General Description and Usage Techniques
The foreground system is organized around commands, which each user gives at his console, and the user's private program files which are kept on the disk. For convenience, the format of the disk files is such that they have titles with name and class designators. (Files can be entered from cards or punched out at disk editing time.)
The Supervisor
The supervisor program remains in A-core at all times when CTSS is in operation. Its functions include: handling of all input and output for the consoles; scheduling of console-initiated (foreground) and offline-initiated (background) jobs; temporary storage and recovery of programs during the scheduled swapping; monitoring of all input and output from the disk, as well as input and output performed by the background system; and performing the general role of monitor for all foreground jobs. These tasks can be carried out by virtue of the supervisor's direct control of all trap interrupts, the most crucial of which is the one associated with the Interval Timer Clock.
The Interval Timer Clock is set for a small quantum of time, q. Every q seconds the supervisor can interrupt the program currently running in B-core in order to accept input from the consoles or to issue output to the consoles. If the input from a console is other than a command line, it is left in the supervisor's core buffers until it is read by the user's program (whether a command or a user-written program). If the input line is a command, it is given immediate priority and the supervisor, after dumping as much as necessary of the current B-core program onto drum or disk, brings in the requested command program from the disk.
Except for this initial top priority, the time-sharing programs are each run for a burst of time which is some multiple of q determined according to the scheduling algorithm. At the end of each program's appropriate time the supervisor determines which user is to be run next.
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