2021-22 COMP3230A

 What is a “process”?

 How to represent a “process”?

 Resources use by a process
 Process states

 Important data structures

 Operations on processes

Principles of Operating Systems 2

 ILO2a - explain how OS manages processes/threads and
discuss the mechanisms and policies in efficiently sharing
of CPU resources.

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 Required Reading
 Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces by Arpaci-Dusseau et. al
 Chapter 4, Abstraction: The Process
 http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/OSTEP/cpu-intro.pdf
 Chapter 5, Interlude: Process API
 http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/OSTEP/cpu-api.pdf

 Reference
 Chapter 3 of Operating Systems, 3rd edition by Deitel et. al

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 Program itself is a lifeless thing

 What is a Process?
 A process is a program in execution
 An instance of a program running in a computer

 A process is an entity that can be assigned to and executed on a CPU

 A unit of activity characterized by

 the execution of a sequence of instructions,
 with an execution state, and
 an associated set of system resources

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 Torepresent a running program, the OS needs to keep
track of the following information:
Examples
The memory that the process Program code
can access (or reference) is Memory
Data
part of the process
Resources I/O in use

in use Physical memory

During execution, process
updates/ stores data in CPU Execution Register set
registers, e.g., program
state Current process
counter, stack pointer, etc. state
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 The process’s view of its memory is called the address space, which is
a range of memory locations (or a range of memory addresses)
 Process address space consisting of a few “regions”:
max
Stack Stores local variables,
arguments to function, return
value for active procedure calls

Where dynamically allocated

Heap
memory is placed
Stores global and
Data segment
static variables
Text segment
Stores the program code that
0 the processor executes 7
 In the process execution life cycle, it moves through a series of
discrete process states.

 Process state - an indicator of the nature of the current

activity of a process
 new (initial): The process is just being created
 running: The process is executing on a processor
 blocked: The process is waiting for some event (e.g., I/O or
communication) to happen before it can proceed
 ready: The process is ready to run on a processor and is waiting to be
assigned to a processor
 terminated (final / zombie): The process has finished execution but has
not yet been cleaned up; why not just discard it?

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 With terminated state, it When a process blocks waiting for
allows parent process to resources (e.g. I/O), it transitions from
examine the return code of running to blocked
the process and see if it
executed successfully

When a process is
dispatched to be OS decides to
executed by the CPU, it switch a
transitions from ready process from
to running running to
ready

When the waiting event occurred,

the blocked process transitions
Switch to the ready state after the process and its from blocked to ready
associated data structures have been allocated
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 To manage a process, OS makes use of a data structure to
maintain information about a process
 Process Control Block (PCB) or Process Descriptor

 PCB typically includes

 Process identification number (PID) - a unique ID
 Current process state
 Program counter - indicates the address of next instruction
 Register context - a snapshot of the register contents in which the
process was last running before it transitioned out of the running state
 Scheduling information - process priority, pointers to scheduling queues,
etc.
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 Credentials - determines the resources this process can access
 Memory Management information - concerning memory areas
allocated to the process
 Accounting information - CPU usage statistics, time limits, etc.
 A pointer to the process’s parent process
 Pointers to the process’s child processes
 Pointers to allocated resources
Example: Linux process descriptor
: struct task_struct
in /usr/src/linux/include/linux/sched.h
at around 450 lines of statements

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 Tomanage many  OSkeeps pointers to each
processes, OS needs process’s PCB in a table
someway to quickly  Example - Linux “process
access process’s PCB table” is organized in a form
of hashed table

 When a process is
“completely” terminated,
OS removes the process
from the process table and
frees all of the process’s
resources
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 Current
per core
PCB
Ready

Blocked

OS maintains a ready
list and a blocked list
that store references
to processes not
currently running

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 You can list the processes’ details in Linux/Mac OS X by using ps
command

 Usage: ps [option]
 When executed without any options, only processes that are associated with
the current terminal are shown.

 Use man-page to learn how to use

 Some Useful options (Linux)

 -e: Select all processes
 -f: Show in full format
 w: Wide output
 f: ASCII-art process hierarchy (forest)

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 A Linux system program similar to ps
 Processes are organized in hierarchy
 As every process has a parent process, their relationship can be viewed by using
pstree

 Usage: pstree [option]

 Use man-page to learn how to use
 Example:

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 Operating systems provide fundamental services to processes
including:

 Creating processes
 Destroying processes
 Suspending processes
 Resuming processes
 Changing process’s priority (for scheduling)
 Waiting for a process (parent process waits for the child process)
 Check process’s status
 Interprocess communication (IPC)
:

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A process spawns a new process
 The process that creates a new process is now called the parent
process
 The newly created process is called the child process
 It also can create other processes, thus forming a tree of processes

 When the parent process is destroyed, modern operating

systems typically responds in this way
 Keeps the child processes and allows them to proceed independently of
the terminated parent process

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 Actions taken
 Assign a unique process ID
 Allocate memory for the process
 Space for PCB must be allocated

 Initialize the process control block

 Save the process ID, parent ID
 Set program counter and stack pointer to appropriate values

 Set links so it is in the appropriate queue

 Create other data structures
 Memory, files, accounting

 Set the process state to Ready and put it to the Ready queue

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 Unix
 fork() system function
 A system call that creates a new process by duplicating the calling process
 exec () family of functions
 OS replaces the current program image with a new program image

 Windows API
 CreateProcess() function
 Creates a new process and its primary thread and loads program for execution
 http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms682512(VS.85).aspx
 CreateProcess() similar to fork() + exec ()

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 Process executes last statement and asks the operating system to
delete itself
 exit() or return from main()

 A process may terminate involuntarily

 Parent may terminate execution of children processes (by sending a
termination signal)
 A number of error and fault conditions can lead to termination of process

 Return termination status from child to parent

 Parent can obtain this info by calling wait(), waitid() or waitpid()
 Process’ resources are de-allocated by OS afterward

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A process is in terminated state
 When a process exits, OS still keeps the PCB of the process, so
that the parent can get the information later
 exit status
 resource usage

 Before the parent process collects the information by calling

wait() or waitpid(), the deceased process is kept in the
Terminated state, and we called it as the “zombie” process

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 Temporarily deactivate the process, such that it is not being
considered for processor scheduling
 Why doing so:
 Upon user request
 Request by the parent process
 OS may decide to suspend a blocked process so as to free up the memory for
another ready process

 A suspended process must be resumed by another process

 Difference between suspension and blocked

 blocking is triggered by internal activity of the process, while suspend is
coming from external

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Principles of Operating Systems 23
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 Signals are used in UNIX systems to notify a process that a
particular event has occurred
 Sometimes being referred as “Software Interrupt”

 Basically implemented as system calls (kill(), signal(),

sigaction(), raise(), pause(), sigsuspend(), etc.)

 Each signal is represented by a value/symbolic name

 SIGINT: value = 2, generated when Ctrl-c is pressed
 SIGCHLD: value = 17, generated when child process finishes execution
or is terminated

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A signal is generated by one software entity (in the
occurrence of an event) to a target software entity
 Synchronous signal – is triggered by the current instruction of the
current running process itself and is delivered to that process by
the OS immediately
 e.g., illegal memory access, division by zero

interrupt

Process Illegal op invoke signal Process

X CPU OS X
Jump to Deliver
Memory OS the
Dereference Identify
protection Interrupt SIGSEGV
a NULL the cause
exception handling signal
pointer of
routine
exception 26
 Asynchronous signals – are generated by external events /
activities, which are not triggered by the current activity / action
of the target process at the time of receiving the signal
 i.e., arrive at unpredictable times during execution of the program
 e.g., by the timer alarm

 e.g., parent process using kill() system call to kill the child process

Process Process
X OS Y
signal

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 A process can decide whether it wants to catch, ignore or
mask a signal
 Catching a signal involves specifying a routine (signal handler) in
advance so that the OS will invoke that handler when the process
receives that signal
 the signal() or sigaction() system calls can be used by the program to specify the
signal handler routine to the OS
 Catching – Using OS's default action to handle the signal
 Ignore – Inform OS that it does not want to handle that signal
 Masking a signal is to instruct the OS not to deliver signals of that type
until the process clears the signal mask

 SIGKILL and SIGSTOP cannot be caught, blocked or ignored

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 How OS determines what a process will respond to a
particular signal
 A process's PCB contains a pointer to a vector of signal handlers
(logically order by the signal number)
 Each entry corresponds to the handler function for that entry (signal)

 A child process inherits the setting from its parent

 However, if use exec…() function to load a new program

image, any signals that have the custom-made handlers will
be reset to default setting

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 To manage and control a running process (application), OS
needs some mechanisms to keep track on the current status
of the process
 Various data structures are needed
 Process control block (PCB)
 Process table and lists

 OS provides a set of operations for us to work with processes

 Signals were introduced in Unix systems to allow interactions

between User Mode processes; the kernel also uses them to
notify processes of system events.

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