Processes

Advanced Operating Systems and Networks

Processes
• Process Concept
• Process Scheduling
• Operations on Processes
• Interprocess Communication
• Examples of IPC Systems
• Communication in Client-Server Systems
Objectives
• To introduce the notion of a process -- a program in execution, which
forms the basis of all computation
• To describe the various features of processes, including scheduling,
creation and termination, and communication
• To explore interprocess communication using shared memory and
message passing
• To describe communication in client-server systems
Process Concept
• An operating system executes a variety of programs:
• Batch system – jobs
• Time-shared systems – user programs or tasks
• Operating System Concepts book uses the terms job and process almost
interchangeably
• 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
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
Process in Memory
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
CPU Switch From Process to Process
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
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
• Maximize CPU use, quickly switch processes onto CPU for time sharing
• Process scheduler selects among available processes for next execution
on CPU
• Maintains scheduling queues of processes
• 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
Ready Queue And Various I/O Device Queues
Representation of Process Scheduling
n Queueing diagram represents queues, resources, flows
Schedulers
• Short-term scheduler (or CPU scheduler) – selects which process should be executed next and allocates
CPU
• Sometimes the only scheduler in a system
• Short-term scheduler is invoked frequently (milliseconds)  (must be fast)
• Long-term scheduler (or job scheduler) – selects which processes should be brought into the ready queue
• Long-term scheduler is invoked infrequently (seconds, minutes)  (may be slow)
• The long-term scheduler controls the degree of multiprogramming
• Processes can be described as either:
• 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
• Long-term scheduler strives for good process mix
Addition of Medium Term Scheduling
n Medium-term scheduler can be added if degree of multiple
programming needs to decrease
l Remove process from memory, store on disk, bring back in
from disk to continue execution: swapping
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
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
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
A Tree of Processes in Linux
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
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
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) Message passing. (b) shared memory.
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
• Information sharing
• Computation speed-up
• Modularity
• Convenience
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
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

Bounded-Buffer – Producer

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;
}
Bounded Buffer – Consumer
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 */

}
Interprocess Communication – 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.
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

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?
Message Passing (Cont.)

• 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
• 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
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
is.
Synchronization
n Message passing may be either blocking or non-blocking
n Blocking is considered synchronous
l Blocking send -- the sender is blocked until the message is received
l Blocking receive -- the receiver is blocked until a message is available
n Non-blocking is considered asynchronous
l Non-blocking send -- the sender sends the message and continue
l Non-blocking receive -- the receiver receives:
l A valid message, or
l Null message
nDifferent combinations possible
l If both send and receive are blocking, we have a rendezvous
Synchronization (Cont.)
nProducer-consumer becomes trivial
message next_produced;
while (true) {
/* produce an item in next produced */
send(next_produced);
}

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
n POSIX Shared Memory
l Process first creates shared memory segment
shm_fd = shm_open(name, O CREAT | O RDWR, 0666);
l Also used to open an existing segment to share it
l Set the size of the object
ftruncate(shm fd, 4096);
l Now the process could write to the shared memory
sprintf(shared memory, "Writing to shared memory");
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 mailboxes at creation- Kernel and Notify
• Only three system calls needed for message transfer
msg_send(), msg_receive(), msg_rpc()
• Mailboxes needed for commuication, created via
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
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
Communications in Client-Server Systems
• Sockets
• Remote Procedure Calls
• Pipes
• Remote Method Invocation (Java)
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:
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
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

n Ordinary Pipes allow communication in standard producer-

consumer style
n Producer writes to one end (the write-end of the pipe)
n Consumer reads from the other end (the read-end of the
pipe)
n Ordinary pipes are therefore unidirectional
n Require parent-child relationship between communicating
processes

n Windows calls these anonymous pipes

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