Operating Systems
Let’s face it, comprehending a
lot of binary at scale is difficult and tedious work for people.
This is saying something because
machine code, traditionally written in binary, is itself a shorthand means of
communicating switch positions on mechanical computer components.
In the old days this meant walls
of switches to be manually configured, often by teams of women as seen below.
The ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer - first digital
computer, 1946) was configured primarily by a team of six female “computers” who
manually set thousands of 10-way switches. (Lifghtfoot, 2017).
The ENIAC, University of
Pennsylvania (Nicholle, n.d.)
If you look at it a certain way,
the evolution of higher-level programming languages and operating systems has
been about getting the end-user as far away from dealing with all that pesky
switch configuration as possible.
In a sense, the operating system
is the last layer of abstraction from the user’s perspective and the first
layer from the system’s perspective.
The user’s intent is passed
through to the operating system in a number of programming languages that are
compiled, assembled, and packaged for the operating system to conduct the
movement of data to and from the hardware components.
Features
of contemporary operating systems and their structures.
In truth, the above analogy
falls short of giving enough credit to what the ENIAC programmers and operating
systems really did and do, respectively.
Operating
systems exist without an industry-wide accepted definition as they can vary
wildly based on the hardware they interface with. In general, however, they can
be thought of as the mutual interface between the user and the hardware.
Contemporary
operating systems have many features, as depicted in the following
visualization.
What’s a Process?
Silberschatz, Galvin, and Gagne, 2014,
explain that a process “is a program in execution” (p150). A program alone
accomplishes nothing. In fact, a program not in execution is in a passive
state. In contrast, a program in execution is in an active state. What
differentiates a program from a process is their state of activity. When a
program is loaded into memory it becomes a process.
Here we see a visualization of a process
inside memory.
0. Text:
Current activity’s program counter value and content of processor’s registers
1. Data:
Global and static variables
2. Heap:
Dynamically allocated memory to a process during run time.
3. Stack:
Contains temporary data such as method/function parameters, return addresses,
and local variables
Process
States
When
processes execute, they exist in one of 5 states: New, Running, Waiting, Ready,
and Terminated (Silberschatz, Galvin, & Gagne, 2014). Consider an example
of an IT help desk worker processing IT trouble tickets
Discuss
how operating systems enable processes to share and exchange information.
Modern
computing systems utilize numerous types of memory to store data and
instructions throughout multiple queuing processes. In effect, each interaction
between devices must be choreographed.
For
instance, processes awaiting CPU utilization, must be scheduled appropriately
so that they use the CPU and any shared variables in the appropriate sequence.
Further, the operating system must have places to store the values that will be
used.
.
In
general, memory that’s fast tends to be more expensive per byte of storage.
Conversely, memory that’s cheap per byte of storage tends to be slower – and speed
is of the essence.
Consider
that computers are intended to increase the efficiency of the execution of our will.
As such, it makes sense that they should be configured with efficiency in mind.
This means placing the faster, more expensive memory closer to the CPU so that
the CPU can quickly call upon stored data or instructions.
Threads
A thread is like a basic unit of CPU
utilization (Silberschatz, Galvin, & Gagne, 2014).
Back to our IT trouble ticket system analogy
from above – what we’ve been discussing thus far is the concept of an IT worker
who only works one ticket, to completion, at a time. This wouldn’t be a very
efficient use of the IT technician’s skills and labor. No, instead you’d expect
her to work a ticket until a delay occurred, then focus their attention on the next
highest priority trouble ticket.
Multithreading is motivated by an ability
to maximize resource utilization through resource sharing which provides
scalable and responsive design capabilities. As you can imagine, multithreading
is common in modern software applications.
Scheduling and the PCB:
Think of process control blocks, or PCBs, as an instance of a process with a list of attributes and values that can be referenced just like those of an instance of a user-defined class within a software application's source code. .
Process control blocks (PCB), or task control blocks, are representations of processes which are comprised of numerous pieces of information, namely: Process states, process number, program counter, registers, scheduling information, memory management information, accounting information, and I/O status.
A computer is, in essence, a miniaturized factory which takes data values and instructions as inputs and outputs transformed data according to the instructions it was given. An operating system, then, is responsible for many things to include the scheduling of movement of packets of data from one system resource to another - such as copying a file in RAM to HDD for non-volatile safekeeping.
The Operating System maintains three separate scheduling queues: the Job Queue, the Ready Queue, and the Device Queue.
Lightfoot, 2017
- The job queue keeps all the processes in the system.
- The ready queue contains all processes loaded into main memory and ready to execute.
- The Device queue contains those processes which are delayed due to the lack of availability of an I/O device.
I/O (Input/Output) Devices:
There are three types of input/ouput (I/O) operations: sensors, control, and data transfer. Some examples of output devices include speakers, projectors, monitors, and traffic lights. Some examples of input devices include cameras, anemometers (wind sensors), keyboards, mice, touchscreens, etc.
The operating sytem is responsible for managing various input and output devices such as those described above and many, many more. An I/O system takes I/O requests coming from applications and send those requests to the physical device, then accept whatever response comes back from the device and returns that result to the application that originated the I/O request.
The Critical-Section Problem:
Scheduling of processes is
incredibly important. Operating systems must ensure that processes are executed
in an appropriate order. It wouldn’t make any sense for the IT technician to
work on the print server installation if the print server has been purchased
but not yet received.
Worse - what if there were two IT technicians both
accidentally working the same trouble ticket – that would get problematic
quickly.
Comparably, operating systems
must concern themselves with the order in which processes read/write from/to
memory. The critical section problem is normally solved through the application
of three requirements: mutual exclusion, and bounded waiting.
Memory
Management
Virtual address space is the set of all
virtual addresses generated by a given program. When the program generates
logical addresses, they’re converted into physical addresses that are stored in
the physical memory space - the aggregate of all physical addresses generated
by a program. The memory management unit (MMU) is a hardware component which is
instrumental in the scheduling of memory access. Virtual memory is, in essence,
an abstraction of an address such that the operating system is able to protect
against concurrent utilization of memory.
For instance, assume that Program A and
Program B both manipulate the value stored at address X. Let’s say that Program
A multiplies the value of X by 7 while Program B cubes the value.
If
X0 = 4 | Program A first: X = 21,952 Program B first: X = 448.
The result after both programs have run
is dependent on the order of operations. Similarly, operating systems must
provide a means by which to sequence memory access. This ensures that the data stored
in the physical memory is being manipulated in the correct order.
While jobs/tasks must be scheduled for
execution in order to maximize CPU utilization, memory access must be managed
to protect against inadvertent data manipulation.
TutorialsPoint explains that “[p]aging is
a memory management technique in which process address space is broken into
blocks of the same size called pages” (n.d.). Main memory is similarly
segmented into frames of the same size as the pages. The virtual address is
comprised of the page number and the offset, while the physical address is
comprised of the frame number and the offset. Paging is only one memory
management technique. Another, segmentation, divides jobs into many pieces (or
segments) as is paging. The main difference is that in segmentation the
different blocks of memory are variable in size.
Files
systems
The objective and functions of file
systems management is to provide a purpose-efficient means of manipulating
files. These files exist as an abstraction of collective data packaged for user
interaction – “name collection of related information that is recorded on
secondary storage” (Silberschatz, Galvin, & Gagne, 2104).
The supported operations for a file
management system vary depending on the specific application but tend to
include the following at a minimum: creating a file, writing a file, reading a
file, repositioning within a file, deleting a file, and truncating a file
(Silberschatz, Galvin, & Gagne, 2014).
Two functions with which many causal
computer users are familiar are open() and close(). These functions store
information about a file in repeated use for a period such that the opened file
can be quickly accessed for read/write and other functionality. Otherwise, the
system would have to inefficiently spend time search for the file during each
necessary interaction.
Other important functions include
enabling users to access file attributes details. Window’s File Explorer
includes the option to view file properties in a drop-down menu after a file’s
icon has been right clicked. One such attribute would be the internal file
read/write pointer. Think of that pointer like the blinking cursor indicator on
a word processor. It lets you know where the letters you type or traverse or delete
will be. You, as a user, know that if you press backspace it will delete the
character to the left of the cursor and move the cursor one position to the
left. In fact, the a text file could be thought of as an array of characters.
The pointer simply represents the index from which action will be taken.
Mass
storage on a modern operating system sees the operating system sending read and
write requests in an order governed by a scheduling models such as First-Come,
First-Served (FCFS), Shortest-Seek-Time-First (SSTF), SCAN, C-SCAN, or others. If
you imagine a hard disk as a cross-section of a heavily-ringed treed, think of
each ring as a very thin 3-dimensional cylinder. This is how hard disks are divided.
They are further divided into sectors, grains of wood on those tree lines, to
continue the analogy.
Protection
and Security
Silberschatz, Galvin, & Gagne, 2014,
provide that a computer system is a collection of processes and objects
(13.3.). These objects can be tangible, hardware objects such as memory
segments, CPUs, printers, etc. Objects can also be abstract software objects
such as files and programs.
As you can see form the below graph,
Protection and Security are related but disparate functions of operating
systems. Protection focuses on managing internal threats to objects and domains
while Security is concerned with preventing (un)intentional misuse of the
system for purposes other than those for which it is designed/intended.
In object-oriented programming (OOP)
we’re introduced to the concept of inheritance and of private, public, and
protected (in some languages) methods/attributes of objects. This is so that
only the attributes and methods which are needed by other objects should be
able to affect those attributes or call those methods.
Similarly, systems must ensure that
objects, both internal and external, via protection and security, respectively,
are only able to interact with the system, its hardware and software objects,
in the way in which that system’s creators and users expect it to be interacted
with.
Domains are essentially a predefined set
of permissions to read, write, execute, print, switch, etc. different specific
objects, such as files. In the below access matrix, we see a matrix of access
lists (columns) and capabilities lists (rows). Access lists are a set of
permissions to interact with a given object. Capabilities lists, meanwhile, are
the inverse idea in that they represent the set of permission to objects for a
given domain.
In the above access matrix provided by
Silberschatz, Galvin, & Gagne, 2014, the capabilities list for Domain 1
(D1) could look something like {F1, read, F3. read}. F3’s access lest, in
comparison, might look like {D1, read; D3, execute; D4, readwrite}.
The fundamental difference between
protection and security has to do with the origin of the threats to data that
they address. Protection addresses threats that are internal to the system such
that bugs and other eventualities do not affect the data stored by the system.
Conversely, security addresses threats that are external to the system such as
malicious or ignorant users.
One example of a means by which security
is affected is through the implementation of bounds checking to prevent
exploitation of stack or buffer overflow. In essence, stack/buffer overflow
attacks take advantage of how computers store process and the data associated
with them. Through experimentation, they can determine how to write code into
memory to be executed. They do this by providing an input that’s too large for
the program to take normally so it gets written into the stack to be processed
later and the malicious programmer can write that so that the computer thinks it’s
another valid process to execute.
Think of it like the Konami code for
Contra except that instead of giving you infinite lives it injected malicious
code onto the NES and recorded the key presses and stored them in memory
somewhere for later retrieval. Bounds checking ensures that the program only
receives an amount of data that the program is designed to deal with.
Excitement Abounds
These
concepts aren’t pure academia, they’re the building blocks for understanding
how the software applications I intend to develop will interact with my
customers’ hardware. Additionally, the final topics of Security and Protection
have kindled an interest in the responsible development of my app.
I’ve
really come to appreciate the numerous layers of abstraction we enjoy. More
important is that it’s slowly dawning on me that this elephantine, constantly
growing mountain of as-of-yet-unobtained software development knowledge and experience
is driven by a need to abstract the human just a bit further from the machine.
References
Lightfoot, J. (31 July 2016). Introducing
ENIAC Six: Atomic’s Room Named for the Women who Programmed the ENIAC.
Retrieved from https://spin.atomicobject.com/2016/07/31/e niac-programmers/
Nicholle, M. (n.d.) The ICT
Lounge: History of Computers Timeline (1910-1959). Retrieved from https://www.ictlounge.com/html/history_of_computers_1910-1960.htm
Silberschatz, A., Galvin, P. B., & Gagne, G. (2014).
Operating system concepts essentials (2nd ed.). Retrieved from https://redshelf.com/
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