
performance even in light- weight implementations and is therefore
widely adopted and supported by virtually all existing operating
systems for personal computers
• FAT file systems are the default file system for removable media (with
the exception of CDs and DVDs
• While FAT12 is present on floppy disks, FAT16 and FAT32 are
typically found on the larger media
Cont...
• A FAT file system is composed of four different sections:
1. The Reserved sectors, located at the very beginning.
• The first reserved sector (sector 0) is the Boot Sector.
• It includes an area called the BIOS Parameter Block (with some basic file
system information, in particular its type, and pointers to the location of the other
sections) and usually contains the operating system's boot loader code.
• For FAT32 file systems, the reserved sectors include a File System Information
Sector at sector 1 and a Backup Boot Sector at sector 6.
2. The FAT Region.
• This typically contains two copies (may vary) of the File Allocation Table for the
sake of redundancy checking, although rarely used, even by disk repair utilities
• These are maps of the Data Region, indicating which clusters are used by files and
directories. In FAT12 and FAT16 they immediately follow the reserved sectors.
Cont...
3 The Root Directory Region
• This is a Directory Table that stores information about the files and
directories located in the root directory
• It is only used with FAT12 and FAT16
4. The Data Region: -
• This is where the actual file and directory data is stored and takes up
most of the partition
NTFS (New Technology File System)
• NTFS has features to improve reliability, such as transaction logs to help recover
from disk failures
• To control access to files, we can set permissions for directories and/or individual
files. NTFS files are not accessible from other operating systems such as DOS.
• For large applications, NTFS supports spanning volumes, which means files and
directories can be spread out across several physical disks.
• NTFS has several improvements over FAT and HPFS (High Performance File
System), such as
• improved support for metadata, and the
• use of advanced data structures to improve performance, reliability, and
• disk space utilization, plus additional extensions, such as security access control
lists (ACL) and file system journaling.
HPFS (High Performance File System)
• HPFS or High Performance File System is a file system created specifically for
the OS/2 operating system to improve upon the limitations of the FAT file system.
• Among its improvements are:
• Support for mixed case file names, in different code pages.
• Support for long file names (255 characters as opposed to FAT's 8+3 characters)
• More efficient use of disk space (files are not stored using multiple-sector clusters
but on a per-sector basis).
• An internal architecture that keeps related items close to each other on the disk
volume.
• Less fragmentation of data.
• Extent-based space allocation.
Disk Sector
• In computer disk storage, a sector is a subdivision of a track on a
magnetic disk or optical disc. Each sector stores a fixed amount of
user data

• Read more on disc sector…

Fragmentation
• Fragmentation is a phenomenon in which storage space is used
inefficiently, reducing storage capacity and in most cases reducing the
performance. The term is also used to denote the wasted space itself.
There are three different but related forms of fragmentation:
• Internal fragmentation: Memory block assigned to process is bigger.
Some portion of memory is left unused, as it cannot be used by
another process.
• External fragmentation: Total memory space is enough to satisfy a
request or to reside a process in it, but it is not contiguous, so it cannot
be used.
• Data fragmentation. Data fragmentation occurs when a piece of data
in memory is broken up into many pieces that are not close together