Modern Operating Systems

Andrew S. Tanenbaum has an S.B. degree from M.I.T. and a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. He is currently a Professor of Computer Science at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, where he is head of the Computer Systems Department. He is also the Dean of the Advanced School for Computing and Imaging, an interuniversity graduate school doing research on advanced parallel, distributed, and imaging systems. Nevertheless, he is trying very hard to avoid turning into a bureaucrat. In the past, he has done research on compilers, operating systems, networking, and local-area distributed systems. His current research focuses primarily on the design of wide-area distributed systems that scale to a billion users. This research is being done together with Dr. Maarten van Steen. Together, all his research projects have led to over 90 refereed papers in journals and conference proceedings and five books. Prof. Tanenbaum has also produced a considerable volume of software. He was the principal architect of the Amsterdam Compiler Kit, a widely-used toolkit for writing portable compilers, as well as of MINIX, a small UNIX clone intended for use in student programming labs. Together with his Ph.D. students and programmers, he helped design the Amoeba distributed operating system, a high-performance microkernel-based distributed operating system. The MINIX and Amoeba systems are now available for free via the Internet. His Ph.D. students have gone on to greater glory after getting their degrees. He is very proud of them. In this respect he resembles a mother hen. Prof. Tanenbaum is a Fellow of the ACM, a Fellow of the IEEE, a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, winner of the 1994 ACM Karl V Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award, and winner of the 1997 ACM/SIGCSE Award for Outstanding Contributions to Computer Science Education. He is also listed in Who's Who in the World. His home page on the World Wide Web can be found at URL http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/.

CHAPTER 1 "INTRODUCTION"

    1.1    WHAT IS AN OPERATING SYSTEM?   3
    1.1.1  The Operating System as an Extended Machine   4
    1.1.2  The Operating System as a Resource Manager   5

    1.2    HISTORY OF OPERATING SYSTEMS   6
    1.2.1  The First Generation (1945-55): Vacuum Tubes   7
    1.2.2  The Second Generation (1955-65): Transistors and Batch Systems 8
    1.2.3  The Third Generation (1965-1980): ICs and Multiprogramming   9
    1.2.4  The Fourth Generation (1980-Present): Personal Computers   15
    1.2.5  The Fifth Generation (1990-Present): Mobile Computers   19

    1.3    COMPUTER HARDWARE REVIEW   20
    1.3.1  Processors   21
    1.3.2  Memory   24
    1.3.3  Disks   27
    1.3.4  I/O Devices   28
    1.3.5  Buses   32
    1.3.6  Booting the Computer   34

    1.4    THE OPERATING SYSTEM ZOO   35
    1.4.1  Mainframe Operating Systems   35
    1.4.2  Server Operating Systems   35
    1.4.3  Multiprocessor Operating Systems   36
    1.4.4  Personal Computer Operating Systems   36
    1.4.5  Handheld Computer Operating Systems   36
    1.4.6  Embedded Operating Systems.   37
    1.4.7  Sensor-Node Operating Systems   37
    1.4.8  Real-Time Operating Systems   37
    1.4.9  Smart Card Operating Systems   38

    1.5    OPERATING SYSTEM CONCEPTS   38
    1.5.1  Processes   39
    1.5.2  Address Spaces   41
    1.5.3  Files   41
    1.5.4  Input/Output   45
    1.5.5  Protection   45
    1.5.6  The Shell   45
    1.5.7  Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny   47

    1.6    SYSTEM CALLS   50
    1.6.1  System Calls for Process Management   53
    1.6.2  System Calls for File Management   56
    1.6.3  Syst...