Process Management

1
Introduction
 In conventional (centralized) operating system, process
management deals with mechanisms and policies for
sharing the processor of the system among all processes.
 In a distributed operating system, the main goal of process
management is to make the best possible use of the
processing resources of the entire system by sharing them
among all processes.
 Three important concepts are used to achieve this
goal:
-Processor allocation
-Process migration
-Threads 2
Cont…
 Process allocation deals with the process of
deciding which process should be assigned to which
processor.

 Process migration deals with the movement of a

process from its current location to the processor to
which it has been assigned.

 Threads deals with fine-grained parallelism for

better utilization of the processing capability of the
system. 3
Process Migration
 Relocation of a process from its current location to
another node.

 Process may be migrated

 either before it start executing on its source node
 known as non-preemptive process migration.

 or during the course of its execution

 Known as preemptive process migration.

4
Cont… : Flow of execution of a
migration process
Source node
Destination node

Time Process P1 in
execution

Execution
suspended
Transfer of
control
Freezing time

Execution
resumed

Process p1 in execution

5
Cont…
 Preemptive process migration is costlier.

 Process Migration Policy

 Selection of a process that should be migrated.
 Selection of the destination node to which the
selected process should be migrated.

 Process Migration Mechanism

 Actual transfer of the selected process to the
destination node.

6
Desirable features of a good process
migration mechanism
 Transparency
 Minimal Interference
 Minimal Residual Dependencies
 Efficiency
 Robustness
 Communication between coprocesses of a job

7
Transparency
Level of transparency:
 Object Access Level
 System Call & Interprocess Communication level

8
Cont… : Object Access level Transparency
 Minimum requirement for a system to support non-
preemptive process migration facility.

 Access to objects such as files and devices can be

location independent.

 Allows free initiation of program at arbitrary node.

 Requires transparent object naming and locating.

9
Cont… : System Call & IPC level
 For migrated process, system calls should be
location independent.

 For transparent redirection of messages during the

transient state of a process.

 Transparency must be provided to support

preemptive process migration facility.

10
Minimal Interference
 Migration of a process should cause minimal
interference of progress of the process involved.

 Achieve by minimizing the freezing time of the

process being migrated.
 Freezing time is the time period for which the execution
of the process is stopped for transferring its information to
the destination node.

11
Minimal Residual Dependencies
 No residual dependency should be left on
previous node.

12
Efficiency
 Minimum time required for migrating a process.

 Minimum cost of locating an object.

 Minimum cost of supporting remote execution

once the process is migrated.

13
Robustness
 The failure of a node other than the one on which a
process is currently running should not in any way
affect the accessibility or execution of that process.

14
Communication between coprocessors of a job

 To reduce communication cost, it is necessary that

coprocesses are able to directly communicate with
each other irrespective of their locations.

15
 Process Migration Mechanisms
Four major activities
 Freezing the process on its source node and

restarting it on its destination node.

 Transferring the process’s address space from its

source node to its destination node.

 Forwarding messages meant for the migrant process.

 Handling communication between cooperating

processes that have been separated as a result of
process migration.
16
Cont… : Mechanisms for Freezing and
Restarting a Process
 Freezing the process:
 The execution of the process is suspended and all
external interactions with the process are deferred.

 Issues:
 Immediate and delayed blocking of the process
 Fast and slow I/O operations
 Information about open files
 Reinstating the process on its Destination node
17
Cont… :Immediate and delayed
blocking of the process
 If the process is not executing a system call, it can be
immediately blocked from further execution.

 If the process is executing a system call but is sleeping at

an interruptible priority waiting for a kernel event to
occur, it can be immediately blocked from further
execution.

 If the process is executing a system call but is sleeping at

an non-interruptible priority waiting for a kernel event to
occur, it cannot be blocked immediately.

18
Cont… : Fast and Slow I/O Operations
 Process is frozen after the completion of all fast I/O
operations like disk access.

 Slow I/O operation (pipe or terminal) is done after

process migration and when process is executed on
destination node.

19
Cont… : Information about open files
 Includes name and identifier of the file, their access
modes and the current positions of their file pointers.

 OS returns a file descriptor to process that is used for

all I/O.

 It is necessary to somehow preserve a pointer to the

file so that migrated process could continue to access
it.
20
Cont…
 Approaches :
 Link is created to the file and the pathname of the
link is used as an access point to the file after the
process migrates.

 An open file’s complete pathname is reconstructed

when required by modifying the kernel.

 Keeping Track of file replicas.

21
Cont… : Reinstating the process on its
Destination Node
 On the destination node, an empty process state is
created.

 Newly allocated process may or may not have the

same process identifier as the migrating process.

22
Cont…
 Once all the state of the migrating process has been
transferred from the source to destination node and
copied into the empty state, new copy of the process
is unfrozen and old copy is deleted.

 The process is restarted on its destination node in

whatever state it was in before being migrated.

23
Address Space Transfer Mechanisms
 The migration of a process involves the
transfer of

 Process’s state
 Process’s address space

from the source node to the destination node.

24
Cont…
 Process State consists of
 Execution Status – Register Contents
 Memory Tables
 I/O State : I/O Queue, I/O buffers, Interrupts
 Capability list
 Process’s Identifier
 Process’s user and group identifier
 Information about Open Files

25
Cont…
 Process address space
 code,
 data and
 program stack

 The size of the process’s address space (several

megabytes) overshadows the size of the process’s
state information (few kilobytes).

26
Cont…
 Mechanisms for address space transfer:
 Total freezing
 Pretransferring
 Transfer on reference

27
Cont… : Total Freezing
 A process’s execution is stopped while its address
space is being transferred.

 Disadvantage:
 Process is suspended for long time during migration,
timeouts may occur, and if process is interactive, the
delay will be noticed by the user.

28
Cont…
Source Destination node
node

Time Migration
Execution decision made
suspended

Transfer of
Freezing time address space

Execution
resumed

29
Cont … : Pretransferring
 Also known as precopying.

 The address space is transferred while the process is

still running on the source node.

 It is done as an initial transfer of the complete

address space followed by repeated transfers of the
page modified during the previous transfer.

30
Cont …
 The pretransfer operation is executed at a higher
priority than all other programs on the source node.

 Reduces the freezing time of the process but it may

increase the total time for migrating due to the
possibility of redundant page transfers.

31
Cont…
Source Destination node
node
Time Migration
decision made

Execution Transfer of
suspended address space
Freezing time
Execution
resumed

32
Cont… : Transfer on Reference
 The process address space is left behind on its
source node, and as the relocated process executes
on its destination node.

 Attempts to reference memory page results in the

generation of requests to copy in the desired blocks
from their remote location.

 A page is transferred from its source node to its

destination node only when referenced.
33
Cont…
 Very short switching time of the process from its
source node to its destination node.

 Imposes a continued load on the process’s source

node and results in the process if source node fails
or is rebooted.

34
Cont…
Source Destination
node node
Time Execution Migration
suspended decision
made
Freezing
time Execution
resumed

On-demand
transfer of
address space

35
Message-forwarding Mechanisms
 In moving a process, it must be ensured that all
pending, re-route, and future messages arrive at the
process’s new location.

 Types of messages:
1. Messages received at the source node after the process’s execution
has been stopped on its source node and the process’s execution has
not yet been started on its destination node.

2. Messages received at the source node after the process’s execution

has started on its destination node.

3. Messages that are to be sent to the migrant process from any other
node after it has started executing on the destination node.
36
Cont…
 Mechanisms:
 Mechanism of resending the message
 Origin site mechanism
 Link traversal mechanism
 Link update mechanism

37
Cont… : Mechanisms of resending the
message
 Messages of the types 1 and 2 are returned to the
sender as not deliverable or are simply dropped,
with the assurance that the sender of the message is
storing a copy of the data and is prepared to
retransmit it.

 Does not require any process state to be left behind

on the process’s source node.

38
Cont…
 Disadvantage:
 The message forwarding mechanism of process
migration operation is nontransparent to the
processes interacting with the migrant process.

39
Cont… : Origin Site Mechanism
 Each site is responsible for keeping information
about the current locations of all the processes
created on it.

 Messages for a particular process are always first

sent to its origin site.

 The origin site then forwards the message to the

process’s current location.
40
Cont…
 Disadvantage:
 Failure of the origin site will disrupt the message
forwarding mechanism.

 Continuous load on the migrant process’s origin site even

after the process has migrated from that node.

41
Cont… : Link Traversal Mechanism
 To redirect message type 1, a message queue for the
migrant process is created on its source node.

 For 2 and 3 type message, a forwarding address

known as link is left at the source node pointing to
the destination of the migrant process.

 Two component of link, one is unique process

identifier and second is last known location.

42
Cont…
 Disadvantage:
 Several link may have to be traversed to locate a process
from a node and if any node in chain of link fails, the
process cannot be located.

43
Cont… : Link Update Mechanisms
 During the transfer phase of the migrant process,
the source node sends link-update messages to the
kernels controlling all of the migrant process’s
communication partners.

 Link update message

 Tells the new address of each link held by the migrant
process.
 Acknowledged for synchronization purposes.

44
Mechanisms for Handling
Coprocesses
 To provide efficient communication between a
process and its sub processes which might have
been migrated on different nodes.

 Mechanisms :
 Disallowing separation of coprocesses.
 Home node or origin site concept.

45
Cont… : Disallowing Separation of
coprocesses
 Easiest method of handling communication
between coprocesses is to disallow their separation.

 Methods :
 By disallowing the migration of processes that wait for
one or more of their children to complete.
 By ensuring that when a parent process migrates, its
children process will be migrated along with it.

46
Cont…
 Disadvantage:
 It does not allow the use of parallelism within jobs.

47
Cont… : Home node or Origin Sites
Concept
 Used for communication between a process and its
sub process when the two are running on different
nodes.

 Allows the complete freedom of migrating a

process or its sub process independently and
executing them on different nodes of the system.

48
Cont…
 Disadvantage:
 All communication between a parent process and its
children processes take place via the home node.

 The message traffic and the communication cost increase

considerably.

49
Advantages of Process Migration
 Reducing average response time of processes
 To reduce the average response time of the processes,
processes of a heavily loaded node are migrated to idle or
underutilized nodes.

 Speeding up individual jobs

 A migration of job to different node is done and execute
them concurrently.
 Migrate a job to a node having a faster CPU or to a node
at which it has minimum turnaround time.
 More speed up more migration cost involved.
50
Cont…
 Gaining higher throughput
 Process migration facility may also be used properly to
mix I/O and CPU-bound processes on a global basis for
increasing the throughput of the system.

 Utilizing resources effectively

 Depending upon the nature of a process, it can be
migrated to suitable node to utilize the system resource in
the most efficient manner.

51
Cont…
 Reducing network traffic
 Migrating a process closer to the resources it is using
most heavily.

 Improving system reliability

 Migrate a copy of a critical process to some other node
and to execute both the original and copied processes
concurrently on different nodes.

 Improving system security

 A sensitive process may be migrated and run on a secure
node. 52