System call

• System calls provide the means for a user program to ask

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the operating system to perform tasks reserved for the

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operating system on the user program’s behalf.

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• System calls provide an interface to the services made

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available by an operating system. These calls are generally

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available as routines written in C and C++.

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• The API specifies a set of functions that are available to an
application programmer, including the parameters that are

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passed to each function and the return values the
programmer can expect.

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• Three of the most common APIs available to application programmers are the
• Windows API for Windows systems

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• POSIX API for POSIX-based systems (which include virtually all versions of UNIX, Linux, and Mac OS X)

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• The Java API for programs that run on the Java virtual machine.

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• The caller need know nothing about how the system call is implemented or what it does during execution. Rather,

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the caller need only obey the API and understand what the operating system will do as a result of the execution of
that system call.

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• Types of System Calls - System calls can be grouped roughly into six major categories: process
control, file manipulation, device manipulation, information maintenance, communications,
and protection.
• Process control
• end, abort

• load, execute

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• create file, delete file

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• open, close

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• create process, terminate process

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• read, write, reposition
• get process attributes, set process attributes

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• wait for time • get file attributes, set file attributes

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• wait event, signal event

• allocate and free memory

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• Device management
• request device, release device

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• read, write, reposition

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• get device attributes, set device attributes

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• logically attach or detach devices

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• Information maintenance

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• get time or date, set time or date

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• get system data, set system data
• get process, file, or device attributes

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• set process, file, or device attributes

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• Communications
• create, delete communication connection
• send, receive messages transfer status information
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 Mode bit

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∙ In order to ensure the proper execution of the operating system, we must be able to distinguish between the
execution of operating-system code and user- defined code.

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∙ At the very least, we need two separate modes of operation: user mode and kernel mode (also called supervisor

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mode, system mode, or privileged mode). A bit, called the mode bit, is added to the hardware of the computer

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to indicate the current mode: kernel (0) or user (1).
∙ When the computer system is executing on behalf of a user application, the system is in user mode. However,

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when a user application requests a service from the operating system (via a system call), the system must

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transition from user to kernel mode to fulfill the request.

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User Mode

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 Farmer

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Instruction set programmer

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 Industry(Gov / Private)

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 Chef

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Programmer

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 Instruction set programmer

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OS designer(API)

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