Chapter 3: Processes

Outline

▪ 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
 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, including developing programs 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.
▪ Design kernel modules that interact with the Linux operating
system.
 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. No parallel execution of
instructions of a single process
▪ 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
 Process Concept (Cont.)

▪ Program is passive entity stored on disk

(executable file); process is active
• Program becomes process when an executable
file is 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
Process in Memory

Text section—the executable code

Data section—global variables

Heap section—memory that is

dynamically allocated during
program run
time
Stack section—temporary data
storage when invoking functions
(such as
function parameters, return
addresses, and local variables)
Memory Layout of a C Program
 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
Diagram of Process State
 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
 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
 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 */
 Process Scheduling

▪ Process scheduler selects among available processes

for next execution on CPU core
▪ Goal -- Maximize CPU use, quickly switch processes onto
CPU core
▪ 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
Ready and Wait Queues
Representation of Process Scheduling
 CPU Switch From Process to Process
A context switch occurs when the CPU switches from one
process to another.
 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 pure 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
 Multitasking in Mobile Systems
▪ Some mobile systems (e.g., early version of iOS) allow only
one process to run, others suspended
▪ Due to screen real estate, user interface limits iOS provides for
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, specific long-running tasks like audio playback
▪ 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
 Operations on Processes

▪ System must provide mechanisms for:

• Process creation
• Process termination
 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
 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()waiting for the child to terminate
A Tree of Processes in Linux
C Program Forking Separate Process
Creating a Separate Process via Windows API
 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
 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
 Android Process Importance Hierarchy

▪ Mobile operating systems often have to terminate processes

to reclaim system resources such as memory. From most to
least important:
• Foreground process
• Visible process
• Service process
• Background process
• Empty process
▪ Android will begin terminating processes that are least
important.
 Multiprocess Architecture – Chrome Browser
▪ Many web browsers ran 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
 Runs in sandbox restricting disk and network I/O, minimizing
effect of security exploits
• Plug-in process for each type of plug-in
 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
 Communications Models

(a) Shared memory. (b) Message passing.

 Producer-Consumer Problem
▪ Paradigm for cooperating processes:
• producer process produces information that is consumed
by a consumer process
▪ Two variations:
• unbounded-buffer places no practical limit on the size of
the buffer:
Producer never waits
Consumer waits if there is no buffer to consume
• bounded-buffer assumes that there is a fixed buffer size
Producer must wait if all buffers are full
Consumer waits if there is no buffer to consume
 IPC – Shared Memory
▪ An area of memory shared among the processes that wish
to communicate
▪ The communication is under the control of the users
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.
▪ Synchronization is discussed in great details in Chapters 6
& 7.
 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

 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;
}
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 */

}
 What about Filling all the Buffers?

▪ Suppose that we wanted to provide a solution to the

consumer-producer problem that fills all the buffers.
▪ We can do so by having an integer counter that keeps
track of the number of full buffers.
▪ Initially, counter is set to 0.
▪ The integer counter is incremented by the producer
after it produces a new buffer.
▪ The integer counter is and is decremented by the
consumer after it consumes a buffer.
 Producer

while (true) {
/* produce an item in next produced */

while (counter == BUFFER_SIZE)

; /* do nothing */
buffer[in] = next_produced;
in = (in + 1) % BUFFER_SIZE;
counter++;
}
 Consumer
while (true) {
while (counter == 0)
; /* do nothing */
next_consumed = buffer[out];
out = (out + 1) % BUFFER_SIZE;
counter--;
/* consume the item in next consumed */
}
 Race Condition
▪ counter++ could be implemented as
register1 = counter
register1 = register1 + 1
counter = register1
▪ counter-- could be implemented as
register2 = counter
register2 = register2 - 1
counter = register2

▪ Consider this execution interleaving with “count = 5” initially:

S0: producer execute register1 = counter {register1 = 5}
S1: producer execute register1 = register1 + 1 {register1 = 6}
S2: consumer execute register2 = counter {register2 = 5}
S3: consumer execute register2 = register2 – 1 {register2 = 4}
S4: producer execute counter = register1 {counter = 6 }
S5: consumer execute counter = register2 {counter = 4}
 Race Condition (Cont.)
▪ Question – why was there no race condition
in the first solution (where at most N – 1)
buffers can be filled?
▪ More in Chapter 6.
 IPC – Message Passing

▪ 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
 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?
 Implementation of Communication Link

▪ Physical:
• Shared memory
• Hardware bus
• Network
▪ Logical:
• Direct or indirect
• Synchronous or asynchronous
• Automatic or explicit buffering
 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
 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
 Indirect Communication (Cont.)

▪ Operations
• Create a new mailbox (port)
• Send and receive messages through mailbox
• Delete a mailbox
▪ Primitives are defined as:
• send(A, message) – send a message to mailbox A
• receive(A, message) – receive a message from
mailbox A
 Indirect Communication (Cont.)

▪ 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.
 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
 Producer-Consumer: Message Passing
▪ Producer
message next_produced;
while (true) {
/* produce an item in next_produced */

send(next_produced);
}

▪ Consumer
message next_consumed;
while (true) {
receive(next_consumed)

/* consume the item in next_consumed */

}
 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
 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().
IPC POSIX Producer
IPC POSIX Consumer
 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
 Mach Messages

#include<mach/mach.h>

struct message {
mach_msg_header_t header;
int data;
};

mach port t client;

mach port t server;
Mach Message Passing - Client
Mach Message Passing - Server
 Examples of IPC Systems – Windows

▪ Message-passing centric 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 opens a handle to the subsystem’s 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.
Local Procedure Calls in Windows
 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.
 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
 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
 Communications in Client-Server Systems

▪ Sockets
▪ Remote Procedure Calls
 Sockets

▪ 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 161.25.19.8:1625 refers to port 1625 on host
161.25.19.8
▪ Communication consists between a pair of sockets
▪ All ports below 1024 are well known, used for standard
services
▪ Special IP address 127.0.0.1 (loopback) to refer to system
on which process is running
Socket Communication
 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:
Sockets in Java
The equivalent Date client
 Remote Procedure Calls
▪ Remote procedure call (RPC) abstracts procedure calls
between processes on networked systems
• Again uses ports for service differentiation
▪ 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 performs the procedure on
the server
▪ On Windows, stub code compile from specification written
in Microsoft Interface Definition Language (MIDL)
 Remote Procedure Calls (Cont.)

▪ Data representation handled via External Data

Representation (XDL) format to account for different
architectures
• Big-endian and little-endian
▪ Remote communication has more failure scenarios than
local
• Messages can be delivered exactly once rather than
at most once
▪ OS typically provides a rendezvous (or matchmaker)
service to connect client and server
Execution of RPC
End of Chapter 3