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Modern Operating Systems by Herbert Bos and Andrew S. Tanenb...
Modern_Operating_Systems_by_Herbert_Bos_and_Andrew_S._Tanenbaum_4th_Ed.pdf
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Modern Operating Systems by Herbert Bos and Andrew...
Modern_Operating_Systems_by_Herbert_Bos_and_Andrew_S._Tanenbaum_4th_Ed.pdf-M ODERN O PERATING S YSTEMS
Modern Operating Systems by Herbert...
Modern_Operating_Systems_by_Herbert_Bos_and_Andrew_S._Tanenbaum_4th_Ed.pdf-M ODERN O PERATING S YSTEMS
Page 90
SEC. 1.6
SYSTEM CALLS
59
By executing the
mount
system call, the USB file system can be attached to the
root file system, as shown in Fig. 1-22.
A typical statement in C to mount is
mount("/dev/sdb0", "/mnt", 0);
where the first parameter is the name of a block special file for USB drive 0, the
second parameter is the place in the tree where it is to be mounted, and the third
parameter tells whether the file system is to be mounted read-write or read-only.
(a)
(b)
bin
dev
lib
mnt
usr
bin
dev
usr
lib
Figure 1-22.
(a) File system before the mount.
(b) File system after the mount.
After the
mount
call, a file on drive 0 can be accessed by just using its path
from the root directory or the working directory, without regard to which drive it is
on. In fact, second, third, and fourth drives can also be mounted anywhere in the
tree. The
mount
call makes it possible to integrate removable media into a single
integrated file hierarchy, without having to worry about which device a file is on.
Although this example involves CD-ROMs, portions of hard disks (often called
partitions
or
minor devices
) can also be mounted this way, as well as external
hard disks and USB sticks. When a file system is no longer needed, it can be
unmounted with the
umount
system call.
1.6.4 Miscellaneous System Calls
A variety of other system calls exist as well.
We will look at just four of them
here. The
chdir
call changes the current working directory. After the call
chdir("/usr/ast/test");
an open on the file
xyz
will open
/usr/ast/test/xyz
.
The concept of a working direc-
tory eliminates the need for typing (long) absolute path names all the time.
In UNIX every file has a mode used for protection. The mode includes the
read-write-execute bits for the owner, group, and others.
The
chmod
system call
makes it possible to change the mode of a file. For example, to make a file read-
only by everyone except the owner, one could execute
chmod("file", 0644);
The
kill
system call is the way users and user processes send signals.
If a proc-
ess is prepared to catch a particular signal, then when it arrives, a signal handler is
Page 91
60
INTRODUCTION
CHAP. 1
run. If the process is not prepared to handle a signal, then its arrival kills the proc-
ess (hence the name of the call).
POSIX defines a number of procedures for dealing with time. For example,
time
just returns the current time in seconds, with 0 corresponding to Jan. 1, 1970
at midnight (just as the day was starting, not ending).
On computers using 32-bit
words, the maximum value
time
can return is 2
32
−
1 seconds (assuming an unsign-
ed integer is used).
This value corresponds to a little over 136 years. Thus in the
year 2106, 32-bit UNIX systems will go berserk, not unlike the famous Y2K prob-
lem that would have wreaked havoc with the world’s computers in 2000, were it
not for the massive effort the IT industry put into fixing the problem.
If you cur-
rently have a 32-bit UNIX system, you are advised to trade it in for a 64-bit one
sometime before the year 2106.
1.6.5 The Windows Win32 API
So far we have focused primarily on UNIX.
Now it is time to look briefly at
Windows. Windows and UNIX differ in a fundamental way in their respective pro-
gramming models.
A UNIX program consists of code that does something or
other, making system calls to have certain services performed.
In contrast, a Win-
dows program is normally event driven. The main program waits for some event to
happen, then calls a procedure to handle it. Typical events are keys being struck,
the mouse being moved, a mouse button being pushed, or a USB drive inserted.
Handlers are then called to process the event, update the screen and update the in-
ternal program state. All in all, this leads to a somewhat different style of pro-
gramming than with UNIX, but since the focus of this book is on operating system
function and structure, these different programming models will not concern us
much more.
Of course, Windows also has system calls. With UNIX, there is almost a one-
to-one relationship between the system calls (e.g.,
read
) and the library procedures
(e.g.,
read
) used to invoke the system calls.
In other words, for each system call,
there is roughly one library procedure that is called to invoke it, as indicated in
Fig. 1-17.
Furthermore, POSIX has only about 100 procedure calls.
With Windows, the situation is radically different. To start with, the library
calls and the actual system calls are highly decoupled. Microsoft has defined a set
of procedures called the
Win32 API
(
Application Programming Interface
) that
programmers are expected to use to get operating system services. This interface is
(partially) supported on all versions of Windows since Windows 95.
By decou-
pling the API interface from the actual system calls, Microsoft retains the ability to
change the actual system calls in time (even from release to release) without invali-
dating existing programs. What actually constitutes Win32 is also slightly ambigu-
ous because recent versions of Windows have many new calls that were not previ-
ously available. In this section, Win32 means the interface supported by all ver-
sions of Windows. Win32 provides compatibility among versions of Windows.
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