JSPM’s

RAJARSHI SHAHU COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

TATHAWADE, PUNE-33
(An Autonomous Institute Affiliated to Savitribai Phule Pune University,Pune)

Department of Information Technology

Assignment No. 1

TITLE: UNIX Process Control- I (part a)

OBJECTIVE:

 Study how to create a process in UNIX using fork() system call.

SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS:

 Ubuntu 14.04 / 14.10

 GNU C Compiler

THEORY:

fork( ):

It is a system call that creates a new process under the UNIX operating system. It takes no arguments.
The purpose of fork() is to create a new process, which becomes the child process of the caller. After a
new child process is created, both processes will execute the next instruction following the fork() system
call. Therefore, we have to distinguish the parent from the child. This can be done by testing the
returned value of fork():
 If fork() returns a negative value, the creation of a child process was unsuccessful.
 fork() returns a zero to the newly created child process.
 fork() returns a positive value, the process ID of the child process, to the parent. The returned
process ID is of type pid_t defined in sys/types.h. Normally, the process ID is an integer.
Moreover, a process can use function getpid() to retrieve the process ID assigned to this process.

Therefore, after the system call to fork(), a simple test can tell which process is the child. Note that Unix
will make an exact copy of the parent's address space and give it to the child. Therefore, the parent and
child processes have separate address spaces.
Let us take an example:

int main()
{ printf(“Before Forking”);
fork();
printf(“After Forking”);
return 0;
}
 JSPM’s
RAJARSHI SHAHU COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING
TATHAWADE, PUNE-33
(An Autonomous Institute Affiliated to Savitribai Phule Pune University,Pune)

Department of Information Technology

If the call to fork() is executed successfully, Unix will
 Make two identical copies of address spaces, one for the parent and the other for the child.
 Both processes will start their execution at the next statement following the fork() call.

If we run this program, we might see the following on the screen:

Before Forking
After Forking
After Forking

Here printf() statement after fork() system call executed by parent as well as child process.

Both processes start their execution right after the system call fork(). Since both processes have identical
but separate address spaces, those variables initialized before the fork() call have the same values in
both address spaces. Since every process has its own address space, any modifications will be
independent of the others. In other words, if the parent changes the value of its variable, the
modification will only affect the variable in the parent process's address space. Other address spaces
created by fork() calls will not be affected even though they have identical variable names.
Consider one simpler example, which distinguishes the parent from the child.

#include
#include
void ChildProcess(); /* child process prototype */
void ParentProcess(); /* parent process prototype */
int main() {
pid_t pid;
pid = fork();
if (pid == 0)
ChildProcess(); else ParentProcess(); return 0; }
void ChildProcess() { }
void ParentProcess() { }

In this program, both processes print lines that indicate (1) whether the line is printed by the child or by
the parent process, and (2) the value of variable i.
 JSPM’s
RAJARSHI SHAHU COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING
TATHAWADE, PUNE-33
(An Autonomous Institute Affiliated to Savitribai Phule Pune University,Pune)

Department of Information Technology

When the main program executes fork(), an identical copy of its address space, including the program
and all data, is created. System call fork() returns the child process ID to the parent and returns 0 to the
child process. The following figure shows that in both address spaces there is a variable pid. The one in
the parent receives the child's process ID 3456 and the one in the child receives 0.

Now both programs (i.e., the parent and child) will execute independent of each other starting at the next
statement:

In the parent, since pid is non-zero, it calls function parentprocess(). On the other hand, the child has a
zero pid and calls childprocess() as shown below:
 JSPM’s
RAJARSHI SHAHU COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING
TATHAWADE, PUNE-33
(An Autonomous Institute Affiliated to Savitribai Phule Pune University,Pune)

Department of Information Technology

Due to the fact that the CPU scheduler will assign a time quantum to each process, the parent or the
child process will run for some time before the control is switched to the other and the running process
will print some lines before you can see any line printed by the other process.

ps command:
The ps command shows the processes we’re running, the process another user is running, or all the
processes on the system.
E.g. $ ps –ef
By default, the ps program shows only processes that maintain a connection with a terminal, a console, a
serial line, or a pseudo terminal. Other processes run without needing to communicate with a user on a
terminal. These are typically system processes that Linux uses to manage shared resources. We can use
ps to see all such processes using the -e option and to get “full” information with -f.

PROBLEM STATEMENT: Implement the C program in which main program accepts the integers to
be sorted. Main program uses the fork system call to create a new process called a child process. Parent
process sorts the integers using merge sort and waits for child process using wait system call to sort the
integers using quick sort. Also demonstrate zombie and orphan states.

ALGORITHM:
 JSPM’s
RAJARSHI SHAHU COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING
TATHAWADE, PUNE-33
(An Autonomous Institute Affiliated to Savitribai Phule Pune University,Pune)

Department of Information Technology

PROGRAM (With output and Comments):

CONCLUSION (At least three points):

ASSIGNMENTS:
1. Write and implement any five options of ps command from command manual.
2. Write and implement the top command.
3. Explain with example, how to make the process to run at background?

REFERENCES:
1. Beginning Linux Programming by Neil Mathew and Richard Stones, Wrox Publications.
2. Unix Concepts and Applications By Sumitabha Das, Tata McGraw Hill
 JSPM’s
RAJARSHI SHAHU COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING
TATHAWADE, PUNE-33
(An Autonomous Institute Affiliated to Savitribai Phule Pune University,Pune)

Department of Information Technology

UNIX Process Control- I (part b)

TITLE:
UNIX Process Control- Program-II.

OBJECTIVE:
1. Study how to use wait(), exec() system calls,
2. Study of zombie, daemon and orphan states.

PROBLEM STATEMENT:
Implement the C program in which main program accepts an integer array. Main program uses the fork
system call to create a new process called a child process. Parent process sorts an integer array and
passes the sorted array to child process through the command line arguments of execve system call. The
child process uses execve system call to load new program that uses this sorted array for performing the
binary search to search the particular item in the array.

THEORY:
exec() system call:
The exec() system call is used after a fork() system call by one of the two processes to replace the
memory space with a new program. The exec() system call loads a binary file into memory (destroying
image of the program containing the exec() system call) and go their separate ways. Within the exec
family there are functions that vary slightly in their capabilities.

exec family:
1 execl() and execlp():
execl(): It permits us to pass a list of command line arguments to the program to be executed. The list of
arguments is terminated by NULL.
e.g. execl("/bin/ls", "ls", "-l", NULL);
execlp(): It does same job except that it will use environment variable PATH to determine which
executable to process. Thus a fully qualified path name would not have to be used. The function
execlp() can also take the fully qualified name as it also resolves explicitly.
e.g. execlp("ls", "ls", "-l", NULL);
 JSPM’s
RAJARSHI SHAHU COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING
TATHAWADE, PUNE-33
(An Autonomous Institute Affiliated to Savitribai Phule Pune University,Pune)

Department of Information Technology

2 execv() and execvp():

execv(): It does same job as execl() except that command line arguments can be passed to it in the form
of an array of pointers to string.
e.g.
char *argv[] = ("ls", "-l", NULL);
execv("/bin/ls", argv);

execvp():
It does same job expect that it will use environment variable PATH to determine which executable to
process. Thus a fully qualified path name would not have to be used.
e.g. execvp("ls", argv);

3 execve( ):
int execve(const char *filename, char *const argv[ ], char *const envp[ ]);
It executes the program pointed to by filename. filename must be either a binary executable, or a script
starting with a line of the form:
argv is an array of argument strings passed to the new program. By convention, the first of these strings
should contain the filename associated with the file being executed. envp is an array of strings,
conventionally of the form key=value, which are passed as environment to the new program. Both argv
and envp must be terminated by a NULL pointer. The argument vector and environment can be accessed
by the called program's main function, when it is defined as:
int main(int argc, char *argv[ ] , char *envp[ ])]
execve() does not return on success, and the text, data, bss, and stack of the calling process are
overwritten by that of the program loaded.

The wait() system call:

It blocks the calling process until one of its child processes exits or a signal is received. wait() takes the
address of an integer variable and returns the process ID of the completed process. Some flags that
 JSPM’s
RAJARSHI SHAHU COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING
TATHAWADE, PUNE-33
(An Autonomous Institute Affiliated to Savitribai Phule Pune University,Pune)

Department of Information Technology

indicate the completion status of the child process are passed back with the integer pointer. One of the
main purposes of wait() is to wait for completion of child processes.

The execution of wait() could have two possible situations.

1 If there are at least one child processes running when the call to wait() is made, the caller will be
blocked until one of its child processes exits. At that moment, the caller resumes its execution.
2 If there is no child process running when the call to wait() is made, then this wait() has no effect at all.
That is, it is as if no wait() is there.

Zombie Process:
When a child process terminates, an association with its parent survives until the parent in turn either
terminates normally or calls wait. The child process entry in the process table is therefore not freed up
immediately. Although no longer active, the child process is still in the system because its exit code
needs to be stored in case the parent subsequently calls wait. It becomes what is known as defunct, or a
zombie process.

Orphan Process:
An orphan process is a computer process whose parent process has finished or terminated, though itself
remains running. A process may also be intentionally orphaned so that it becomes detached from the
user's session and left running in the background; usually to allow a long-running job to complete
without further user attention, or to start an indefinitely running service. Under UNIX, the latter kinds of
processes are typically called daemon processes. The UNIX nohup command is one means to
accomplish this.
Daemon Process:
It is a process that runs in the background, rather than under the direct control of a user; they are usually
initiated as background processes.

ALGORITHM:

PROGRAM (With output and Comments):

 JSPM’s
RAJARSHI SHAHU COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING
TATHAWADE, PUNE-33
(An Autonomous Institute Affiliated to Savitribai Phule Pune University,Pune)

Department of Information Technology

CONCLUSION (At least three points):

ASSIGNMENTS:
1. Write and implement any five options of kill command from command manual.
2. What is nice value? Write and implement nice command.
3. Explain with example, how to show processes created by system?

REFERENCES:
1. Beginning Linux Programming by Neil Mathew and Richard Stones, Wrox Publications.
2. Unix Concepts and Applications by Sumitabha Das, Tata McGraw Hill