================ Start Lecture #1 ================

Operating Systems

2001-2002 Spring
Tuesday and Thursday 2-3:15
Ciww 102

Chapter -1: Administrivia

I start at -1 so that when we get to chapter 1, the numbering will agree with the text.

(-1).1: Contact Information

(-1).2: Course Web Page

There is a web site for the course. You can find it from my home page, which is http://allan.ultra.nyu.edu/~gottlieb

(-1).3: Textbook

The course text is Tanenbaum, "Modern Operating Systems", 2nd Edition

(-1).4: Computer Accounts and Mailman Mailing List

(-1).5: Grades

Assuming 3 labs, which is likely, grades will computed as
.3*LabAverage + .4*Midterm + .7*FinalExam (but see homeworks below).

Midterm

We will have a midterm. As the time approaches we will vote in class for the exact date. Please do not schedule any trips during days when the class meets until the midterm date is scheduled.

(-1).6: Homeworks and Labs

I make a distinction between homeworks and labs.

Labs are

Homeworks are

(-1).6.1: Doing Labs on non-NYU Systems

You may solve lab assignments on any system you wish, but ...

(-1).6.2: Obtaining Help with the Labs

Good methods for obtaining help include

  1. Asking me during office hours (see web page for my hours).
  2. Asking the mailing list.
  3. Asking another student, but ...
    Your lab must be your own.
    That is, each student must submit a unique lab. Naturally changing comments, variable names, etc does not produce a unique lab

(-1).7: The Upper Left Board

I use the upper left board for lab/homework assignments and announcements. I should never erase that board. Viewed as a file it is group readable (the group is those in the room), appendable by just me, and (re-)writable by no one. If you see me start to erase an announcement, let me know.

(-1).8: A Grade of ``Incomplete''

It is university policy that a student's request for an incomplete be granted only in exceptional circumstances and only if applied for in advance. Naturally, the application must be before the final exam.

Chapter 0: Interlude on Linkers

Originally called a linkage editor by IBM.

A linker is an example of a utility program included with an operating system distribution. Like a compiler, the linker is not part of the operating system per se, i.e. it does not run in supervisor mode. Unlike a compiler it is OS dependent (what object/load file format is used) and is not (normally) language dependent.

0.1: What does a Linker Do?

Link of course.

When the compiler and assembler have finished processing a module, they produce an object module that is almost runnable. There are two remaining tasks to be accomplished for the object module to be runnable. Both are involved with linking (that word, again) together multiple object modules. The tasks are relocating relative addresses and resolving external references.

0.1.1: Relocating Relative Addresses


0.1.2: Resolving External Reverences


The output of a linker is called a load module because it is now ready to be loaded and run.

To see how a linker works lets consider the following example, which is the first dataset from lab #1. The description in lab1 is more detailed.

The target machine is word addressable and has a memory of 250 words, each consisting of 4 decimal digits. The first (leftmost) digit is the opcode and the remaining three digits form an address.

Each object module contains three parts, a definition list, the program text itself, and a use list. Each definition is a pair (sym, loc). Each use is a symbol.

The program text consists of a count N followed by N pairs (type, word), where word is a 4-digit instruction described above and type is a single character indicating if the address in the word is Immediate, Absolute, Relative, or External.

Input set #1

1 xy 2
2 z xy
5 R 1004  I 5678  E 2000  R 8002  E 7001
0
1 z
6 R 8001  E 1000  E 1000  E 3000  R 1002  A 1010
0
1 z
2 R 5001  E 4000
1 z 2
2 xy z
3 A 8000  E 1001  E 2000

The first pass simply finds the base address of each module and produces the symbol table giving the values for xy and z (2 and 15 respectively). The second pass does the real work using the symbol table and base addresses produced in pass one.

              Symbol Table
                  xy=2
                  z=15

               Memory Map
 +0
 0:       R 1004      1004+0 = 1004
 1:       I 5678               5678
 2: xy:   E 2000 ->z           2015
 3:       R 8002      8002+0 = 8002
 4:       E 7001 ->xy          7002
 +5
 0        R 8001      8001+5 = 8006
 1        E 1000 ->z           1015
 2        E 1000 ->z           1015
 3        E 3000 ->z           3015
 4        R 1002      1002+5 = 1007
 5        A 1010               1010
 +11
 0        R 5001      5001+11= 5012
 1        E 4000 ->z           4015
 +13
 0        A 8000               8000
 1        E 1001 ->z           1015
 2 z:     E 2000 ->xy          2002

(Unofficial) Remark: It is faster (less I/O) to do a one pass approach, but is harder since you need ``fix-up code'' whenever a use occurs in a module that precedes the module with the definition.

The linker on unix is mistakenly called ld (for loader), which is unfortunate since it links but does not load.

Lab #1: Implement a linker. The specific assignment is detailed on the sheet handed out in in class and is due in three weeks. The content of the handout is available on the web as well (see the class home page).

End of Interlude on Linkers


================ Start Lecture #2 ================

Chapter 1: Introduction

Homework: Read Chapter 1 (Introduction)

Levels of abstraction (virtual machines)

1.1: What is an operating system?

The kernel itself raises the level of abstraction and hides details. For example a user (of the kernel) can write to a file (a concept not present in hardware) and ignore whether the file resides on a floppy, a CD-ROM, or a hard magnetic disk

The kernel is a resource manager (so users don't conflict).

How is an OS fundamentally different from a compiler (say)?

Answer: Concurrency! Per Brinch Hansen in Operating Systems Principles (Prentice Hall, 1973) writes.

The main difficulty of multiprogramming is that concurrent activities can interact in a time-dependent manner, which makes it practically impossibly to locate programming errors by systematic testing. Perhaps, more than anything else, this explains the difficulty of making operating systems reliable.
Homework: 1, 2. (unless otherwise stated, problems numbers are from the end of the chapter in Tanenbaum.)

1.2 History of Operating Systems

  1. Single user (no OS).

  2. Batch, uniprogrammed, run to completion.
  3. Multiprogrammed
  4. Personal Computers

Homework: 3.

1.3: OS Zoo

There is not as much difference between mainframe, server, multiprocessor, and PC OSes as Tannenbaum suggests. For example Windows NT and 2000 are used in all (except mainframes) and Unix and Linux are used on all.

1.3.1: Mainframe Operating Systems

Used in data centers, these systems ofter tremendous I/O capabilities.

1.3.2: Server Operating Systems

Perhaps the most important servers today are web servers. Again I/O (and network) performance are critical.

1.3.3: Multiprocessor Operating systems

These existed almost from the beginning of the computer age, but now are not exotic.

1.3.4: PC Operating Systems (client machines)

Some OSes (e.g. Windows ME) are tailored for this application. One could also say they are restricted to this application.

1.3.5: Real-time Operating Systems

1.3.6: Embedded Operating Systems

1.3.7: Smart Card Operating Systems

Very limited in power (both meanings of the word).

Multiple computers

Homework: 5.

1.4: Computer Hardware Review

Tannenbaum's treatment is very brief and superficial. Mine is even more so. The picture on the right is very simplified. For one thing, today separate buses are used to Memory and Video.

1.4.1: Processors

We will ignore processor concepts such as program counters and stack pointers. We will also ignore computer design issues such as pipelining and superscalar. We do, however, need the notion of a trap, that is an instruction that atomically switches the processor into privileged mode and jumps to a pre-defined physical address.

1.4.2: Memory

We will ignore caches, but will (later) discuss demand paging, which is very similar although uses completely disjoint terminology. In both cases, the goal is to combine large slow memory with small fast memory and achieve the effect of large fast memory.

The central memory in a system is called RAM (Random Access Memory). A key point is that it is volatile, i.e. the memory loses its value if power is turned off.

Disk Hardware

I don't understand why Tanenbaum discusses disks here instead of in the next section entitled I/O devices, but he does. I don't.

ROM / PROM / EPROM / EEPROM / Flash Ram

ROM (Read Only Memory) is used to hold data that will not change, e.g. the serial number of a computer or the program use in a microwave. ROM is non-volatile.

But often this unchangable data needs to be changed (e.g., to fix bug). This gives rise first to PROM (Programmable ROM), which, like a CD-R, can be written once (as opposed to being mass produced already written like a CD-ROM), and then to EPROM (Erasable PROM; not Erasable ROM as in Tanenbaum), which is like a CD-RW. An EPROM is especially. convenient if it can be erased with a normal circuit (EEPROM, Electrically EPROM or Flash RAM).

Memory Protection and Context Switching

As mentioned above when discussing OS/MFT and OS/MVT multiprogramming requires that we protect one process from another. That is we need to translate the virtual addresses of each program into distinct physical addresses. The hardware that performs this translation is called the MMU or Memory Management Unit.

When context switching from one process to another, the translation must change, which can be an expensive operation.


================ Start Lecture #3 ================

1.4.3: I/O Devices

Show a real disk opened up and illustrate the components

Devices are often quite complicated to manage and a separate computer, called a controller, is used to translate simple commands (read sector 123456) into what the device requires (read cylinder 321, head 6, sector 765). Actually the controller does considerably more, e.g. calculates a checksum for error detection.

How does the OS know when the I/O is complete?

  1. It can busy wait constantly asking the controller if the I/O is complete. This is the easiest (by far) but has low performance. It is also called polling or PIO (Programmed I/O).
  2. It can tell the controller to start the I/O and then switch to other tasks. The controller must then interrupt the OS when the I/O is done. Less waiting, but harder (concurrency!).
  3. Some controllers can do DMA (Direct Memory Access) in which case they deal directly with memory after being started by the CPU. This takes work from the CPU and halves the number of bus accesses.
We discuss this more in chapter 5. In particular, we explain the last point about halving bus accesses there.






1.4.3: Buses

I don't care so much about the names of the buses, but the diagram given in the book doesn't show a modern design. The one on the right does. Below is a figure showing the specifications for a modern chip set (introduced in 2000).

1.5: Operating System Concepts

This will be very brief. Much of the rest of the course will consist in ``filling in the details''.

1.5.1: Processes

A program in execution. If you run the same program twice, you have created two processes. For example if you have two editors running in two windows, each instance of the editor is a separate process.

Often one distinguishes the state or context (memory image, open files) from the thread of control. Then if one has many threads running in the same task, the result is a ``multithreaded processes''.

The OS keeps information about all processes in the process table. Indeed, the OS views the process as the entry. This is an example of an active entity being viewed as a data structure (cf. discrete event simulations). An observation made by Finkel in his (out of print) OS textbook.

The set of processes forms a tree via the fork system call. The forker is the parent of the forkee, which is called a child. If the system blocks the parent until the child finishes, the ``tree'' is quite simple, just a line. But the parent (in many OSes) is free to continue executing and in particular is free to fork again producing another child.

A process can send a signal to another process to cause the latter to execute a predefined function (the signal handler). This can be tricky to program since the programmer does not know when in his ``main'' program the signal handler will be invoked.

Each user is assigned User IDentification (UID) and all processes created by that user have this UID. One UID is special (the superuser or administrator) and has extra privileges. A child has the same UID as its parent. It is sometimes possible to change the UID of a running process. A group of users can be formed and given a Group IDentification, GID.

Access to files and devices can be limited to a given UID or GID.




1.5.2: Deadlocks

A set of processes each of which is blocked by a process in the set. The automotive equivalent, shown at right, is gridlock.

1.5.3: Memory Management

Each process requires memory. The loader produces a load module that assumes the process is loaded at location 0. The operating system ensures that the processes are actually given disjoint memory. Current operating systems permit each process to be given more (virtual) memory than the total amount of (real) memory on the machine.

1.5.4: Input/Output

There are a wide variety of I/O devices that the OS must manage. For example, if two processes are printing at the same time, the OS must not interleave the output. The OS contains device specific code (drivers) for each device as well as device-independent I/O code.

1.5.5: Files

Modern systems have a hierarchy of files. A file system tree.

You can name a file via an absolute path starting at the root directory or via a relative path starting at the current working directory.

In addition to regular files and directories, Unix also uses the file system namespace for devices (called special files, which are typically found in the /dev directory. Often utilities that are normally applied to (ordinary) files can be applied as well to some special files. For example, when you are accessing a unix system using a mouse and do not have anything serious going on (e.g., right after you log in), type the following command

    cat /dev/mouse
and then move the mouse. You kill the cat by typing cntl-C. I tried this on my linux box and no damage occurred. Your mileage may vary.

Before a file can be accessed, it must be opened and a file descriptor obtained. Many systems have standard files that are automatically made available to a process upon startup. These (initial) file descriptors are fixed

A convenience offered by some command interpretors is a pipe or pipeline. The pipeline

  dir | wc
which pipes the output dir into a character/word/line counter, will give the number of files in the directory (plus other info).

1.5.6: Security

Files and directories normally have permissions

1.5.7: The Shell or Command Interpreter (DOS Prompt)

The command line interface to the operating system. The shell permits the user to

Homework: 8


================ Start Lecture #4 ================

1.6: System Calls

System calls are the way a user (i.e., a program) directly interfaces with the OS. Some textbooks use the term envelope for the component of the OS responsible for fielding system calls and dispatching them. On the right is a picture showing some of the OS components and the external events for which they are the interface.

Note that the OS serves two masters. The hardware (below) asynchronously sends interrupts and the user makes system calls and generates page faults.

Homework: 14
What happens when a user executes a system call such as read()? We show a more detailed picture below, but at a high level what happens is

  1. Normal function call (in C, Ada, Pascal, etc.).
  2. Library routine (in C).
  3. Small assembler routine.
    1. Move arguments to predefined place (perhaps registers).
    2. Poof (a trap instruction) and then the OS proper runs in supervisor mode.
    3. Fix up result (move to correct place).

The following actions occur when the user executes the (Unix) system call

count = read(fd,buffer,nbytes)
which reads up to nbytes from the file described by fd into buffer. The actual number of bytes read is returned (it might be less than nbytes if, for example, an eof was encountered).
  1. Push third parameter on to the stack.
  2. Push second parameter on to the stack.
  3. Push first parameter on to the stack.
  4. Call the library routine, which involves pushing the return address on to the stack and jumping to the routine.
  5. Machine/OS dependent actions. One is to put the system call number for read in a well defined place, e.g., a specific register. This requires assembly language.
  6. Trap to the kernel (assembly language). This enters the operating system proper and shifts the computer to privileged mode.
  7. The envelope uses the system call number to access a table of pointers to find the handler for this system call.
  8. The read system call handler processes the request (see below).
  9. Some magic instruction returns to user mode and jumps to the location right after the trap.
  10. The library routine returns (there is more; e.g., the count must be returned.
  11. The stack is popped (ending the function call read).

A major complication is that the system call handler may block. Indeed for read it is likely. In that case a switch occurs to another process. This is far from trivial and is discussed later in the course.

Process Management
Posix Win32 Description
Fork CreateProcess Clone current process
exec(ve) Replace current process
waid(pid) WaitForSingleObject Wait for a child to terminate.
exit ExitProcess Terminate current process & return status
File Management
Posix Win32 Description
open CreateFile Open a file & return descriptor
close CloseHandle Close an open file
read ReadFile Read from file to buffer
write WriteFile Write from buffer to file
lseek SetFilePointer Move file pointer
stat GetFileAttributesEx Get status info
Directory and File System Management
Posix Win32 Description
mkdir CreateDirectory Create new directory
rmdir RemoveDirectory Remove empty directory
link (none) Create a directory entry
unlink DeleteFile Remove a directory entry
mount (none) Mount a file system
umount (none) Unmount a file system
Miscellaneous
Posix Win32 Description
chdir SetCurrentDirectory Change the current working directory
chmod (none) Change permissions on a file
kill (none) Send a signal to a process
time GetLocalTime Elapsed time since 1 jan 1970

A Few Important Posix/Unix/Linux and Win32 System Calls

The table on the right shows some systems calls; the descriptions are accurate for Unix and close for win32. To show how the four process management calls enable much of process management, consider the following highly simplified shell.

while (true)
    display_prompt()
    read_command(command)

    if (fork() != 0)  // true in parent false in child
        waitpid(...)
    else
        execve(command) // the command itself executes exit()
    endif
endwhile

Homework: 18.

1.7: OS Structure

I must note that Tanenbaum is a big advocate of the so called microkernel approach in which as much as possible is moved out of the (supervisor mode) microkernel into separate processes.

In the early 90s this was popular. Digital Unix (now called True64) and Windows NT are examples. Digital Unix is based on Mach, a research OS from Carnegie Mellon university. Lately, the growing popularity of Linux has called into question the belief that ``all new operating systems will be microkernel based''.

1.7.1: Monolithic approach

The previous picture: one big program

The system switches from user mode to kernel mode during the poof and then back when the OS does a ``return''.

But of course we can structure the system better, which brings us to.

1.7.2: Layered Systems

Some systems have more layers and are more strictly structured.

An early layered system was ``THE'' operating system by Dijkstra. The layers were.

  1. The operator
  2. User programs
  3. I/O mgt
  4. Operator-process communication
  5. Memory and drum management

The layering was done by convention, i.e. there was no enforcement by hardware and the entire OS is linked together as one program. This is true of many modern OS systems as well (e.g., linux).

The multics system was layered in a more formal manner. The hardware provided several protection layers and the OS used them. That is, arbitrary code could not jump to or access data in a more protected layer.

1.7.3: Virtual Machines

Use a ``hypervisor'' (beyond supervisor, i.e. beyond a normal OS) to switch between multiple Operating Systems. Made popular by IBM's VM/CMS

1.7.4: Exokernels

Similar to VM/CMS but the virtual machines have disjoint resources (e.g., distinct disk blocks) so less remapping is needed.

1.7.5: Client Server

When implemented on one computer, a client server OS is using the microkernel approach in which the microkernel just supplies interprocess communication and the main OS functions are provided by a number of separate processes.

This does have advantages. For example an error in the file server cannot corrupt memory in the process server. This makes errors easier to track down.

But it does mean that when a (real) user process makes a system call there are more processes switches. These are not free.

A distributed system can be thought of as an extension of the client server concept where the servers are remote.

Homework: 23

Chapter 2: Process and Thread Management

Tanenbaum's chapter title is ``Processes and Threads''. I prefer to add the word management. The subject matter is processes, threads, scheduling, interrupt handling, and IPC (InterProcess Communication--and Coordination).

2.1: Processes

Definition: A process is a program in execution.

2.1.1: The Process Model

Even though in actuality there are many processes running at once, the OS gives each process the illusion that it is running alone.

Virtual time and virtual memory are examples of abstractions provided by the operating system to the user processes so that the latter ``sees'' a more pleasant virtual machine than actually exists.


================ Start Lecture #5 ================

2.1.2: Process Creation

From the users or external viewpoint there are several mechanisms for creating a process.

  1. System initialization, including daemon processes.
  2. Execution of a process creation system call by a running process.
  3. A user request to create a new process.
  4. Initiation of a batch job.

But looked at internally, from the system's viewpoint, the second method dominates. Indeed in unix only one process is created at system initialization (the process is called init); all the others are children of this first process.

Why have init? That is why not have all processes created via method 2?
Ans: Because without init there would be no running process to create any others.

2.1.3: Process Termination

Again from the outside there appear to be several termination mechanism.

  1. Normal exit (voluntary).
  2. Error exit (voluntary).
  3. Fatal error (involuntary).
  4. Killed by another process (involuntary).

And again, internally the situation is simpler. In Unix terminology, there are two system calls kill and exit that are used. Kill (poorly named in my view) sends a signal to another process. If this signal is not caught (via the signal system call) the process is terminated. There is also an ``uncatchable'' signal. Exit is used for self termination and can indicate success or failure.

2.1.4: Process Hierarchies

Modern general purpose operating systems permit a user to create and destroy processes.

Old or primitive operating system like MS-DOS are not multiprogrammed, so when one process starts another, the first process is automatically blocked and waits until the second is finished.

2.1.5: Process States and Transitions

The diagram on the right contains much information.


One can organize an OS around the scheduler.

2.1.6: Implementation of Processes

The OS organizes the data about each process in a table naturally called the process table. Each entry in this table is called a process table entry (PTE) or process control block.

An aside on Interrupts (will be done again here)

In a well defined location in memory (specified by the hardware) the OS stores an interrupt vector, which contains the address of the (first level) interrupt handler.

Assume a process P is running and a disk interrupt occurs for the completion of a disk read previously issued by process Q, which is currently blocked. Note that interrupts are unlikely to be for the currently running process (because the process waiting for the interrupt is likely blocked).

  1. The hardware saves the program counter and some other registers (or switches to using another set of registers, the exact mechanism is machine dependent).
  2. Hardware loads new program counter from the interrupt vector.
  3. Assembly language routine saves registers.
  4. Assembly routine sets up new stack.
  5. Assembly routine calls C procedure (Tanenbaum forgot this one).
  6. C procedure does the real work.
  7. The scheduler decides which process to run (P or Q or something else). Lets assume that the decision is to run P.
  8. The C procedure (that did the real work in the interrupt processing) continues and returns to the assembly code.
  9. Assembly language restores P's state (e.g., registers) and starts P at the point it was when the interrupt occurred.


================ Start Lecture #6 ================

Notes:
  1. Inputs with errors are on the web.
  2. Labs should be emailed to the e-tutor AND uploaded to an NYU machine.
End of Notes

2.2: Threads

Per process itemsPer thread items
Address spaceProgram counter
Global variablesMachine registers
Open filesStack
Child processes
Pending alarms
Signals and signal handlers
Accounting information

The idea is to have separate threads of control (hence the name) running in the same address space. An address space is a memory management concept. For now think of an address space as the memory in which a process runs and the mapping from the virtual addresses (addresses in the program) to the physical addresses (addresses in the machine). Each thread is somewhat like a process (e.g., it is scheduled to run) but contains less state (the address space belongs to the process in which the thread runs.

2.2.1: The Thread Model

A process contains a number of resources such as address space, open files, accounting information, etc. In addition to these resources, a process has a thread of control, e.g., program counter, register contents, stack. The idea of threads is to permit multiple threads of control to execute within one process. This is often called multithreading and threads are often called lightweight processes. Because threads in the same process share so much state, switching between them is much less expensive than switching between separate processes.

Individual threads within the same process are not completely independent. For example there is no memory protection between them. This is typically not a security problem as the threads are cooperating and all are from the same user (indeed the same process). However, the shared resources do make debugging harder. For example one thread can easily overwrite data needed by another and if one thread closes a file other threads can't read from it.

2.2.2: Thread Usage

Often, when a process A is blocked (say for I/O) there is still computation that can be done. Another process B can't do this computation since it doesn't have access to the A's memory. But two threads in the same process do share memory so there is no problem.

An important modern example is a multithreaded web server. Each thread is responding to a single WWW connection. While one thread is blocked on I/O, another thread can be processing another WWW connection. Why not use separate processes, i.e., what is the shared memory?
Ans: The cache of frequently referenced pages.

A common organization is to have a dispatcher thread that fields requests and then passes this request on to an idle thread.

Another example is a producer-consumer problem (c.f. below) in which we have 3 threads in a pipeline. One reads data, the second processes the data read, and the third outputs the processed data. Again, while one thread is blocked the others can execute.

Homework: 9.

2.2.3: Implementing threads in user space

Write a (threads) library that acts as a mini-scheduler and implements thread_create, thread_exit, thread_wait, thread_yield, etc. The central data structure maintained and used by this library is the thread table, the analogue of the process table in the operating system itself.

Advantages

Disadvantages

2.2.4: Implementing Threads in the Kernel

Move the thread operations into the operating system itself. This naturally requires that the operating system itself be (significantly) modified and is thus not a trivial undertaking.

2.2.5: Hybrid Implementations

One can write a (user-level) thread library even if the kernel also has threads. Then each kernel thread can switch between user level threads. Thus switching between user-level threads within one kernel thread is very fast (no context switch) and we maintain the advantage that a blocking system call or page fault does not block the entire multi-threaded application.

2.2.6: Scheduler Activations

Skipped

2.2.7: Popup Threads

The idea is to automatically issue a create thread system call upon message arrival. (The alternative is to have a thread or process blocked on a receive system call.) If implemented well the latency between message arrival and thread execution can be very small since the new thread does not have state to restore.

Making Single-threaded Code Multithreaded

Definitely NOT for the faint of heart.

2.3: Interprocess Communication (IPC) and Coordination/Synchronization

2.3.1: Race Conditions

A race condition occurs when two processes can interact and the outcome depends on the order in which the processes execute.

Homework: 18.

2.3.2: Critical sections

We must prevent interleaving sections of code that need to be atomic with respect to each other. That is, the conflicting sections need mutual exclusion. If process A is executing its critical section, it excludes process B from executing its critical section. Conversely if process B is executing is critical section, it excludes process A from executing its critical section.

Requirements for a critical section implementation.

  1. No two processes may be simultaneously inside their critical section.
  2. No assumption may be made about the speeds or the number of CPUs.
  3. No process outside its critical section may block other processes.
  4. No process should have to wait forever to enter its critical section.

2.3.3 Mutual exclusion with busy waiting

The operating system can choose not to preempt itself. That is, we do not preempt system processes (if the OS is client server) or processes running in system mode (if the OS is self service). Forbidding preemption for system processes would prevent the problem above where x<--x+1 not being atomic crashed the printer spooler if the spooler is part of the OS.

But simply forbidding preemption while in system mode is not sufficient.

Software solutions for two processes

Initially P1wants=P2wants=false

Code for P1                             Code for P2

Loop forever {                          Loop forever {
    P1wants <-- true         ENTRY          P2wants <-- true
    while (P2wants) {}       ENTRY          while (P1wants) {}
    critical-section                        critical-section
    P1wants <-- false        EXIT           P2wants <-- false
    non-critical-section }                  non-critical-section }

Explain why this works.

But it is wrong! Why?

Let's try again. The trouble was that setting want before the loop permitted us to get stuck. We had them in the wrong order!

Initially P1wants=P2wants=false

Code for P1                             Code for P2

Loop forever {                          Loop forever {
    while (P2wants) {}       ENTRY          while (P1wants) {}
    P1wants <-- true         ENTRY          P2wants <-- true
    critical-section                        critical-section
    P1wants <-- false        EXIT           P2wants <-- false
    non-critical-section }                  non-critical-section }

Explain why this works.

But it is wrong again! Why?


================ Start Lecture #7 ================

So let's be polite and really take turns. None of this wanting stuff.

Initially turn=1

Code for P1                      Code for P2

Loop forever {                   Loop forever {
    while (turn = 2) {}              while (turn = 1) {}
    critical-section                 critical-section
    turn <-- 2                       turn <-- 1
    non-critical-section }           non-critical-section }

This one forces alternation, so is not general enough. Specifically, it does not satisfy condition three, which requires that no process in its non-critical section can stop another process from entering its critical section. With alternation, if one process is in its non-critical section (NCS) then the other can enter the CS once but not again.

In fact, it took years (way back when) to find a correct solution. Many earlier ``solutions'' were found and several were published, but all were wrong. The first correct solution was found by a mathematician named Dekker, who combined the ideas of turn and wants. The basic idea is that you take turns when there is contention, but when there is no contention, the requesting process can enter. It is very clever, but I am skipping it (I cover it when I teach distributed operating systems in V22.0480 or G22.2251). Subsequently, algorithms with better fairness properties were found (e.g., no task has to wait for another task to enter the CS twice).

What follows is Peterson's solution, which also combines turn and wants to force alternation only when there is contention. When Peterson's solution was published, it was a surprise to see such a simple soluntion. In fact Peterson gave a solution for any number of processes. A proof that the algorithm satisfies our properties (including a strong fairness condition) for any number of processes can be found in Operating Systems Review Jan 1990, pp. 18-22.

Initially P1wants=P2wants=false  and  turn=1

Code for P1                        Code for P2

Loop forever {                     Loop forever {
    P1wants <-- true                   P2wants <-- true
    turn <-- 2                         turn <-- 1
    while (P2wants and turn=2) {}      while (P1wants and turn=1) {}
    critical-section                   critical-section
    P1wants <-- false                  P2wants <-- false
    non-critical-section               non-critical-section

Hardware assist (test and set)

TAS(b), where b is a binary variable, ATOMICALLY sets b<--true and returns the OLD value of b.
Of course it would be silly to return the new value of b since we know the new value is true.

The wordatomically means that the two actions performed by TAS(x) (testing, i.e., returning the old value of x and setting , i.e., assigning true to x) are inseparable. Specifically it is not possible for two concurrent TAS(x) operations to both return false (unless there is also another concurrent statement that sets x to false).

With TAS available implementing a critical section for any number of processes is trivial.

loop forever {
    while (TAS(s)) {}   ENTRY
    CS
    s<--false           EXIT
    NCS

2.3.4: Sleep and Wakeup

Remark: Tanenbaum does both busy waiting (as above) and blocking (process switching) solutions. We will only do busy waiting, which is easier. Sleep and Wakeup are the simplest blocking primitives. Sleep voluntarily blocks the process and wakeup unblocks a sleeping process. We will not cover these.

Homework: Explain the difference between busy waiting and blocking.

2.3.5: Semaphores

Remark: Tannenbaum use the term semaphore only for blocking solutions. I will use the term for our busy waiting solutions. Others call our solutions spin locks.

P and V and Semaphores

The entry code is often called P and the exit code V. Thus the critical section problem is to write P and V so that

loop forever
    P
    critical-section
    V
    non-critical-section
satisfies
  1. Mutual exclusion.
  2. No speed assumptions.
  3. No blocking by processes in NCS.
  4. Forward progress (my weakened version of Tanenbaum's last condition).

Note that I use indenting carefully and hence do not need (and sometimes omit) the braces {} used in languages like C or java.

A binary semaphore abstracts the TAS solution we gave for the critical section problem.

The above code is not real, i.e., it is not an implementation of P. It is, instead, a definition of the effect P is to have.

To repeat: for any number of processes, the critical section problem can be solved by

loop forever
    P(S)
    CS
    V(S)
    NCS

The only specific solution we have seen for an arbitrary number of processes is the one just above with P(S) implemented via test and set.

Remark: Peterson's solution requires each process to know its processor number. The TAS soluton does not. Moreover the definition of P and V does not permit use of the processor number. Thus, strictly speaking Peterson did not provide an implementation of P and V. He did solve the critical section problem.

To solve other coordination problems we want to extend binary semaphores.

Both of the shortcomings can be overcome by not restricting ourselves to a binary variable, but instead define a generalized or counting semaphore.

These counting semaphores can solve what I call the semi-critical-section problem, where you premit up to k processes in the section. When k=1 we have the original critical-section problem.

initially S=k

loop forever
    P(S)
    SCS   <== semi-critical-section
    V(S)
    NCS

Producer-consumer problem

Initially e=k, f=0 (counting semaphore); b=open (binary semaphore)

Producer                         Consumer

loop forever                     loop forever
    produce-item                     P(f)
    P(e)                             P(b); take item from buf; V(b)
    P(b); add item to buf; V(b)      V(e)
    V(f)                             consume-item


================ Start Lecture #8 ================

2.3.6: Mutexes

Remark: Whereas we use the term semaphore to mean binary semaphore and explicitly say generalized or counting semaphore for the positive integer version, Tanenbaum uses semaphore for the positive integer solution and mutex for the binary version. Also, as indicated above, for Tanenbaum semaphore/mutex implies a blocking primitive.

My Terminology
Busy waitblock/switch
critical(binary) semaphore(binary) semaphore
semi-criticalcounting semaphorecounting semaphore
Tanenbaum's Terminology
Busy waitblock/switch
criticalenter/leave regionmutex
semi-criticalno namesemaphore

2.3.7: Monitors

Skipped.

2.3..8: Message Passing

Skipped. You can find some information on barriers in my lecture notes for a follow-on course (see in particular lecture #16).

2.4: Classical IPC Problems

2.4.1: The Dining Philosophers Problem

A classical problem from Dijkstra

What algorithm do you use for access to the shared resource (the forks)?

The purpose of mentioning the Dining Philosophers problem without giving the solution is to give a feel of what coordination problems are like. The book gives others as well. We are skipping these (again this material would be covered in a sequel course). If you are interested look, for example, here.

Homework: 31 and 32 (these have short answers but are not easy).

2.4.2: The Readers and Writers Problem

Quite useful in multiprocessor operating systems and database systems. The ``easy way out'' is to treat all processes as writers in which case the problem reduces to mutual exclusion (P and V). The disadvantage of the easy way out is that you give up reader concurrency. Again for more information see the web page referenced above.

2.4.3: The Sleeping Barber Problem

Skipped.

2.5: Process Scheduling

Scheduling processes on the processor is often called ``process scheduling'' or simply ``scheduling''.

The objectives of a good scheduling policy include

Recall the basic diagram describing process states

For now we are discussing short-term scheduling, i.e., the arcs connecting running <--> ready.

Medium term scheduling is discussed later.

Preemption

It is important to distinguish preemptive from non-preemptive scheduling algorithms.

Deadline scheduling

This is used for real time systems. The objective of the scheduler is to find a schedule for all the tasks (there are a fixed set of tasks) so that each meets its deadline. The run time of each task is known in advance.

Actually it is more complicated.

We do not cover deadline scheduling in this course.

The name game

There is an amazing inconsistency in naming the different (short-term) scheduling algorithms. Over the years I have used primarily 4 books: In chronological order they are Finkel, Deitel, Silberschatz, and Tanenbaum. The table just below illustrates the name game for these four books. After the table we discuss each scheduling policy in turn.

Finkel  Deitel  Silbershatz Tanenbaum
-------------------------------------
FCFS    FIFO    FCFS        --    unnamed in tanenbaum
RR      RR      RR          RR
PS      **      PS          PS
SRR     **      SRR         **    not in tanenbaum
SPN     SJF     SJF         SJF
PSPN    SRT     PSJF/SRTF   --    unnamed in tanenbaum
HPRN    HRN     **          **    not in tanenbaum
**      **      MLQ         **    only in silbershatz
FB      MLFQ    MLFQ        MQ

First Come First Served (FCFS, FIFO, FCFS, --)

If the OS ``doesn't'' schedule, it still needs to store the PTEs somewhere. If it is a queue you get FCFS. If it is a stack (strange), you get LCFS. Perhaps you could get some sort of random policy as well.

Round Robin (RR, RR, RR, RR)

Homework: 26, 35, 38.


================ Start Lecture #9 ================

Homework: Give an argument favoring a large quantum; give an argument favoring a small quantum.

ProcessCPU TimeCreation Time
P1200
P233
P325
Homework: (Remind me to discuss this last one in class next time): Consider the set of processes in the table below. When does each process finish if RR scheduling is used with q=1, if q=2, if q=3, if q=100. First assume (unrealistically) that context switch time is zero. Then assume it is .1. Each process performs no I/O (i.e., no process ever blocks). All times are in milliseconds. The CPU time is the total time required for the process (excluding any context switch time). The creation time is the time when the process is created. So P1 is created when the problem begins and P3 is created 5 milliseconds later. If two processes have equal priority (in RR this means if thy both enter the ready state at the same cycle), we give priority (in RR this means place first on the queue) to the process with the earliest creation time. If they also have the same creation time, then we give priority to the process with the lower number.

Processor Sharing (PS, **, PS, PS)

Merge the ready and running states and permit all ready jobs to be run at once. However, the processor slows down so that when n jobs are running at once, each progresses at a speed 1/n as fast as it would if it were running alone.

Homework: 34.

Variants of Round Robin

Priority Scheduling

Each job is assigned a priority (externally, perhaps by charging more for higher priority) and the highest priority ready job is run.

Priority aging

As a job is waiting, raise its priority so eventually it will have the maximum priority.

Selfish RR (SRR, **, SRR, **)

Shortest Job First (SPN, SJF, SJF, SJF)

Sort jobs by total execution time needed and run the shortest first.

Homework: 39, 40.

Preemptive Shortest Job First (PSPN, SRT, PSJF/SRTF, --)

Preemptive version of above

Highest Penalty Ratio Next (HPRN, HRN, **, **)

Run the process that has been ``hurt'' the most.

Multilevel Queues (**, **, MLQ, **)

Put different classes of processs in different queues

Multilevel Feedback Queues (FB, MFQ, MLFBQ, MQ)

Many queues and processs move from queue to queue in an attempt to dynamically separate ``batch-like'' from interactive processs.


================ Start Lecture #10 ================

Theoretical Issues

Considerable theory has been developed.

Medium-Term Scheduling

In addition to the short-term scheduling we have discussed, we add medium-term scheduling in which decisions are made at a coarser time scale.

Long Term Scheduling

2.5.4: Scheduling in Real Time Systems

Skipped

2.5.5: Policy versus Mechanism

Skipped.

2.5.6: Thread Scheduling

Skipped.

Research on Processes and Threads

Skipped.

Note on Date of Midterm (vote)

The midterm will cover chapters 0-3 of the notes, i.e., linkers and tanenbaum chapters 1-3. We will finish chapter 3 a week from today and the exam must be given before the break so that it can be graded a returned by the deadline.

Thus the only two possibilities are tues 5 march and thurs 7 march. The exam would be the same on either day. I will be in on wed afternoon 6 march.

The exam is closed book and closed notes. I will hand out some sample questions or review sheet on tuesday.

The vote was held and the winner was thursday 7 March. End of Note

Notes on lab (scheduling)

  1. If several processes are waiting on I/O, you may assume noninterference. For example, assume that on cycle 100 process A flips a coin and decides its wait is 6 units (i.e., during cycles 101-106 A will be blocked. Assume B begins running at cycle 101 for a burst of 1 cycle. So during 101 process B flips a coin and decides its wait is 3 units. You do NOT alter process A. That is, Process A will become ready after cycle 106 (100+6) so enters the ready list cycle 107 and process B becomes ready after cycle 104 (101+3) and enters ready list cycle 105.

  2. For processor sharing (PS), which is part of the extra credit:
    PS (processor sharing). Every cycle you see how many jobs are ready (or running). Say there are 7. Then during this cycle (an exception will be described below) each process gets 1/7 of a cycle.
    EXCEPTION: Assume there are exactly 2 ready jobs, one needs 1/3 cycle and one needs 1/2 cycle. The process needing only 1/3 gets only 1/3, i.e. it is finished after 2/3 cycle. So the other process gets 1/3 cycle during the first 2/3 cycle and then starts to get all the CPU. Hence it finishes after 2/3 + 1/6 = 5/6 cycle. The last 1/6 cycle is not used by any process.
End of Notes

Chapter 3: Deadlocks

A deadlock occurs when a every member of a set of processes is waiting for an event that can only be caused by a member of the set.

Often the event waited for is the release of a resource.

In the automotive world deadlocks are called gridlocks.

Reward: One point extra credit on the final exam for anyone who brings a real (e.g., newspaper) picture of an automotive deadlock. You must bring the clipping to the final and it must be in good condition. Hand it in with your exam paper. Note that it must really be a gridlock, i.e., motion is not possible without breaking the traffic rules. A huge traffic jam is not sufficient.

For a computer science example consider two processes A and B that each want to print a file currently on tape.

  1. A has obtained ownership of the printer and will release it after printing one file.
  2. B has obtained ownership of the tape drive and will release it after reading one file.
  3. A tries to get ownership of the tape drive, but is told to wait for B to release it.
  4. B tries to get ownership of the printer, but is told to wait for A to release the printer.

Bingo: deadlock!

3.1: Resources:

The resource is the object granted to a process.

3.1.1: Preemptable and Nonpreemptable Resourses

3.1.2: Resourse Acquisition

Simple example of the trouble you can get into.

Recall from the semaphore/critical-section treatment last chapter, that it is easy to cause trouble if a process dies or stays forever inside its critical section. Similarly, we assume that no process maintains a resource forever. It may obtain the resource an unbounded number of times (i.e. it can have a loop forever with a resource request inside), but each time it gets the resource, it must release it eventually.

3.2: Introduction to Deadlocks

To repeat: A deadlock occurs when a every member of a set of processes is waiting for an event that can only be caused by a member of the set.

Often the event waited for is the release of a resource.

3.2.1: (Necessary) Conditions for Deadlock

The following four conditions (Coffman; Havender) are necessary but not sufficient for deadlock. Repeat: They are not sufficient.

  1. Mutual exclusion: A resource can be assigned to at most one process at a time (no sharing).
  2. Hold and wait: A processing holding a resource is permitted to request another.
  3. No preemption: A process must release its resources; they cannot be taken away.
  4. Circular wait: There must be a chain of processes such that each member of the chain is waiting for a resource held by the next member of the chain.

The first three are characteristics of the system and resources. For a given system fixed set of resource they are either true or false, i.e., they don't change with time. The truth or falsehood of the last condition does indeed change with time as the resources are requested/allocated/released.

3.2.2: Deadlock Modeling

On the right is the Resource Allocation Graph, also called the Reusable Resource Graph.

Homework: 5.

Consider two concurrent processes P1 and P2 whose programs are.

P1: request R1       P2: request R2
    request R2           request R1
    release R2           release R1
    release R1           release R2

On the board draw the resource allocation graph for various possible executions of the processes, indicating when deadlock occurs and when deadlock is no longer avoidable.

There are four strategies used for dealing with deadlocks.

  1. Ignore the problem
  2. Detect deadlocks and recover from them
  3. Avoid deadlocks by carefully deciding when to allocate resources.
  4. Prevent deadlocks by violating one of the 4 necessary conditions.

3.3: Ignoring the problem--The Ostrich Algorithm

The ``put your head in the sand approach''.

3.4: Detecting Deadlocks and Recovering From Them

3.4.1: Detecting Deadlocks with Single Unit Resources

Consider the case in which there is only one instance of each resource.

To find a directed cycle in a directed graph is not hard. The algorithm is in the book. The idea is simple.

  1. For each node in the graph do a depth first traversal (hoping the graph is a DAG (directed acyclic graph), building a list as you go down the DAG.
  2. If you ever find the same node twice on your list, you have found a directed cycle and the graph is not a DAG and deadlock exists among the processes in your current list.
  3. If you never find the same node twice, the graph is a DAG and no deadlock occurs.
  4. The searches are finite since the list size is bounded by the number of nodes.

3.4.2: Detecting Deadlocks with Multiple Unit Resources

This is more difficult.


================ Start Lecture #11 ================

3.4.3: Recovery from deadlock

Preemption

Perhaps you can temporarily preempt a resource from a process. Not likely.

Rollback

Database (and other) systems take periodic checkpoints. If the system does take checkpoints, one can roll back to a checkpoint whenever a deadlock is detected. Somehow must guarantee forward progress.

Kill processes

Can always be done but might be painful. For example some processes have had effects that can't be simply undone. Print, launch a missile, etc.

Remark: We are doing 3.6 before 3.5 since 3.6 is easier.

3.6: Deadlock Prevention

Attack one of the coffman/havender conditions

3.6.1: Attacking Mutual Exclusion

Idea is to use spooling instead of mutual exclusion. Not possible for many kinds of resources

3.6.2: Attacking Hold and Wait

Require each processes to request all resources at the beginning of the run. This is often called One Shot.

3.6.3: Attacking No Preempt

Normally not possible.

3.6.4: Attacking Circular Wait

Establish a fixed ordering of the resources and require that they be requested in this order. So if a process holds resources #34 and #54, it can request only resources #55 and higher.

It is easy to see that a cycle is no longer possible.

Homework: 7.

3.5: Deadlock Avoidance

Let's see if we can tiptoe through the tulips and avoid deadlock states even though our system does permit all four of the necessary conditions for deadlock.

An optimistic resource manager is one that grants every request as soon as it can. To avoid deadlocks with all four conditions present, the manager must be smart not optimistic.

3.5.1 Resource Trajectories

We plot progress of each process along an axis. In the example we show, there are two processes, hence two axes, i.e., planar. This procedure assumes that we know the entire request and release pattern of the processes in advance so it is not a practical solution. I present it as it is some motivation for the practical solution that follows, the Banker's Algorithm.

Homework: 10, 11, 12.

3.5.2: Safe States

Avoiding deadlocks given some extra knowledge.

Definition: A state is safe if there is an ordering of the processes such that: if the processes are run in this order, they will all terminate (assuming none exceeds its claim).

Give an example of all four possibilities. A state that is

  1. Safe and deadlocked--not possible
  2. Safe and not deadlocked
  3. Not safe and deadlocked
  4. Not safe and not deadlocked--interesting

A manager can determine if a state is safe.

The manager then follows the following procedure, which is part of Banker's Algorithms discovered by Dijkstra, to determine if the state is safe.

  1. If there are no processes remaining, the state is safe.

  2. Seek a process P whose max additional requests is less than what remains (for each resource type).
    • If no such process can be found, then the state is not safe.
    • The banker (manager) knows that if it refuses all requests excepts those from P, then it will be able to satisfy all of P's requests. Why?
      Ans: Look at how P was chosen.

  3. The banker now pretends that P has terminated (since the banker knows that it can guarantee this will happen). Hence the banker pretends that all of P's currently held resources are returned. This makes the banker richer and hence perhaps a process that was not eligible to be chosen as P previously, can now be chosen.

  4. Repeat these steps.

Example 1

A safe state with 22 units of one resource
processclaimcurrentmax need
X312
Y1156
Z19109
Total16
Available6

Example 2

A unsafe state with 22 units of one resource
processclaimcurrentmax need
X312
Y1156
Z19127
Total18
Available4

Start with example 1 and assume that Z now requests 2 units and we grant them.


================ Start Lecture #12 ================

Remark: An unsafe state is not necessarily a deadlocked state. Indeed, if one gets lucky all processes may terminate successfully. A safe state means that the manager can guarantee that no deadlock will occur.

3.5.3: The Banker's Algorithm (Dijkstra) for a Single Resource

The algorithm is simple: Stay in safe states. Initially, we assume all the processes are present before execution begins and that all claims are given before execution begins. We will relax these assumptions very soon.

Homework: 13.

3.5.4: The Banker's Algorithm for Multiple Resources

At a high level the algorithm is identical: Stay in safe states.

Limitations of the banker's algorithm

Homework: 21, 27, and 20. There is an interesting typo in 20 (2nd edition of book): A has claimed 3 units of resource 5, but there are only 2 units in the entire system. change A's claim to 2.

3.7: Other Issues

3.7.1: Two-phase locking

This is covered (MUCH better) in a database text. We will skip it.

3.7.2: Non-resource deadlocks

You can get deadlock from semaphores as well as resources. This is trivial. Semaphores can be considered resources. P(S) is request S and V(S) is release S. The manager is the module implementing P and V. When the manager returns from P(S), it has granted the resource S.

3.7.3: Starvation

As usual FCFS is a good cure. Often this is done by priority aging and picking the highest priority process to get the resource. Also can periodically stop accepting new processes until all old ones get their resources.

3.8: Research on Deadlocks

Skipped.

3.9: Summary

Read.

Chapter 4: Memory Management

Also called storage management or space management.

Memory management must deal with the storage hierarchy present in modern machines.

We will see in the next few lectures that there are three independent decision:

  1. Segmentation (or no segmentation)
  2. Paging (or no paging)
  3. Fetch on demand (or no fetching on demand)


================ Start Lecture #13 ================

Memory management implements address translation.

Homework: 6.


================ Start Lecture #14 ================

MIDTERM EXAM


================ Start Lecture #15 ================

When is address translation performed?

  1. At compile time
    • Compiler generates physical addresses.
    • Requires knowledge of where the compilation unit will be loaded.
    • No linker.
    • Loader is trivial.
    • Primitive.
    • Rarely used (MSDOS .COM files).

  2. At link-edit time (the ``linker lab'')
    • Compiler
      • Generates relocatable addresses for each compilation unit.
      • References external addresses.
    • Linkage editor
      • Converts the relocatable addr to absolute.
      • Resolves external references.
      • Misnamed ld by unix.
      • Also converts virtual to physical addresses by knowing where the linked program will be loaded. Linker lab ``does'' this, but it is trivial since we assume the linked program will be loaded at 0.
    • Loader is still trivial.
    • Hardware requirements are small.
    • A program can be loaded only where specified and cannot move once loaded.
    • Not used much any more.

  3. At load time
    • Similar to at link-edit time, but do not fix the starting address.
    • Program can be loaded anywhere.
    • Program can move but cannot be split.
    • Need modest hardware: base/limit registers.
    • Loader sets the base/limit registers.

  4. At execution time
    • Addresses translated dynamically during execution.
    • Hardware needed to perform the virtual to physical address translation quickly.
    • Currently dominates.
    • Much more information later.

Extensions

Note: I will place ** before each memory management scheme.

4.1: Basic Memory Management (Without Swapping or Paging)

Entire process remains in memory from start to finish and does not move.

The sum of the memory requirements of all jobs in the system cannot exceed the size of physical memory.

** 4.1.1: Monoprogramming without swapping or paging (Single User)

The ``good old days'' when everything was easy.

**4.1.2: Multiprogramming with fixed partitions

Two goals of multiprogramming are to improve CPU utilization, by overlapping CPU and I/O and to permit short jobs to finish quickly.


================ Start Lecture #16 ================

4.1.3: Modeling Multiprogramming

Homework: 1, 2 (typo in book; figure 4.21 seems irrelevant).

4.1.4: Analysis of Multiprogramming System Performance

Skipped

4.1.5: Relocation and Protection

Relocation was discussed as part of linker lab and at the beginning of this chapter. When done dynamically, a simple method is to have a base register whose value is added to every address by the hardware.

Similarly a limit register is checked by the hardware to be sure that the address (before the base register is added) is not bigger than the size of the program.

The base and limit register are set by the OS when the job starts.

4.2: Swapping

Moving entire processes between disk and memory is called swapping.

Multiprogramming with Variable Partitions

Both the number and size of the partitions change with time.

Homework: 3

MVT Introduces the ``Placement Question''

That is, which hole (partition) should one choose?

4.2.1: Memory Management with Bitmaps

Divide memory into blocks and associate a bit with each block, used to indicate if the corresponding block is free or allocated. To find a chunk of size N blocks need to find N consecutive bits indicating a free block.

The only design question is how much memory does one bit represent.

4.2.2: Memory Management with Linked Lists

Memory Management using Boundary Tags

Homework: 5.

MVT also introduces the ``Replacement Question''

That is, which victim should we swap out? Note that this is an example of the suspend arc mentioned in process scheduling.

We will study this question more when we discuss demand paging in which case we swap out part of a process.

Considerations in choosing a victim


================ Start Lecture #17 ================

NOTEs:
  1. So far the schemes presented so far have had two properties:
    1. Each job is stored contiguously in memory. That is, the job is contiguous in physical addresses.
    2. Each job cannot use more memory than exists in the system. That is, the virtual addresses space cannot exceed the physical address space.

  2. Tanenbaum now attacks the second item. I wish to do both and start with the first.

  3. Tanenbaum (and most of the world) uses the term ``paging'' to mean what I call demand paging. This is unfortunate as it mixes together two concepts.
    1. Paging (dicing the address space) to solve the placement problem and essentially eliminate external fragmentation.
    2. Demand fetching, to permit the total memory requirements of all loaded jobs to exceed the size of physical memory.

  4. Tanenbaum (and most of the world) uses the term virtual memory as a synonym for demand paging. Again I consider this unfortunate.
    1. Demand paging is a fine term and is quite descriptive.
    2. Virtual memory ``should'' be used in contrast with physical memory to describe any virtual to physical address translation.

** (non-demand) Paging

Simplest scheme to remove the requirement of contiguous physical memory.

Example: Assume a decimal machine with page size = frame size = 1000.
Assume PTE 3 contains 459.
Then virtual address 3372 corresponds to physical address 459372.

Properties of (non-demand) paging.

Homework: 16.


================ Start Lecture #18 ================

Address translation

Choice of page size is discuss below.

Homework: 8.

4.3: Virtual Memory (meaning fetch on demand)

Idea is that a program can execute even if only the active portion of its address space is memory resident. That is, swap in and swap out portions of a program. In a crude sense this can be called ``automatic overlays''.

Advantages

4.3.1: Paging (meaning demand paging)

Fetch pages from disk to memory when they are referenced, with a hope of getting the most actively used pages in memory.

Homework: 12.

4.3.2: Page tables

A discussion of page tables is also appropriate for (non-demand) paging, but the issues are more acute with demand paging since the tables can be much larger. Why?

  1. The total size of the active processes is no longer limited to the size of physical memory. Since the total size of the processes is greater, the total size of the page tables is greater and hence concerns over the size of the page table are more acute.
  2. With demand paging an important question is the choice of a victim page to page out. Data in the page table can be useful in this choice.

We must be able access to the page table very quickly since it is needed for every memory access.

Unfortunate laws of hardware.

So we can't just say, put the page table in fast processor registers, and let it be huge, and sell the system for $1500.




For now, put the (one-level) page table in main memory.


Contents of a PTE

Each page has a corresponding page table entry (PTE). The information in a PTE is for use by the hardware. Information set by and used by the OS is normally kept in other OS tables. The page table format is determined by the hardware so access routines are not portable. The following fields are often present.

  1. The valid bit. This tells if the page is currently loaded (i.e., is in a frame). If set, the frame pointer is valid. It is also called the presence or presence/absence bit. If a page is accessed with the valid bit zero, a page fault is generated by the hardware.
  2. The frame number. This is the main reason for the table. It is needed for virtual to physical address translation.
  3. The Modified bit. Indicates that some part of the page has been written since it was loaded. This is needed when the page is evicted so the OS can know that the page must be written back to disk.
  4. The referenced bit. Indicates that some word in the page has been referenced. Used to select a victim: unreferenced pages make good victims by the locality property (discussed below).
  5. Protection bits. For example one can mark text pages as execute only. This requires that boundaries between regions with different protection are on page boundaries. Normally many consecutive (in logical address) pages have the same protection so many page protection bits are redundant. Protection is more naturally done with segmentation.

Multilevel page tables (Not on 202 final exam)

Recall the previous diagram. Most of the virtual memory is the unused space between the data and stack regions. However, with demand paging this space does not waste real memory. But the single large page table does waste real memory.

The idea of multi-level page tables (a similar idea is used in Unix inode-based file systems) is to add a level of indirection and have a page table containing pointers to page tables.

Do an example on the board

The VAX used a 2-level page table structure, but with some wrinkles (see Tanenbaum for details).

Naturally, there is no need to stop at 2 levels. In fact the SPARC has 3 levels and the Motorola 68030 has 4 (and the number of bits of Virtual Address used for P#1, P#2, P#3, and P#4 can be varied).


================ Start Lecture #19 ================

4.3.3: TLBs--Translation Lookaside Buffers (and General Associative Memory)

Note: Tanenbaum suggests that ``associative memory'' and ``translation lookaside buffer'' are synonyms. This is wrong. Associative memory is a general structure and translation lookaside buffer is a special case.

An associative memory is a content addressable memory. That is you access the memory by giving the value of some field and the hardware searches all the records and returns the record whose field contains the requested value.

For example

Name  | Animal | Mood     | Color
======+========+==========+======
Moris | Cat    | Finicky  | Grey
Fido  | Dog    | Friendly | Black
Izzy  | Iguana | Quiet    | Brown
Bud   | Frog   | Smashed  | Green
If the index field is Animal and Iguana is given, the associative memory returns
Izzy  | Iguana | Quiet    | Brown

A Translation Lookaside Buffer or TLB is an associate memory where the index field is the page number. The other fields include the frame number, dirty bit, valid bit, and others.

Homework: 17.

4.3.4: Inverted page tables

Keep a table indexed by frame number with the entry f containing the number of the page currently loaded in frame f.

4.4: Page Replacement Algorithms (PRAs)

These are solutions to the replacement question.

Good solutions take advantage of locality.

Pages belonging to processes that have terminated are of course perfect choices for victims.

Pages belonging to processes that have been blocked for a long time are good choices as well.

Random PRA

A lower bound on performance. Any decent scheme should do better.

4.4.1: The optimal page replacement algorithm (opt PRA) (aka Belady's min PRA)

Replace the page whose next reference will be furthest in the future.

4.4.2: The not recently used (NRU) PRA

Divide the frames into four classes and make a random selection from the lowest nonempty class.

  1. Not referenced, not modified
  2. Not referenced, modified
  3. Referenced, not modified
  4. Referenced, modified

Assumes that in each PTE there are two extra flags R (sometimes called U, for used) and M (often called D, for dirty).

Also assumes that a page in a lower priority class is cheaper to evict.

We again have the prisoner problem, we do a good job of making little ones out of big ones, but not the reverse. Need more resets.

Every k clock ticks, reset all R bits

What if the hardware doesn't set these bits?

4.4.3: FIFO PRA

Simple but poor since usage of the page is ignored.

Belady's Anomaly: Can have more frames yet generate more faults. Example given later.

4.4.4: Second chance PRA

Similar to the FIFO PRA but when time choosing a victim, if the page at the head of the queue has been referenced (R bit set), don't evict it. Instead reset R and move the page to the rear of the queue (so it looks new). The page is being a second chance.

What if all frames have been referenced?
Becomes the same as fifo (but takes longer).

Might want to turn off the R bit more often (say every k clock ticks).

4.4.5: Clock PRA

Same algorithm as 2nd chance, but a better (and I would say obvious) implementation: Use a circular list.

Do an example.

LIFO PRA

This is terrible! Why?
Ans: All but the last frame are frozen once loaded so you can replace only one frame. This is especially bad after a phase shift in the program when it is using all new pages.

4.4.6:Least Recently Used (LRU) PRA

When a page fault occurs, choose as victim that page that has been unused for the longest time, i.e. that has been least recently used.

LRU is definitely

Homework: 29, 23

A hardware cutsie in Tanenbaum

4.4.7: Simulating (Approximating) LRU in Software

The Not Frequently Used (NFU) PRA

R counter
110000000
001000000
110100000
111010000
001101000
000110100
110011010
111001101
001100110

The Aging PRA

NFU doesn't distinguish between old references and recent ones. The following modification does distinguish.

Homework: 25, 34


================ Start Lecture #20 ================

4.4.8: The Working Set Page Replacement Problem (Peter Denning)

The working set policy (Peter Denning)

The goal is to specify which pages a given process needs to have memory resident in order for the give process to run without too many page faults.

The idea of the working set policy is to ensure that each process keeps its working set in memory.

Interesting questions include:

... Various approximations to the working set, have been devised. We will study three: using virtual time instead of memory references (immediately below), WSClock (section 4.4.9), and Page Fault Frequency (section 4.6).

Using virtual time

Approximate the working set as those pages referenced during the last m milliseconds. Then clear the reference bit every m milliseconds and set it on every reference. Note that the time is measured only while this process is running. That is why it is called virtual time. So now to choose a victim, we need to find a page with the R bit clear. Similar to NRU.

4.4.9: The WSClock Page Replacement Algorithm

4.4.10: Summary of Page Replacement Algorithms

AlgorithmComment
RandomPoor, used for comparison
OptimalUnimplementable, use for comparison
LIFOHorrible, useless
NRUCrude
FIFONot good ignores frequency of use
Second ChanceImprovement over FIFO
ClockBetter (natural) implementation of Second Chance
LRUGreat but impractical
NFUCrude LRU approximation
AgingBetter LRU approximation
Working SetGood, but expensive
WSClockGood approximation to working set

4.5: Modeling Paging Algorithms

4.5.1: Belady's anomaly

Consider a system that has no pages loaded and that uses the FIFO PRU.
Consider the following ``reference string'' (sequences of pages referenced).

 0 1 2 3 0 1 4 0 1 2 3 4

If we have 3 frames this generates 9 page faults (do it).

If we have 4 frames this generates 10 page faults (do it).

Theory has been developed and certain PRA (so called ``stack algorithms'') cannot suffer this anomaly for any reference string. FIFO is clearly not a stack algorithm. LRU is. Tannenbaum has a few details, but we are skipping it.

Repeat the above calculations for LRU.

4.6: Design issues for (demand) Paging Systems

4.6.1: Local vs Global Allocation Policies

A local PRA is one is which a victim page is chosen among the pages of the same process that requires a new page. That is the number of pages for each process is fixed. So LRU means the page least recently used by this process.

If we apply global LRU indiscriminately with some sort of RR processor scheduling policy, and memory is somewhat over-committed, then by the time we get around to a process, all the others have run and have probably paged out this process.

If this happens each process will need to page fault at a high rate; this is called thrashing.

It is therefore important to get a good idea of how many pages a process needs, so that we can balance the local and global desires. The working set W(t,ω) is good for this.

An approximation to the working set policy that is useful for determining how many frames a process needs (but not which pages) is the Page Fault Frequency (PFF) algorithm.

As mentioned above a question arises what to do if the sum of the working set sizes exceeds the amount of physical memory available. This question is similar to the final point about PFF and brings us to consider controlling the load (or memory pressure).




4.6.2: Load Control

To reduce the overall memory pressure, we must reduce the multiprogramming level (or install more memory while the system is running, which is hardly practical). That is, we have a connection between memory management and process management. This is the suspend/resume arcs we saw way back when.


================ Start Lecture #21 ================

4.6.3: Page size

4.6.4: Separate Instruction and Data (I and D) Spaces

Skipped.

4.6.5: Shared pages

Permit several processes to each have a page loaded in the same frame. Of course this can only be done if the processes are using the same program and/or data.

4.6.6: Cleaning Policy (Paging Daemons)

Done earlier

4.6.7: Virtual Memory Interface

Skipped.

4.7: Implementation Issues

4.7.1: Operating System Involvement with Paging

4.7.2: Page Fault Handling

What happens when a process, say process A, gets a page fault?
  1. The hardware detects the fault and traps to the kernel (switches to supervisor mode and saves state).

  2. Some assembly language code save more state, establishes the C-language (or another programming language) environment, and ``calls'' the OS.

  3. The OS determines that a page fault occurred and which page was referenced.

  4. If the virtual address is invalid, process A is killed. If the virtual address is valid, the OS must find a free frame. If there is no free frames, the OS selects a victim frame. Call the process owning the victim frame, process B. (If the page replacement algorithm is local, the victim is process A.)

  5. The PTE of the victim page is updated to show that the page is no longer resident.

  6. If the victim page is dirty, the OS schedules an I/O write to copy the frame to disk and blocks A waiting for this I/O to occur.

  7. Since process A is blocked, the scheduler is invoked to perform a context switch.

    • Tanenbaum ``forgot'' some here.
    • The process selected by the scheduler (say process C) runs.
    • Perhaps C is preempted for D or perhaps C blocks and D runs and then perhaps D is blocked and E runs, etc.
    • When the I/O to write the victim frame completes, a Disk interrupt occurs. Assume processes C is running at the time.
    • Hardware trap / assembly code / OS determines I/O done.
    • The scheduler picks a process to run, maybe A, maybe B, maybe C, maybe another processes.
    • At some point the scheduler does pick process A to run. Recall that at this point A is still executing OS code.

  8. Now the O/S has a clean frame (this may be much later in wall clock time if a victim frame had to be written). The O/S schedules an I/O to read the desired page into this clean frame. Process A is blocked (perhaps for the second time) and hence the process scheduler is invoked to perform a context switch.

  9. A Disk interrupt occurs when the I/O completes (trap / asm / OS determines I/O done). The PTE in process A is updated to indicate that the page is in memory.

  10. The O/S may need to fix up process A (e.g. reset the program counter to re-execute the instruction that caused the page fault).

  11. Process A is placed on the ready list and eventually is chosen by the scheduler to run. Recall that process A is executing O/S code.

  12. The OS returns to the first assembly language routine.

  13. The assembly language routine restores registers, etc. and ``returns'' to user mode.

The user's program running as process A is unaware that all this happened (except for the time delay).

4.7.3: Instruction Backup

A cute horror story. The 68000 was so bad in this regard that early demand paging systems for the 68000, used two processors one running one instruction behind. If the first got a page fault, there wasn't always enough information to figure out what to do so the system switched to the second processor after it did the page fault. Don't worry about instruction backup. Very machine dependent and modern implementations tend to get it right. The next generation machine, 68010, provided extra information on the stack so the horrible 2-processor kludge was no longer necessary.

4.7.4: Locking (Pinning) Pages in Memory

We discussed pinning jobs already. The same (mostly I/O) considerations apply to pages.

4.7.5: Backing Store

The issue is where on disk do we put pages.

4.7.6: Separation of Policy and Mechanism

Skipped.

4.8: Segmentation

Up to now, the virtual address space has been contiguous.

Homework: 37.

** Two Segments

Late PDP-10s and TOPS-10

** Three Segments

Traditional (early) Unix shown at right.

** Four Segments

Just kidding.

** General (not necessarily demand) Segmentation

** Demand Segmentation

Same idea as demand paging applied to segments.

The following table mostly from Tanenbaum compares demand paging with demand segmentation.

Consideration Demand
Paging
Demand
Segmentation
Programmer aware NoYes
How many addr spaces 1Many
VA size > PA size YesYes
Protect individual
procedures separately
NoYes
Accommodate elements
with changing sizes
NoYes
Ease user sharing NoYes
Why invented let the VA size
exceed the PA size
Sharing, Protection,
independent addr spaces

Internal fragmentation YesNo, in principle
External fragmentation NoYes
Placement question NoYes
Replacement question YesYes


================ Start Lecture #22 ================

** 4.8.2 and 4.8.3: Segmentation With Paging

(Tanenbaum gives two sections to explain the differences between Multics and the Intel Pentium. These notes cover what is common to all segmentation).

Combines both segmentation and paging to get advantages of both at a cost in complexity. This is very common now.

Homework: 38.

4.9: Research on Memory Management

Skipped

4.10: Summary

Read

Some Last Words on Memory Management

Chapter 5: Input/Output

5.1: Principles of I/O Hardware

5.1.1: I/O Devices

5.1.2: Device Controllers

These are the ``devices'' as far as the OS is concerned. That is, the OS code is written with the controller spec in hand not with the device spec.

5.1.3: Memory-Mapped I/O

Think of a disk controller and a read request. The goal is to copy data from the disk to some portion of the central memory. How do we do this?

5.1.4: Direct Memory Access (DMA)

Homework: 12


================ Start Lecture #23 ================

5.1.5: Interrupts Revisited

Skipped.

5.2: Principles of I/O Software

As with any large software system, good design and layering is important.

5.2.1: Goals of the I/O Software

Device independence

We want to have most of the OS, unaware of the characteristics of the specific devices attached to the system. Indeed we also want the OS to be largely unaware of the CPU type itself.

Due to this device independence, programs are written to read and write generic devices and then at run time specific devices are assigned. Writing to a disk has differences from writing to a terminal, but Unix cp and DOS copy do not see these differences. Indeed, most of the OS, including the file system code, is unaware of whether the device is a floppy or hard disk.

Homework: 5.9

Uniform naming

Recall that we discussed the value of the name space implemented by file systems. There is no dependence between the name of the file and the device on which it is stored. So a file called IAmStoredOnAHardDisk might well be stored on a floppy disk.

Error handling

There are several aspects to error handling including: detection, correction (if possible) and reporting.
  1. Detection should be done as close to where the error occurred as possible before more damage is done (fault containment). This is not trivial.

  2. Correction is sometimes easy, for example ECC memory does this automatically (but the OS wants to know about the error so that it can schedule replacement of the faulty chips before unrecoverable double errors occur).

    Other easy cases include successful retries for failed ethernet transmissions. In this example, while logging is appropriate, it is quite reasonable for no action to be taken.

  3. Error reporting tends to be awful. The trouble is that the error occurs at a low level but by the time it is reported the context is lost. Unix/Linux in particular is horrible in this area.

Creating the illusion of synchronous I/O

Buffering

Sharable vs dedicated devices

For devices like printers and tape drives, only one user at a time is permitted. These are called serially reusable devices, and were studied in the deadlocks chapter. Devices like disks and Ethernet ports can be shared by processes running concurrently.

5.2.2: Programmed I/O

5.2.3: Interrupt-Driven I/O

I/O Using DMA

5.3: I/O Software Layers

Layers of abstraction as usual prove to be effective. Most systems are believed to use the following layers (but for many systems, the OS code is not available for inspection).

  1. User level I/O routines.
  2. Device independent I/O software.
  3. Device drivers.
  4. Interrupt handlers.

We will give a bottom up explanation.

5.3.1: Interrupt Handlers

We discussed an interrupt handler before when studying page faults. Then it was called ``assembly language code''.

In the present case, we have a process blocked on I/O and the I/O event has just completed. So the goal is to make the process ready. Possible methods are.

Once the process is ready, it is up to the scheduler to decide when it should run.

5.3.2: Device Drivers

The portion of the OS that ``knows'' the characteristics of the controller.

The driver has two ``parts'' corresponding to its two access points. Recall the following figure from the beginning of the course.

  1. Accessed by the main line OS via the envelope in response to an I/O system call. The portion of the driver accessed in this way is sometimes call the ``top'' part.
  2. Accessed by the interrupt handler when the I/O completes (this completion is signaled by an interrupt). The portion of the driver accessed in this way is sometimes call the ``bottom'' part.

Tanenbaum describes the actions of the driver assuming it is implemented as a process (which he recommends). I give both that view point and the self-service paradigm in which the driver is invoked by the OS acting in behalf of a user process (more precisely the process shifts into kernel mode).

Driver in a self-service paradigm

  1. The user (A) issues an I/O system call.

  2. The main line, machine independent, OS prepares a generic request for the driver and calls (the top part of) the driver.
    1. If the driver was idle (i.e., the controller was idle), the driver writes device registers on the controller ending with a command for the controller to begin the actual I/O.
    2. If the controller was busy (doing work the driver gave it previously), the driver simply queues the current request (the driver dequeues this request below).

  3. The driver jumps to the scheduler indicating that the current process should be blocked.

  4. The scheduler blocks A and runs (say) B.

  5. B starts running.

  6. An interrupt arrives (i.e., an I/O has been completed).

  7. The interrupt handler invokes (the bottom part of) the driver.
    1. The driver informs the main line perhaps passing data and surely passing status (error, OK).
    2. The top part is called to start another I/O if the queue is nonempty. We know the controller is free. Why?
      Answer: We just received an interrupt saying so.

  8. The driver jumps to the scheduler indicating that process A should be made ready.

  9. The scheduler picks a ready process to run. Assume it picks A.

  10. A resumes in the driver, which returns to the main line, which returns to the user code.

Driver as a process (Tanenbaum) (less detailed than above)

5.3.3: Device-Independent I/O Software

The device-independent code does most of the functionality, but not necessarily most of the code since there can be many drivers all doing essentially the same thing in slightly different ways due to slightly different controllers.

5.3.4: User-Space Software

A good deal of I/O code is actually executed in user space. Some is in library routines linked into user programs and some is in daemon processes.

Homework: 10, 13.

5.4: Disks

The ideal storage device is

  1. Fast
  2. Big (in capacity)
  3. Cheap
  4. Impossible

Disks are big and cheap, but slow.

5.4.1: Disk Hardware

Show a real disk opened up and illustrate the components

Overlapping I/O operations is important. Many controllers can do overlapped seeks, i.e. issue a seek to one disk while another is already seeking.

Modern disks cheat and do not have the same number of sectors on outer cylinders as on inner one. However, the disks have electronics and software (firmware) that hides the cheat and gives the illusion of the same number of sectors on all cylinders.

(Unofficial) Despite what tanenbaum says later, it is not true that when one head is reading from cylinder C, all the heads can read from cylinder C with no penalty. It is, however, true that the penalty is very small.

Choice of block size

Homework: Consider a disk with an average seek time of 10ms, an average rotational latency of 5ms, and a transfer rate of 10MB/sec.

  1. If the block size is 1KB, how long would it take to read a block?
  2. If the block size is 100KB, how long would it take to read a block?
  3. If the goal is to read 1K, a 1KB block size is better as the remaining 99KB are wasted. If the goal is to read 100KB, the 100KB block size is better since the 1KB block size needs 100 seeks and 100 rotational latencies. What is the minimum size request for which a disk with a 100KB block size would complete faster than one with a 1KB block size?

RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) (Skipped)

5.4.2: Disk Formatting

Skipped.


================ Start Lecture #24 ================

5.4.3: Disk Arm Scheduling Algorithms

There are three components to disk response time: seek, rotational latency, and transfer time. Disk arm scheduling is concerned with minimizing seek time by reordering the requests.

These algorithms are relevant only if there are several I/O requests pending. For many PCs this is not the case. For most commercial applications, I/O is crucial and there are often many requests pending.

  1. FCFS (First Come First Served): Simple but has long delays.

  2. Pick: Same as FCFS but pick up requests for cylinders that are passed on the way to the next FCFS request.

  3. SSTF or SSF (Shortest Seek (Time) First): Greedy algorithm. Can starve requests for outer cylinders and almost always favors middle requests.

  4. Scan (Look, Elevator): The method used by an old fashioned jukebox (remember ``Happy Days'') and by elevators. The disk arm proceeds in one direction picking up all requests until there are no more requests in this direction at which point it goes back the other direction. This favors requests in the middle, but can't starve any requests.

  5. C-Scan (C-look, Circular Scan/Look): Similar to Scan but only service requests when moving in one direction. When going in the other direction, go directly to the furthest away request. This doesn't favor any spot on the disk. Indeed, it treats the cylinders as though they were a clock, i.e. after the highest numbered cylinder comes cylinder 0.

  6. N-step Scan: This is what the natural implementation of Scan gives.
    • While the disk is servicing a Scan direction, the controller gathers up new requests and sorts them.
    • At the end of the current sweep, the new list becomes the next sweep.

Minimizing Rotational Latency

Use Scan based on sector numbers not cylinder number. For rotational latency Scan which is the same as C-Scan. Why?
Ans: Because the disk only rotates in one direction.

Homework: 24, 25

5.4.4: Error Handling

Disks error rates have dropped in recent years. Moreover, bad block forwarding is normally done by the controller (or disk electronic) so this topic is no longer as important for OS.

5.5: Clocks

Also called timers.

5.5.1: Clock Hardware

5.5.2: Clock Software

  1. TOD: Bump a counter each tick (clock interupt). If counter is only 32 bits must worry about overflow so keep two counters: low order and high order.

  2. Time quantum for RR: Decrement a counter at each tick. The quantum expires when counter is zero. Load this counter when the scheduler runs a process.

  3. Accounting: At each tick, bump a counter in the process table entry for the currently running process.

  4. Alarm system call and system alarms:
    • Users can request an alarm at some future time.
    • The system also on occasion needs to schedule some of its own activities to occur at specific times in the future (e.g. turn off the floppy motor).
    • The conceptually simplest solution is to have one timer for each event.
    • Instead, we simulate many timers with just one.
    • The data structure on the right works well.
    • The time in each list entry is the time after the preceding entry that this entry's alarm is to ring.
    • For example, if the time is zero, this event occurs at the same time as the previous event.
    • The other entry is a pointer to the action to perform.
    • At each tick, decrement next-signal.
    • When next-signal goes to zero, process the first entry on the list and any others following immediately after with a time of zero (which means they are to be simultaneous with this alarm). Then set next-signal to the value in the next alarm.
  5. Profiling
    • Want a histogram giving how much time was spent in each 1KB (say) block of code.
    • At each tick check the PC and bump the appropriate counter.
    • A user-mode program can determine the software module associated with each 1K block.
    • If we use finer granularity (say 10B instead of 1KB), we get increased accuracy but more memory overhead.

Homework: 27

5.6: Character-Oriented Terminals (skipped)

5.6.1: RS-232 Terminal Hardware

Quite dated. It is true that modern systems can communicate to a hardwired ascii terminal, but most don't. Serial ports are used, but they are normally connected to modems and then some protocol (SLIP, PPP) is used not just a stream of ascii characters. So skip this section.

Memory-Mapped Terminals

Not as dated as the previous section but it still discusses the character not graphics interface.

Keyboards

Tanenbaum description of keyboards is correct.

5.6.2: Input Software

5.6.3: Output Software

Again too dated and the truth is too complicated to deal with in a few minutes.

5.7: Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs)

Skipped.

5.8: Network Terminals

Skipped.

5.9: Power Management

Skipped.

5.10: Research on Input/Output

Skipped.

5.11: Summary

Read.

Chapter 6: File Systems

Requirements

  1. Size: Store very large amounts of data.
  2. Persistence: Data survives the creating process.
  3. Access: Multiple processes can access the data concurrently.

Solution: Store data in files that together form a file system.

6.1: Files

6.1.1: File Naming

Very important. A major function of the file system.

6.1.2: File structure

A file is a

  1. Byte stream
    • Unix, dos, windows (I think).
    • Maximum flexibility.
    • Minimum structure.

  2. (fixed size) Record stream: Out of date
    • 80-character records for card images.
    • 133-character records for line printer files. Column 1 was for control (e.g., new page) Remaining 132 characters were printed.

  3. Varied and complicated beast.
    • Indexed sequential.
    • B-trees.
    • Supports rapidly finding a record with a specific key.
    • Supports retrieving (varying size) records in key order.
    • Treated in depth in database courses.


================ Start Lecture #25 ================

Remark: In spring 2002, due to my attending a conference, showing all the parts of a disk and doing a problem involving I/O time are done here.

6.1.3: File types

Examples

  1. (Regular) files.

  2. Directories: studied below.

  3. Special files (for devices). Uses the naming power of files to unify many actions.
        dir             # prints on screen
        dir > file      # result put in a file
        dir > /dev/tape # results written to tape
        
  4. ``Symbolic'' Links (similar to ``shortcuts''): Also studied below.

``Magic number'': Identifies an executable file.

Strongly typed files:

6.1.4: File access

There are basically two possibilities, sequential access and random access (a.k.a. direct access). Previously, files were declared to be sequential or random. Modern systems do not do this. Instead all files are random and optimizations are applied when the system dynamically determines that a file is (probably) being accessed sequentially.

  1. With Sequential access the bytes (or records) are accessed in order (i.e., n-1, n, n+1, ...). Sequential access is the most common and gives the highest performance. For some devices (e.g. tapes) access ``must'' be sequential.
  2. With random access, the bytes are accessed in any order. Thus each access must specify which bytes are desired.

6.1.5: File attributes

A laundry list of properties that can be specified for a file For example:


================ Start Lecture #26 ================

NOTE: there is an alternate time for the final exam. Each student can choose from thurs 9 may at 2pm or friday 10 may at noon. The room for friday is TBA. You cannot take both exams and if you see the thursday exam, you can't opt out and come back on friday.

6.1.6: File operations

Homework: 6, 7.

6.1.7: An Example Program Using File System Calls

Homework: Read and understand ``copyfile''.

Notes on copyfile

6.1.7: Memory mapped files (Unofficial)

Conceptually simple and elegant. Associate a segment with each file and then normal memory operations take the place of I/O.

Thus copyfile does not have fgetc/fputc (or read/write). Instead it is just like memcopy

while ( *(dest++) = *(src++) );

The implementation is via segmentation with demand paging but the backing store for the pages is the file itself. This all sounds great but ...

  1. How do you tell the length of a newly created file? You know which pages were written but not what words in those pages. So a file with one byte or 10, looks like a page.
  2. What if same file is accessed by both I/O and memory mapping.
  3. What if the file is bigger than the size of virtual memory (will not be a problem for systems built 3 years from now as all will have enormous virtual memory sizes).

6.2: Directories

Unit of organization.

6.2.1-3: Single-level, Two-level, and Hierarchical directory systems

Possibilities

These are not as wildly different as they sound.

6.2.4: Path Names

You can specify the location of a file in the file hierarchy by using either an absolute or a Relative path to the file

Homework: 1, 9.

6.2.5: Directory operations

  1. Create: Produces an ``empty'' directory. Normally the directory created actually contains . and .., so is not really empty

  2. Delete: Requires the directory to be empty (i.e., to just contain . and ..). Commands are normally written that will first empty the directory (except for . and ..) and then delete it. These commands make use of file and directory delete system calls.

  3. Opendir: Same as for files (creates a ``handle'')

  4. Closedir: Same as for files

  5. Readdir: In the old days (of unix) one could read directories as files so there was no special readdir (or opendir/closedir). It was believed that the uniform treatment would make programming (or at least system understanding) easier as there was less to learn.

    However, experience has taught that this was not a good idea since the structure of directories then becomes exposed. Early unix had a simple structure (and there was only one). Modern systems have more sophisticated structures and more importantly they are not fixed across implementations.

  6. Rename: As with files

  7. Link: Add a second name for a file; discussed below.

  8. Unlink: Remove a directory entry. This is how a file is deleted. But if there are many links and just one is unlinked, the file remains. Discussed in more detail below.

6.3: File System Implementation

6.3.1: File System Layout

6.3.2: Implementing Files

Contiguous allocation

Homework: 12.

Linked allocation

FAT (file allocation table)

Inodes

6.3.3: Implementing Directories

Recall that a directory is a mapping that converts file (or subdirectory) names to the files (or subdirectories) themselves.

Trivial File System (CP/M)

MS-DOS and Windows (FAT)

Unix/linux

Homework: 27


================ Start Lecture #27 ================

Notes:
  1. As expected robin has confirmed that the friday room is 102 WWH, i.e., our classroom.
  2. A practice final is available on the web.

6.3.4: Shared files (links)

Hard Links

Start with an empty file system (i.e., just the root directory) and then execute:

cd /
mkdir /A; mkdir /B
touch /A/X; touch /B/Y

We have the situation shown on the right.


Now execute
ln /B/Y /A/New
This gives the new diagram to the right.

At this point there are two equally valid name for the right hand yellow file, /B/Y and /A/New. The fact that /B/Y was created first is NOT detectable.


Assume Bob created /B and /B/Y and Alice created /A, /A/X, and /A/New. Later Bob tires of /B/Y and removes it by executing

rm /B/Y

The file /A/New is still fine (see third diagram on the right). But it is owned by Bob, who can't find it! If the system enforces quotas bob will likely be charged (as the owner), but he can neither find nor delete the file (since bob cannot unlink, i.e. remove, files from /A)

Since hard links are only permitted to files (not directories) the resulting file system is a dag (directed acyclic graph). That is, there are no directed cycles. We will now proceed to give away this useful property by studying symlinks, which can point to directories.

Symlinks

Again start with an empty file system and this time execute

cd /
mkdir /A; mkdir /B
touch /A/X; touch /B/Y
ln -s /B/Y /A/New

We now have an additional file /A/New, which is a symlink to /B/Y.

The bottom line is that, with a hard link, a new name is created for the file. This new name has equal status with the original name. This can cause some surprises (e.g., you create a link but I own the file). With a symbolic link a new file is created (owned by the creator naturally) that contains the name of the original file. We often say the new file points to the original file.

Question: Consider the hard link setup above. If Bob removes /B/Y and then creates another /B/Y, what happens to /A/New?
Answer: Nothing. /A/New is still a file with the same contents as the original /B/Y.

Question: What about with a symlink?
Answer: /A/New becomes invalid and then valid again, this time pointing to the new /B/Y. (It can't point to the old /B/Y as that is completely gone.)

Note:

Shortcuts in windows contain more that symlinks in unix. In addition to the file name of the original file, they can contain arguments to pass to the file if it is executable. So a shortcut to

netscape.exe
can specify
netscape.exe //allan.ultra.nyu.edu/~gottlieb/courses/os/class-notes.html
End of Note

What about symlinking a directory?

cd /
mkdir /A; mkdir /B
touch /A/X; touch /B/Y
ln -s /B /A/New

Is there a file named /A/New/Y ?
Yes.

What happens if you execute cd /A/New/.. ?

What did I mean when I said the pictures made it all clear?
Answer: From the file system perspective it is clear. It is not always so clear what programs will do.

6.3.5: Disk space management

All general purpose systems use a (non-demand) paging algorithm for file storage. Files are broken into fixed size pieces, called blocks that can be scattered over the disk. Note that although this is paging, it is never called paging.

The file is completely stored on the disk, i.e., it is not demand paging.

Actually, it is more complicated

  1. Various optimizations are performed to try to have consecutive blocks of a single file stored consecutively on the disk. Discussed below
    .
  2. One can imagine systems that store only parts of the file on disk with the rest on tertiary storage (some kind of tape).

  3. This would be just like demand paging.

  4. Perhaps NASA does this with their huge datasets.

  5. Caching (as done for example in microprocessors) is also the same as demand paging.

  6. We unify these concepts in the computer architecture course.

Choice of block size

Storing free blocks

There are basically two possibilities

  1. An in-memory bit map.
    • One bit per block
    • If block size is 4KB = 32K bits, 1 bit per 32K bits
    • So 32GB disk (potentially all free) needs 1MB ram.
    • Variation is to demand page the bit map. This saves space (RAM) at the cost of I/O.

  2. Linked list with each free block pointing to next.
    • Thus you must do a read for each request.
    • But reading a free block is a wasted I/O.
    • Instead some free blocks contain pointers to other free blocks. This has much less wasted I/O, but is more complicated.
    • When read a block of pointers store them in memory.
    • See diagram on right.

6.3.6: File System reliability

Bad blocks on disks

Not so much of a problem now. Disks are more reliable and, more importantly, disks take care of the bad blocks themselves. That is, there is no OS support needed to map out bad blocks. But if a block goes bad, the data is lost (not always).

Backups

All modern systems support full and incremental dumps.

Consistency

6.3.7 File System Performance

Buffer cache or block cache

An in-memory cache of disk blocks.

Homework: 29.

Block Read Ahead

When the access pattern ``looks'' sequential read ahead is employed. This means that after completing a read() request for block n of a file. The system guesses that a read() request for block n+1 will shortly be issued so it automatically fetches block n+1.

Reducing Disk Arm Motion

Try to place near each other blocks that are going to be read in succession.

  1. If the system uses a bitmap for the free list, it can allocate a new block for a file close to the previous block (guessing that the file will be accessed sequentially).

  2. The system can perform allocations in ``super-blocks'', consisting of several contiguous blocks.
    • Block cache and I/O requests are still in blocks.
    • If the file is accessed sequentially, consecutive blocks of a super-block will be accessed in sequence and these are contiguous on the disk.

  3. For a unix-like file system, the inodes can be placed in the middle of the disk, instead of at one end, to reduce the seek time to access an inoded followed by a block of the file.
  4. Can divide the disk into cylinder groups, each of which is a consecutive group of cylinders.
    • Each cylinder group has its own free list and, for a unix-like file system, its own space for inodes.
    • If possible, the blocks for a file are allocated in the same cylinder group as is the inode.
    • This reduces seek time if consecutive accesses are for the same file.

6.3.8: Log-Structured File Systems (unofficial)

A research file system that tries to make all writes sequential. That is, writes are treated as if going to a log file. This project worked with a unix-like file system, i.e. was inode based.

6.4: Example File Systems (watch this space)

6.4.1: CD-ROM File Systems (skipped)

6.4.2: The CP/M File System

This was done above.

6.4.3: The MS-DOS File System

This was done above.

6.4.4: The windows 98 File System (skipped)

6.4.5: The Unix V7 File System

This was done above.

Draw the steps to find /allan/gottlieb/linker.java

6.5: Research on File Systems (skipped)

6.6 Summary (read)

The End: Good luck on the final