Operating Systems and Computer Structures G2

Tutorial Week 2

1. What are the two main functions of an Operating System? ,br> To provide management of hardware resources, and to provide management of software resources (programs, files, etc).
2. In handling tasks such as printing, why is spooling used?
   To allow orderly processing of jobs, so that they can be printed in some sort of order and without trying to simultaneously access the hardware.
3. List some differences between PC Operating Systems and mainframe Operating Systems.
   Multi-user; multi-tasking; security; address capability; batch processing
4. Why is the shell not part of the Operating System?
   Shell functionality is not inherent in the O/S. It allows different shells to be used.
5. List several types of hardware components that may vary between different installations of the same computer type. How should these differences be handled by the Operating System?
   Video cards of different types; floppy disks of different sizes. Need a common abstraction above this (open, write, close) to hide the differences.
6. List the MSDOS commands to perform the common operations given in the lecture. Which of these commands are executed by command.com? List some of the differences between these commands and their Unix equivalents.
   DIR, COPY, REN, TYPE, DEL, CD, MKDIR, RMDIR. Options are signalled by /option instead of -option. Range of options is usually smaller.
7. Is Microsoft Windows an Operating System? Is Windows NT an Operating System? What are some of the differences between Microsoft Windows and Windows NT?
   MS Windows: No; Windows NT: Yes. NT: flat memory model, support for multi-tasking.
8. How does Microsoft Windows allow the user to perfrom the common commands given in the lecture?
   Use the File Manager.
9. List some of the differences between Unix file name globbing and the similar pattern matching mechanism in MSDOS. Unix performs globbing in the shell, MSDOS by individual applications. Unix allows as many wildcards as wanted in the pattern, MSDOS does not. Laboratory Week 2
10. There are a number of graphical editors available under Unix. A simple one is ted, which will edit a single file using a single window. A more complex one is axe which will allow multiple files in many windows. Choose one of these an use the online help to explore the editor.
11. Start the mail program, and read the messages that have been sent to you. Use the mail program to send messages to other people, using their login id.
12. Use the news program to read some interesting groups. A group that you can post to is uc.ise.os
13. Use the online manual to find out what the following commands do: at, compress du, file,
    at - run a command at a later time
    compress - compress a file to use less space
    du - report on disk usage
    file - find the type of a file (program, C text, etc)
14. What do the following commands do: ls -R, ls -t, ls -rta
    -R - recursive listing
    -t - order by time modified instead of alphabetic
    -rta - all files (including starting with .), reversed time order.