Chapter 3: Processes
Process Concept
Process Scheduling
Chapter 3: Processes
Operations on Processes
Interprocess Communication
Examples of IPC Systems
Communication in Client-Server Systems
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Operating System Concepts 8th Edition
Objectives
An operating system executes a variety of programs:
execution, which forms the basis of all computation
Batch system jobs
Time-shared systems user programs or tasks
Textbook uses the terms job and process almost interchangeably
Process a program in execution; process execution must
progress in sequential fashion
A process includes:
program counter
stack
data section
To describe the various features of processes, including
scheduling, creation and termination, and communication
To describe communication in client-server systems
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Process in Memory
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Process State
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Process Concept
To introduce the notion of a process -- a program in
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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
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Diagram of Process State
Process Control Block (PCB)
Information associated with each process
Process state
Program counter
CPU registers
CPU scheduling information
Memory-management information
Accounting information
I/O status information
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Process Control Block (PCB)
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Process Scheduling Queues
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CPU Switch From Process to Process
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Ready Queue And Various I/O Device Queues
Job queue set of all processes in the system
Ready queue set of all processes residing in main memory,
ready and waiting to execute
Device queues set of processes waiting for an I/O device
Processes migrate among the various queues
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Representation of Process Scheduling
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
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Addition of Medium Term Scheduling
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Schedulers (Cont)
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:
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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
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Context Switch
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Process Creation
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
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
Context-switch time is overhead; the system does no useful work while
switching
Time dependent on hardware support
Parent and children share all resources
Children share subset of parents resources
Parent and child share no resources
Execution
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Parent and children execute concurrently
Parent waits until children terminate
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Process Creation (Cont)
Process Creation
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
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C Program Forking Separate Process
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A tree of processes on a typical Solaris
int main()
{
pid_t pid;
/* fork another process */
pid = fork();
if (pid < 0) { /* error occurred */
fprintf(stderr, "Fork Failed");
exit(-1);
}
else if (pid == 0) { /* child process */
execlp("/bin/ls", "ls", NULL);
}
else { /* parent process */
/* parent will wait for the child to complete */
wait (NULL);
printf ("Child Complete");
exit(0);
}
}
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Process Termination
delete it (exit)
Processes within a system may be independent or cooperating
Cooperating process can affect or be affected by other processes,
Output data from child to parent (via wait)
Process resources are deallocated by operating system
including sharing data
Parent may terminate execution of children processes (abort)
Reasons for cooperating processes:
Information sharing
Child has exceeded allocated resources
Computation speedup
Task assigned to child is no longer required
Modularity
If parent is exiting
Convenience
Some operating system do not allow child to continue if its
parent terminates
All children terminated - cascading termination
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Interprocess Communication
Process executes last statement and asks the operating system to
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Cooperating processes need interprocess communication (IPC)
Two models of IPC
Shared memory
Message passing
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Communications Models
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
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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
Information sharing
Computation speed-up
Modularity
Convenience
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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
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Bounded-Buffer Producer
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Bounded Buffer Consumer
while (true) {
while (true) {
/* Produce an item */
while (in == out)
; // do nothing -- nothing to consume
while (((in = (in + 1) % BUFFER SIZE count) == out)
; /* do nothing -- no free buffers */
// remove an item from the buffer
item = buffer[out];
buffer[in] = item;
out = (out + 1) % BUFFER SIZE;
in = (in + 1) % BUFFER SIZE;
return item;
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Implementation Questions
Interprocess Communication Message Passing
Mechanism for processes to communicate and to synchronize their actions
How are links established?
Message system processes communicate with each other without
Can a link be associated with more than two processes?
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
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?
exchange messages via send/receive
Implementation of communication link
physical (e.g., shared memory, hardware bus)
logical (e.g., logical properties)
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Direct Communication
Processes must name each other explicitly:
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Indirect Communication
Messages are directed and received from mailboxes (also referred to as
send (P, message) send a message to process P
receive(Q, message) receive a message from process Q
Properties of communication link
ports)
Each mailbox has a unique id
Processes can communicate only if they share a mailbox
Properties of communication link
Links are established automatically
A link is associated with exactly one pair of communicating processes
Link established only if processes share a common mailbox
Between each pair there exists exactly one link
A link may be associated with many processes
The link may be unidirectional, but is usually bi-directional
Each pair of processes may share several communication links
Link may be unidirectional or bi-directional
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Indirect Communication
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Indirect Communication
Mailbox sharing
Operations
create a new mailbox
P1, P2, and P3 share mailbox A
send and receive messages through mailbox
P1, sends; P2 and P3 receive
destroy a mailbox
Who gets the message?
Solutions
Primitives are defined as:
send(A, message) send a message to mailbox A
Allow a link to be associated with at most two processes
receive(A, message) receive a message from mailbox A
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.
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Synchronization
Buffering
Message passing may be either blocking or non-blocking
Blocking is considered synchronous
Queue of messages attached to the link; implemented in one of three
ways
Blocking send has the sender block until the message is
received
1. Zero capacity 0 messages
Sender must wait for receiver (rendezvous)
Blocking receive has the receiver block until a message is
available
2. Bounded capacity finite length of n messages
Sender must wait if link full
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
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Examples of IPC Systems - POSIX
POSIX Shared Memory
3. Unbounded capacity infinite length
Sender never waits
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Examples of IPC Systems - Mach
Mach communication is message based
Even system calls are messages
segment id = shmget(IPC PRIVATE, size, S IRUSR | S
IWUSR);
Each task gets two mailboxes at creation- Kernel and Notify
Only three system calls needed for message transfer
msg_send(), msg_receive(), msg_rpc()
Process first creates shared memory segment
Process wanting access to that shared memory must attach to it
shared memory = (char *) shmat(id, NULL, 0);
Now the process could write to the shared memory
Mailboxes needed for commuication, created via
port_allocate()
sprintf(shared memory, "Writing to shared memory");
When done a process can detach the shared memory from its address
space
shmdt(shared memory);
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Examples of IPC Systems Windows XP
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Local Procedure Calls in Windows XP
Message-passing centric via 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 subsystems 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
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Sockets
Communications in Client-Server Systems
Sockets
A socket is defined as an endpoint for communication
Remote Procedure Calls
Concatenation of IP address and port
Remote Method Invocation (Java)
The socket 161.25.19.8:1625 refers to port 1625 on host
161.25.19.8
Communication consists between a pair of sockets
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Socket Communication
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Remote Procedure Calls
Remote procedure call (RPC) abstracts procedure calls between processes
on networked systems
Stubs client-side proxy for the actual procedure on the server
The client-side stub locates the server and marshalls the parameters
The server-side stub receives this message, unpacks the marshalled
parameters, and peforms the procedure on the server
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Execution of RPC
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Remote Method Invocation
Remote Method Invocation (RMI) is a Java mechanism similar to RPCs
RMI allows a Java program on one machine to invoke a method on a
remote object
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Marshalling Parameters
End of Chapter 3
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