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hOSpital - Operating Systems Project

Overview

The hOSpital project is designed to simulate a hospital admission system, focusing on process synchronization, memory management, and inter-process communication. This project was completed in the context of the Operating Systems course at Ciências ULisboa. This README covers compiling instructions, usage, and the structure of the project.

Authors

  • Francisco Catarino
  • Maria Sargaço
  • Pedro Simões

Table of Contents

Compilation Instructions

To compile the project, navigate to the root directory where the makefile is located and run:

make

This will compile the necessary files and create an executable in the bin/ directory named hOSpital.

Usage

Once compiled, run the application using:

./bin/hOSpital <config_file>

where <config_file> is the path to a configuration file containing initial arguments such as maximum admissions, buffer sizes, and the number of staff.

After starting, the program provides a menu of actions:

    "[Main] Available actions:\n"
    "[Main] ad patient doctor - create a new admission\n"
    "[Main] status - displays the current state of the variables contained in the data_container\n"
    "[Main] info id - check the status of an admission\n"
    "[Main] help - prints information about the available actions.\n"
    "[Main] end - terminates the execution of hOSpital."

Available Commands

  • ad <patient> <doctor> - Register a new patient admission.
  • status - View the current state of the hospital system variables.
  • info <id> - Get details on a specific admission using its ID.
  • help - Show a list of available commands.
  • end - Exit the program and release all resources.

Skills Acquired

During the completion of the hOSpital project, various essential technical and problem-solving skills were developed:

  1. Process Synchronization and Concurrency: Learned to manage concurrent access to shared resources using semaphores and mutexes, ensuring thread-safe operations and data integrity.

  2. Memory Management: Gained practical experience in dynamic memory allocation, buffer management, and shared memory handling, improving the project's efficiency and scalability.

  3. File I/O and Logging: Implemented file operations for configuration loading, logging actions, and generating statistics, which included handling input/output streams, formatting, and error handling.

  4. Inter-process Communication (IPC): Utilized IPC mechanisms to enable communication between separate processes in a controlled manner, which is crucial for maintaining the project's integrity.

  5. Signal Handling: Developed robust signal handling techniques to intercept and process system signals (e.g., SIGINT for program termination), ensuring smooth cleanup and resource release.

  6. Timing and Alarms: Integrated timing functions to log events and trigger alarms at set intervals, enhancing functionality and enabling automated updates in real-time.

  7. Project Structure and Build Automation: Learned to organize code into modular components (header and source files) and utilized makefile for efficient build automation, promoting good software engineering practices.

Project Structure

hospital
├── README.md
├── bin
│   ├── hOSpital
│   └── hOSpital_profs
├── hosp_files
│   ├── entrada.txt
│   ├── log.txt
│   └── stats.txt
├── include
│   ├── close_sems-private.h
│   ├── configuration.h
│   ├── doctor.h
│   ├── hospsignal.h
│   ├── hosptime.h
│   ├── log.h
│   ├── main.h
│   ├── memory.h
│   ├── patient.h
│   ├── process.h
│   ├── receptionist.h
│   ├── stats.h
│   └── synchronization.h
├── makefile
├── obj
│   ├── *.o
└── src
    ├── close_sems-private.c
    ├── configuration.c
    ├── doctor.c
    ├── hospsignal.c
    ├── hosptime.c
    ├── log.c
    ├── main.c
    ├── memory.c
    ├── patient.c
    ├── process.c
    ├── receptionist.c
    ├── stats.c
    └── synchronization.c

Important Files

  • makefile: Build instructions to compile the project.
  • bin/: Contains the compiled executable files.
  • hosp_files/: Holds input/output files like logs and statistics.
  • include/: Header files with definitions and declarations.
  • obj/: Contains compiled object files.
  • src/: Source code files for the project's logic.