UNIX INTERNALS

ANNA UNIVERSITY TIRUCHIRAPPALLI
Tiruchirappalli - 620 024
Regulations 2007
Syllabus
B.E. COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING

SEMESTER VIII (Common to CSE 8th Semester and IT 7th
Semester)
UNIX INTERNALS
(Common to CSE and IT)

L T P
3 0 0

UNIT I GENERAL OVERVIEW OF THE SYSTEM 9
History − System structure − User perspective − Operating system services − Assumptions about
hardware − Introduction to the kernel − Architecture of the UNIX operating system − Introduction to
system concepts − Kernel data structures − System administration − Summary and preview.

UNIT II BUFFER CACHE 9
Buffer headers − Structure of the buffer pool − Advantages and disadvantages of the buffer cache −
Internal representation of files − Inodes − Structure of a regular file − Directories − Conversion of a
path name to an inode − Super block − Other file types.

UNIT III SYSTEM CALLS FOR FILE SYSTEM 9
Open − Read − Write − File and record locking − Adjusting the position of file I/O − LSEEK − Close
− File creation − Creation of special files − Pipes − Dup − Mounting and unmounting file systems.

UNIT IV THE STRUCTURE OF PROCESSES 9
Process states and transitions − Layout of system memory − The context of a process − Saving the
context of a process − Process control − Process creation − Signals − Process termination − Awaiting
process termination − Invoking other programs − The shell − System boot and the INIT process.

UNIT V PROCESS SCHEDULING AND MEMORY MANAGEMENT POLICIES 9
Process scheduling − Memory management policies − Swapping − A hybrid system with swapping and
demand paging − The I/O subsystem − Driver interfaces − Disk drivers − Terminal drivers.


Total: 45
TEXT BOOK
1. Maurice J. Bach, “The Design of the Unix Operating System”, PHI, 2004.

REFERENCE
1. Vahalia, “Unix Internals: The New Frontiers”, Pearson Education Inc, 2003.