Solaris 10 Operating System Internals (SI-365-S10)

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Who Can Benefit

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Prerequisites

• Read C programs and explain the meaning of a = (struct foo *) b and int func(int)
• Understand and be able to explain the concept of pointers, structures, unions, link lists, hashing, and binary trees

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Skills Gained

• Explain step-by-step how a lock is acquired
• Discuss the reason for priority inheritance and its implementation
• Identify the steps performed in a virtual to physical memory address translation
• List the process structures and routines needed to implement a scheduling class
• List the process structures used to implement multiple scheduling classes and the fields in the time-sharing and real-time dispatch parameter tables
• Describe the paging and swapping algorithms that manage physical memory as a cache
• Describe process creation, execution, and termination
• Discuss kernel thread scheduling and preemption
• Use kmdb, mdb, and DTrace to locate and display the system structures for an open file in a given process, such as the file descriptor, file structure, vnode structure, inode structure, page structure, and superblock
• Describe the placement policies that the UNIX® file system (UFS) uses to place inodes and blocks of data

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Related Courses

Before:

• UNIX System Interface Programming (SI-220)

After:

• Introduction to Crash Dump Analysis and the SunOS Kernel (ST-375)
• Writing Device Drivers for Solaris (SI-375)

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Course Content

Module 1 - Introducing the Solaris 10 Operating System

• Define the purpose of the operating system and explain the concept of kernel layering
• Explain and diagram the segments that make up the process address space
• Explain the trap mechanism
• Differentiate between hardware and software interrupts
• List the new features in recent releases of the Solaris 10 OS
• Start using tools such as mdb, kmdb, and DTrace to examine kernel data structures
• Start using http://cvs.opensolaris.org/source/ to examine the source code

Module 2 - Multithread Architecture

• Explain the difference between symmetrical multiprocessing (SMP) and asymmetrical multiprocessing (ASMP)
• Define an application and a kernel thread
• Define a lightweight process (LWP)
• Explain the difference between a thread and an LWP
• List the structures that describe the state of a kernel thread, an LWP, and a process
• Explain how a mutex lock works
• Define a condition variable
• Describe how a counting semaphore is implemented
• Explain how a multiple-reader, single-writer lock works
• Explain the advantages of multiple LWPs for a given process

Module 3 - Hardware Memory Management

• Describe how the MMU tables are used to perform virtual-to- physical address translation
• List the differences between the x86/x64 memory management unit (MMU) and the SFMMU
• Describe types of cache implemented on Sun systems
• Explain the purpose of the hardware address translation (HAT) layer

Module 4 - Software Memory Management

• List the layers of the SunOS 5.x software virtual memory (VM) system and define the role of each layer
• List the mapping structures that make up process address space
• Locate the page structures and process address space structures in mdb or dtrace and identify the fields within the structures
• Explain how the memory mapping and memory control system calls can be used by an application programmer to effectively manage process memory needs

Module 5 - Paging and Swapping

• Explain the layered approach to page-fault handling
• List the conditions under which the page daemon runs
• List the functions of the page daemon
• List the conditions under which the swapper runs

Module 6 - The swapfs File System

• List the shortcomings of SunOS 4.x swap management
• Describe the changes that were made to the anonymous memory layer to accommodate the implementation of the swapfs file system
• List two advantages obtained by adding the swapfs file system to the SunOS 5.x

Module 7 - Scheduling

• List at least two major barriers to real-time processing in the traditional UNIX architectures, such as System V Release 3 (SVR3), the 4.3 Berkeley Software Design version of UNIX (BSD), and SunOS 4.x software
• Explain the difference between a fully preemptible kernel and a kernel with preemption points
• List a routine used to place a thread on a dispatch queue
• Describe when a thread is placed at the head of a dispatch queue
• Describe how the sleep queues are ordered
• Define a user-level preemption
• Define a kernel-level preemption
• Define deterministic dispatch latency
• Define priority inversion

Module 8 - Process Lifetime

• Explain the differences among the system calls used to create a new process
• Describe the kernel routines used to implement process creation
• List the different types of executables supported in the Solaris 10 OS
• Explain the routines used to implement executable and linking format (ELF) executables
• List the advantages of the ELF executable format
• Describe the actions taken by a process when it exits
• Explain the waitid(2) system call and how it is implemented

Module 9 - Signals

• List the different types of signals that can be delivered to a process or thread
• Explain the difference between a trap signal and an interrupt signal
• List the signal management routines and describe their functions
• Describe what the signal facility is for, and how a signal is delivered

Module 10 - File Systems

• Describe the vnode interface layer to a file system
• List the four fields in a directory entry
• Explain the advantages of the 4.3 BSD file system
• Describe the function of the superblock and cylinder group structures
• List the fields in the disk inode structure and explain how they are used
• Name the routines involved in determining the global placement policies
• Explain the allocation routines using the flowcharts and describe how the fragments are located quickly

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