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Operations On Processes

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Sharlin Lins L
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133 views

Operations On Processes

Uploaded by

Sharlin Lins L
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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ROHINI COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING & TECHNOLOGY

2.3 OPERATIONS ON PROCESSES


The operating system must provide a mechanism for process creation and
termination. The process can be created and deleted dynamically by the operating system.
The Operations on the process includes
 Process creation
 Process Termination
2.3.1 Process Creation
During Execution a process may create several new processes.
 The creating process is called as the parent process and the newly created process is
called as the child process.
o Processes may create other processes through appropriate system calls, such
as fork or spawn.
o The operating systems identify the processes according to their unique process
identifier.
:

Fig: A tree of processes on a typical Linux system


 The init process serves as the root parent process for all the user process.
 Once the system has booted, the init process can also create various user processes,
such as a web or printserver, an ssh server.
 The kthreadd process is responsible for creating additional processes that perform
tasks on behalf of the kernel

CS8493-OPERATING SYSTEMS
ROHINI COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING & TECHNOLOGY

 The sshd process is responsible for managing clients that connect to the system by
using ssh(Secure shell)
 The login process is responsible for managing clients that directly log onto the system
 The command ps –el will list complete information for all processes currently active in
the system.
When a process creates a new process, two possibilities for execution exist:
 The parent continues to execute concurrently with its children.
 The parent waits until some or all of its children have terminated
There are also two address-space possibilities for the new process:
 The child process is a duplicate of the parent process (it has the same program as the
parent).
 The child process has a new program loaded into it.
 The return code for the fork() is zero for the new (child) process, whereas the
(nonzero) process identifier of the child is returned to the parent.
o After a fork() system call, one of the two processes typically uses the exec()
system call to replace the process’s memory space with a new program.
o A new process is created by the fork() system call. The new process consists of
a copy of the address space of the original process. This mechanism allows the
parent process to communicate easily with its child process.

Depending on system implementation, a child process may receive some amount of


shared resources with its parent. Child processes may or may not be limited to a subset of the
resources originally allocated to the parent, preventing runaway children from consuming all
of a certain system resource.

CS8493-OPERATING SYSTEMS
ROHINI COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING & TECHNOLOGY

Creating a separate process using the UNIX fork( )system call.

Process creation using the fork( ) system call

2.3.2 Process Termination

 A process terminates when it finishes executing its final statement and asks the
operating system to delete it by using the exit() system call.
 At that point, the process may return a status value (typically an integer) to its parent
process.
 All the resources of the process—including physical and virtual memory, open files,
and I/O buffers—are deallocated by the operating system

CS8493-OPERATING SYSTEMS
ROHINI COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING & TECHNOLOGY

 A parent may terminate the execution of one of its children for a variety of reasons,
such as
 The child has exceeded its usage of some of the resources that it has been allocated.
 The task assigned to the child is no longer required.
 The parent is exiting, and the operating system does not allow a child to continue if its
parent terminates.
 Some systems do not allow a child to exist if its parent has terminated. In such systems,
if a process terminates (either normally or abnormally), then all its children must also
be terminated. This phenomenon is referred to as cascading termination.
 A parent process may wait for the termination of a child process by using the wait()
system call
 This system call also returns the process identifier of the terminated child so that the
parent can tell which of its children has terminated:
pid t pid;
int status;
pid = wait(&status);

o A process that has terminated, but whose parent has not yet called wait(), is
known as a zombie process.

CS8493-OPERATING SYSTEMS

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