Chapter 3: Processes

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Chapter 3: Processes
 Process Concept
 Process Scheduling
 Operations on Processes
 Interprocess Communication
 Examples of IPC Systems
 Communication in Client-Server Systems

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.2 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Objectives
 To introduce the notion of a process -- a program in execution, which forms the basis of all
computation

 To describe the various features of processes, including scheduling, creation and termination,
and communication

 To explore interprocess communication using shared memory and message passing

 To describe communication in client-server systems

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.3 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Process Concept
 An operating system executes a variety of programs:
 Batch system – jobs
 Time-shared systems – user programs or tasks or Active program
 Textbook uses the terms job and process almost interchangeably
 Process – a program in execution; process execution must progress in sequential fashion
 Multiple parts
 The program code, also called text section
 Current activity including program counter, processor registers
 Stack containing temporary data
 Function parameters, return addresses, local variables
 Data section containing global variables
 Heap containing memory dynamically allocated during run time
 Program is passive entity stored on disk (executable file), process is active
 Program becomes process when executable file loaded into memory {Multi}
 Execution of program started via GUI mouse clicks, command line entry of its name, etc
 One program can be several processes {how example}
 Consider multiple users executing the same program

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.4 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Process in Memory

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 Process State
 As a process executes, it changes state
 new: The process is being created
 running: Instructions are being executed
 waiting: The process is waiting for some event to occur
 ready: The process is waiting to be assigned to a processor {Memory}
 terminated: The process has finished execution ( Passive/program}

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.6 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Diagram of Process State

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.7 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Process Control Block (PCB)
Information associated with each process
(also called task control block)
 Process state – running, waiting, etc
 Program counter – location of instruction to next execute
 CPU registers – contents of all process-centric registers
 CPU scheduling information- priorities, scheduling queue
pointers
 Memory-management information – memory allocated to
the process
 Accounting information – CPU used, clock time elapsed
since start, time limits
 I/O status information – I/O devices allocated to process, list
of open files

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.8 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 CPU Switch From Process to Process

States Q

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.9 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Threads

 So far, process has a single thread of execution

 Consider having multiple program counters per process
 Multiple locations can execute at once
 Multiple threads of control -> threads
 Must then have storage for thread details, multiple program counters in PCB
 See next chapter

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.10 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Process Scheduling

 Maximize CPU use, quickly switch processes onto CPU for time sharing
 Process scheduler (S/W): selects among available processes for next execution on CPU
 Maintains scheduling queues of processes
 Job queue – set of all processes in the system
 Ready queue – set of all processes residing in main memory, ready and waiting to
execute // {belong to}
 Device queues – set of processes waiting for an I/O device
 Processes migrate among the various queues // (State diagram /Process life cycle)

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.11 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Ready Queue And Various
I/O Device Queues

How many p’s in the system

this moment?

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.12 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Representation of Process Scheduling
 Queueing diagram represents queues, resources, flows

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 Schedulers

 Long-term scheduler (or job scheduler) – selects which processes should be brought into the
ready queue
 Short-term scheduler (or CPU scheduler) – selects which process should be executed next and
allocates CPU
 Sometimes the only scheduler in a system
 Short-term scheduler is invoked very frequently (milliseconds)  (must be fast)

 Long-term scheduler is invoked very infrequently (seconds, minutes)  (may be slow)

 The long-term scheduler controls the degree of multiprogramming

 Processes can be described as either:

 I/O-bound process – spends more time doing I/O than computations, many short CPU
bursts
 CPU-bound process – spends more time doing computations; few very long CPU bursts

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.14 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Addition of Medium Term Scheduling

 Medium-term scheduler can be added if degree of multiple programming needs to decrease

 Remove process from memory, store on disk, bring back in from disk to continue execution:
swapping

Merge F13& F15 in one

single Figure

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.15 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Multitasking in Mobile Systems
 Some systems / early systems allow only one process to run, others suspended
 Due to screen real estate, user interface limits iOS provides for a
 Single foreground process- controlled via user interface { refers back to page 37}
 Multiple background processes– in memory, running, but not on the display, and with limits
 Limits include single, short task, receiving notification of events, specific long-running tasks like audio
playback.

 Android runs foreground and background, with fewer limits

 Background process uses a service to perform tasks
 Service can keep running even if background process is suspended
 Service has no user interface, small memory use

Two operating systems currently dominate mobile computing: Apple iOS and Google Android. iOS was designed to run on Apple iPhone and iPad mobile devices. Android powers smartphones and tablet computers available from many manufacturers. We examine these two mobile operating systems in further detail in Chapter 2.

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.16 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Context Switch
 When CPU switches to another process, the system must save the state of the old process and load
the saved state for the new process via a context switch

 Context of a process represented in the PCB

 Context-switch time is overhead; the system does no useful work while switching
 The more complex the OS and the PCB -> longer the context switch

 Time dependent on hardware support

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.17 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Operations on Processes
 System must provide mechanisms for process creation, termination, and
so on as detailed next.

 Process Creation : Parent process create children processes, which, in turn create other processes,
forming a tree of processes

 Generally, process identified and managed via a process identifier (pid)

 Resource sharing options

 Parent and children share all resources
 Children share subset of parent’s resources
 Parent and child share no resources

 Execution options
 Parent and children execute concurrently
 Parent waits until children terminate

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.18 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 A Tree of Processes in Linux

init
pid = 1

login kthreadd sshd

pid = 8415 pid = 2 pid = 3028

bash khelper pdflush sshd

pid = 8416 pid = 6 pid = 200 pid = 3610

emacs tcsch
ps
pid = 9204 pid = 4005
pid = 9298

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.19 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Process Creation (Cont.)
 Address space
 Child duplicate of parent
 Child has a program loaded into it

 UNIX examples
 fork() system call creates new process{ what is fork and in which os is found}
 exec() system call used after a fork() to replace the process’ memory space with a new program

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.20 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 C Program Forking Separate Process

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 Creating a Separate Process via Windows API

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 Process Termination
 Process executes last statement and asks the operating system to delete it (exit()) what is the commend?
 Output data from child to parent (via wait())
 Process’ resources are deallocated by operating system

 Parent may terminate execution of children processes (abort()) when the abort command happened by parent?
 Child has exceeded allocated resources
 Task assigned to child is no longer required
 If parent is exiting
 Some operating systems do not allow child to continue if its parent terminates
– All children terminated - cascading termination
 Wait for termination, returning the pid:
pid t_pid; int status;
pid = wait(&status);
 If no parent waiting, then terminated process is a zombie*
 If parent terminated, processes are orphans page 121

* A process that has terminated, but whose parent has not yet called wait(), is known as a zombie process.
* Now consider what would happen if a parent did not invoke wait() and instead terminated, thereby leaving its
child processes as orphans.

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.23 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Multiprocess Architecture – Chrome Browser

 Many web browsers ran as single process (some still do)

 If one web site causes trouble, entire browser can hang or crash
 Google Chrome Browser is multiprocess with 3 categories
 Browser process manages user interface, disk and network I/O
 Renderer process renders web pages, deals with HTML, Javascript, new one for each website opened
 Renderer process runs in sandbox restricting disk and network I/O, minimizing effect of security
exploits
 Plug-in process for each type of plug-in page 123

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.24 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Interprocess Communication
 Processes within a system may be independent or cooperating
 Cooperating process can affect or be affected by other processes, including sharing data
 Reasons for cooperating processes:
 Information sharing
 Computation speedup
 Modularity
 Convenience
 Cooperating processes need interprocess communication (IPC)
 Two models of IPC
 Shared memory
 Message passing

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.25 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Communications Models

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 Cooperating Processes
 Independent process cannot affect or be affected by the execution of another process

 Cooperating process can affect or be affected by the execution of another process

 Advantages of process cooperation

 Information sharing
 Computation speed-up
 Modularity
 Convenience

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.27 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Producer-Consumer Problem

 Paradigm for cooperating processes, producer process produces information that is

consumed by a consumer process
 unbounded-buffer places no practical limit on the size of the buffer
 bounded-buffer assumes that there is a fixed buffer size

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.28 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Bounded-Buffer – Shared-Memory Solution

Q. Explain the function of the following segment

 Shared data

#define BUFFER_SIZE 10
typedef struct {
. . .
} item;

item buffer[BUFFER_SIZE];
int in = 0;
int out = 0;
 Solution is correct, but can only use BUFFER_SIZE-1 elements

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.29 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Bounded-Buffer – Producer
Q. Explain the function of the following segment?

item next_produced;
while (true) {
/* produce an item in next produced */
while (((in + 1) % BUFFER_SIZE) == out)
; /* do nothing */
buffer[in] = next_produced;
in = (in + 1) % BUFFER_SIZE;
}

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.30 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Bounded Buffer – Consumer

item next_consumed;
while (true) {
while (in == out)
; /* do nothing */
next_consumed = buffer[out];
out = (out + 1) % BUFFER_SIZE;

/* consume the item in next consumed */

}

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.31 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Interprocess Communication – Message Passing
 Mechanism for processes to communicate and to synchronize their actions

 Message system – processes communicate with each other without resorting to shared variables

 IPC facility provides two operations:

 send(message) – message size fixed or variable
 receive(message)

 If P and Q wish to communicate, they need to:

 establish a communication link between them
 exchange messages via send/receive

 Implementation of communication link

 physical (e.g., shared memory, hardware bus)
 logical (e.g., direct or indirect, synchronous or asynchronous, automatic or explicit buffering)

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.32 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Implementation Questions
 How are links established?

 Can a link be associated with more than two processes?

 How many links can there be between every pair of communicating processes?

 What is the capacity of a link?

 Is the size of a message that the link can accommodate fixed or variable?

 Is a link unidirectional or bi-directional?

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.33 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Direct Communication
 Processes must name each other explicitly:
 send (P, message) – send a message to process P
 receive(Q, message) – receive a message from process Q

 Properties of communication link

 Links are established automatically
 A link is associated with exactly one pair of communicating processes
 Between each pair there exists exactly one link
 The link may be unidirectional, but is usually bi-directional

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.34 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Indirect Communication
 Messages are directed and received from mailboxes
 Each mailbox has a unique id
 Processes can communicate only if they share a mailbox

 Properties of communication link

 Link established only if processes share a common mailbox
 A link may be associated with many processes
 Each pair of processes may share several communication links
 Link may be unidirectional or bi-directional

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.35 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Indirect Communication
 Operations
 create a new mailbox
 send and receive messages through mailbox
 destroy a mailbox

 Primitives are defined as:

send(A, message) – send a message to mailbox A
receive(A, message) – receive a message from mailbox A

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.36 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Indirect Communication
 Mailbox sharing
 P1, P2, and P3 share mailbox A
 P1, sends; P2 and P3 receive
 Who gets the message?

 Solutions
 Allow a link to be associated with at most two processes
 Allow only one process at a time to execute a receive operation
 Allow the system to select arbitrarily the receiver. Sender is notified who the receiver was.

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.37 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Synchronization
 Message passing may be either blocking or non-blocking

 Blocking is considered synchronous

 Blocking send has the sender block until the message is received
 Blocking receive has the receiver block until a message is available

 Non-blocking is considered asynchronous

 Non-blocking send has the sender send the message and continue
 Non-blocking receive has the receiver receive a valid message or null
}

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.38 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Examples of IPC Systems – Windows
 Message-passing centric via advanced local procedure call (LPC) facility
 Only works between processes on the same system
 Uses ports (like mailboxes) to establish and maintain communication channels
 Communication works as follows:
 The client opens a handle to the subsystem’s connection port object.
 The client sends a connection request.
 The server creates two private communication ports and returns the handle to one of them
to the client.
 The client and server use the corresponding port handle to send messages or callbacks and
to listen for replies.

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 3.39 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 End of Chapter 3

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013