Chapter 3: Processes

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Chapter 3: Processes
 Process Concept
 Process Scheduling
 Operations on Processes
 Interprocess Communication
 IPC in Shared-Memory Systems
 IPC in Message-Passing Systems
 Examples of IPC Systems
 Communication in Client-Server Systems

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.2 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Objectives
 Identify the separate components of a process and illustrate
how they are represented and scheduled in an operating
system.
 Describe how processes are created and terminated in an
operating system using the appropriate system calls that
perform these operations.
 Describe and contrast interprocess communication using
shared memory and message passing.
 Design programs that uses pipes and POSIX shared memory
to perform interprocess communication.
 Describe client-server communication using sockets and
remote procedure calls.

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.3 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Process Concept
 An operating system executes a variety of programs that run as a
process.
 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

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.4 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Process Concept (Cont.)
 Program is passive entity stored on disk (executable file);
process is active
 Program becomes process when executable file loaded into
memory
 Execution of program started via GUI mouse clicks, command
line entry of its name, etc
 One program can be several processes
 Consider multiple users executing the same program

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.5 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Process in Memory

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.6 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 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
 Terminated: The process has finished execution

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.7 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Diagram of Process State

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.8 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 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 – 10th Edition 3.9 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 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
 Explore in detail in Chapter 4

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.10 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Process Representation in Linux

Represented by the C structure task_struct

pid t_pid; /* process identifier */

long state; /* state of the process */
unsigned int time_slice /* scheduling information */
struct task_struct *parent;/* this process’s parent */
struct list_head children; /* this process’s children */
struct files_struct *files;/* list of open files */
struct mm_struct *mm; /* address space of this process */

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.11 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Process Scheduling

 Maximize CPU use, quickly switch processes onto CPU

 Process scheduler selects among available processes for
next execution on CPU
 Maintains scheduling queues of processes
 Ready queue – set of all processes residing in main
memory, ready and waiting to execute
 Wait queues – set of processes waiting for an event (i.e.
I/O)
 Processes migrate among the various queues

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.12 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Ready and Wait Queues

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.13 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Representation of Process Scheduling

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 CPU Switch From Process to Process
A context switch occurs when the CPU
switches from one process to another.

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.15 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 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  the longer the
context switch
 Time dependent on hardware support
 Some hardware provides multiple sets of registers per CPU
 multiple contexts loaded at once

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.16 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Multitasking in Mobile Systems
 Some mobile systems (e.g., early version of iOS) allow only one
process to run, others suspended
 Due to smaller screen, user interface limits iOS to provide a
 Single foreground process- controlled via user interface
 Multiple background processes– in memory, running, but not
on the display, and with limits
 Limits include single, short task, receiving notification of events
such as SMS service and reminders
 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

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.17 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Operations on Processes

 System must provide mechanisms for:

 process creation
 process termination

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.18 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 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 – 10th Edition 3.19 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 A Tree of Processes in Linux

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.20 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Process Creation (Cont.)
 Address space
 Child duplicate of parent
 Child has a program loaded into it
 UNIX examples
 fork() system call creates new process
 exec() system call used after a fork() to replace the
process’ memory space with a new program
 Parent process calls wait() for the child to terminate

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.21 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 C Program Forking Separate Process

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.22 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Creating a Separate Process via Windows API

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.23 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Assignment#03?? No. Then??
 Run both programs on slide#22 and 23 for Linux and Windows
respectively.
 Then in Linux code run another program instead of “ls” and in
Windows another program instead of “[Link]”.
 Overall four programs, Thus a group of two students.
 Check how to pass arguments to the new program
 Gather process statistics from Task manager, Such as PID, Memory
usage CPU usage.
 Verify both execution options
 Check Mechanism?
 Assignment check date??

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.24 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Process Termination

 Process executes last statement and then asks the operating

system to delete it using the exit() system call.
 Returns status data from child to parent (via wait())
 Process’ resources are deallocated by operating system
 Parent may terminate the execution of children processes using
the abort() system call. Some reasons for doing so:
 Child has exceeded allocated resources
 Task assigned to child is no longer required
 The parent is exiting and the operating systems does not
allow a child to continue if its parent terminates

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.25 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Process Termination

 Some operating systems do not allow child to exists if its parent has
terminated. If a process terminates, then all its children must also
be terminated.
 cascading termination. All children, grandchildren, etc. are
terminated.
 The termination is initiated by the operating system.
 The parent process may wait for termination of a child process by
using the wait()system call. The call returns status information
and the pid of the terminated process
pid = wait(&status);
 If no parent waiting (did not invoke wait()) process is a zombie
 If parent terminated without invoking wait , process is an orphan

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.26 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Android Process Importance Hierarchy
 Mobile operating systems often have to terminate processes to reclaim
system resources such as memory. From most to least important:
o Foreground process
o Visible process
o Service process
o Background process
o Empty process
 Android will begin terminating processes that are least important.

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.27 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Multiprocess Architecture – Chrome Browser
 Many web browsers run 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 different types of
processes:
 Browser process manages user interface, disk and network I/O
 Renderer process renders web pages, deals with HTML,
Javascript. A new renderer created for each website opened
 Plug-in process for each type of plug-in

 Why Google chrome opens so many processes in task manager

and how to make one process
 [Link]
s-running/
 [Link]
rocesses
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.28 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 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 – 10th Edition 3.29 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Communications Models
(a) Shared memory. (b) Message passing.

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.30 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 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 – 10th Edition 3.31 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Interprocess Communication – Shared Memory

 An area of memory shared among the processes that wish

to communicate
 The communication is under the control of the user
processes not the operating system.
 Major issues is to provide mechanism that will allow the
user processes to synchronize their actions when they
access shared memory.

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.32 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Bounded-Buffer – Shared-Memory Solution

 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 – 10th Edition 3.33 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Producer Process – Shared Memory

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 – 10th Edition 3.34 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Consumer Process – Shared Memory

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 – 10th Edition 3.35 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 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)
 receive(message)

 The message size is either fixed or variable

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.36 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Message Passing (Cont.)

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

 Establish a communication link between them
 Exchange messages via send/receive
 Implementation issues:
 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 – 10th Edition 3.37 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 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 – 10th Edition 3.38 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Indirect Communication
 Messages are directed and received from mailboxes (also referred
to as ports)
 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 – 10th Edition 3.39 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Indirect Communication
 Operations
 create a new mailbox (port)
 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 – 10th Edition 3.40 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 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 – 10th Edition 3.41 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Synchronization
 Message passing may be either blocking or non-blocking
 Blocking is considered synchronous
 Blocking send -- the sender is blocked until the message is
received
 Blocking receive -- the receiver is blocked until a message
is available
 Non-blocking is considered asynchronous
 Non-blocking send -- the sender sends the message and
continue
 Non-blocking receive -- the receiver receives:
 A valid message, or
 Null message
 Different combinations possible
 If both send and receive are blocking, we have a rendezvous

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.42 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Buffering

 Queue of messages attached to the link.

 Implemented in one of three ways
1. Zero capacity – no messages are queued on a link.
Sender must wait for receiver (rendezvous)
2. Bounded capacity – finite length of n messages
Sender must wait if link full
3. Unbounded capacity – infinite length
Sender never waits

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.43 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Examples of IPC Systems - POSIX

 POSIX Shared Memory

 Process first creates shared memory segment
shm_fd = shm_open(name, O_CREAT | O_RDWR, 0666);
 Also used to open an existing segment
 Set the size of the object
ftruncate(shm_fd, 4096);
 Use mmap() to memory-map a file pointer to the shared memory
object
 Reading and writing to shared memory is done by using the
pointer returned by mmap().

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.44 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 IPC POSIX Producer

void *mmap(void *addr, size_t length, int prot, int

flags, int fd, off_t offset);

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.45 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 IPC POSIX Consumer

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.46 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Examples of IPC Systems - Mach
 Mach communication is message based
 Even system calls are messages
 Each task gets two ports at creation- Kernel and Notify
 Messages are sent and received using the mach_msg() function
 Ports needed for communication, created via
mach_port_allocate()
 Send and receive are flexible, for example four options if mailbox full:
 Wait indefinitely
 Wait at most n milliseconds
 Return immediately
 Temporarily cache a message

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.47 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Examples of IPC Systems – Windows

 Message-passing is done 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 sends a connection request.
 The client opens a handle to the subsystem’s
connection port object.
 The server creates two private communication ports
and returns the handle of 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 – 10th Edition 3.48 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Local Procedure Calls in Windows

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.49 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Examples of IPC Systems – Windows 10
 Using the Clipboard for IPC
 The clipboard acts as a central repository for data
sharing among applications.
 When a user performs a cut or copy operation in an
application, the application puts the selected data on
the clipboard in one or more standard or application-
defined formats.
 Any other application can then retrieve the data from
the clipboard, choosing from the available formats that
it understands.
 The clipboard is a very loosely coupled exchange
medium, where applications need only agree on the
data format. The applications can reside on the same
computer or on different computers on a network.

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.50 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Quiz#02
 Quiz#02 next week 4th October Omega and 5th October Alpha.

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.51 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Pipes
 Acts as a conduit allowing two processes to communicate
 Issues:
 Is communication unidirectional or bidirectional?
 In the case of two-way communication, is it half or full-
duplex?
 Must there exist a relationship (i.e., parent-child) between
the communicating processes?
 Can the pipes be used over a network?
 Ordinary pipes – cannot be accessed from outside the
process that created it. Typically, a parent process creates a
pipe and uses it to communicate with a child process that it
created.
 Named pipes – can be accessed without a parent-child
relationship.

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.52 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Ordinary Pipes
 Ordinary Pipes allow communication in standard producer-consumer
style
 Producer writes to one end (the write-end of the pipe)
 Consumer reads from the other end (the read-end of the pipe)
 Ordinary pipes are therefore unidirectional
 Require parent-child relationship between communicating processes

 Windows calls these anonymous pipes

 Pipe code on page 141 and 142 of book

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.53 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Named Pipes

 Named Pipes are more powerful than ordinary pipes

 Communication is bidirectional
 No parent-child relationship is necessary between the
communicating processes
 Several processes can use the named pipe for communication
 Provided on both UNIX and Windows systems

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.54 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Communications in Client-Server Systems

 A socket is defined as an endpoint for communication

 Concatenation of IP address and port – a number included at

start of message packet to differentiate network services on a
host

 The socket [Link]:1625 refers to port 1625 on host

[Link]

 Communication consists between a pair of sockets

 All ports below 1024 are well known, used for standard
services

 Special IP address [Link] (loopback) to refer to system on

which process is running
 For more information on designated port numbers in Windows
pleases visit
[Link]
number
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.55 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Top 10 Networking commands on windows

 [Link]
eryone-one-should-know/
 Ping
 IPConfig
 Getmac
 Hostname
 NSLookup
 Tracert
 Netstat (To come out of netstat use Ctrl+c). For more info please visit
[Link]
 Arp
 Systeminfo

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.56 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Socket Communication

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.57 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Sockets in Java

 Three types of sockets

 Connection-oriented
(TCP)
 Connectionless (UDP)
 MulticastSocket
class– data can be sent
to multiple recipients

 Consider this “Date” server

in Java:

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.58 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Sockets in Java
The equivalent Date client

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.59 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 Assigment#03
 Change Java code at slide# 57 and 58 in such a way that client passes
server three parameters (two integer numbers and one operation type).
Server performs specified operation and return result to client. Client prints
the result.
 At least two different connection methods (wi-fi, hotspot, cable)
 Implement the same using udp and muticast socket.
 While using multicast socket server should send result to both clients
 Ideally 2 to 3 students per group.
 Also you are required to identify that if there is a limit on message size or
not?
 Submission 27th October, Ms Teams, come with laptops in class,
demonstration by random groups. If any group doesn’t bring laptop, implies
03 marks in assignment. For absent group zero marks.
 Put reminder today

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.60 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018
 End of Chapter 3

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2018