Process Management

Prof J P Misra
BITS, Pilani

Operating Systems BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus

 Program & Process
• Program is set of logically arranged instruction to
perform a specific task.
• Program is written using some kind of language and
compiled to produce machine executable code.
• Program is passive entity containing list of instruction
stored on disk
• Needs to be loaded into memory for execution
• Processor Sequentially executes the instructions one
by one until it encounters a branch instruction
• Process is an instance of executing program
• Process is characterized by
– Its code, Data, stack , Heap and set of register
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Process in memory

Max
Stack

Heap

Data

Text
0
3
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 Process creation

• Process Is created
– When a new job is submitted
– When a user attempts to login
– to provide a service
• Process can be spawned by existing process

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How a program/job is executed ?

• For executing a job , OS first creates data structure

for holding the context of process
• Loads the job in memory
• At some point of time the scheduler schedules the job
and it starts executing.
• Dispatcher process dispatches ready to execute
process for execution
– once executing process terminates,
– its time slice expires
– Executing process makes I/O request and gets blocked
• Dispatcher is a system process

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Process & Multiprogramming

• In multiprogramming environment, many jobs

can be in memory
• Jobs in memory are ready to execute
• At any point of time one Job would be in
running state and other jobs would be in not
running state.

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 Memory Layout

Program Counter

Dispatcher

Process A

Process C

Process B

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 Execution Of Ready Processes

P1, P2, P3 are user processes

D is Dispatcher Process. It takes constant time to dispatch

D P1 D P2 D P3

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 • Computing system can be considered as
assemblage of set of processes.
• The processes can be system processes or user
processes
• At any given time the processes can be in
different states.
• The system can be modeled with the help of
state transition diagram
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Two State Process Model

• Process may in any of the 2 states

– Running
– Not running

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 Queuing Diagram

Queue P0
Exit
Enter Dispatch
P3 P2 P1 Processor

Pause

Queue May contain ready and blocked

processes

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 State Transition
• Not running to running state , transition occurs
when
– process in running state finishes execution
– Makes an I/O request
– Time slice for executing process expires
• Running to not running state transition occurs
when
– Running process makes an I/O request
– Time slice of executing process expires

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Dispatcher

• Dispatcher schedules a Ready process to CPU for

execution.
• In Two State model Not running state contains
processes which are :
– Ready to run
– Blocked
• Dispatcher is required to linearly search the
queue to find Ready to run process which
Increases dispatcher overhead.
• Solution : Split not running state into Ready state
& Blocked state

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Three State Model

Dispatch
Admit Release
Ready Running
Time Out

Event Occurs Event Wait

Blocked

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Process States

• Running: The process that is currently being

executed
• Ready: A process that is prepared to execute
when given the opportunity
• Blocked : A process can not execute until
some events occur
• Occurrence of event is usually indicated by
interrupt signal

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 Queuing Diagram

Queue
Exit
Enter Dispatch
Processor

Pause

Blocked Queue

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 Queuing Diagram

Queue
Exit
Enter Dispatch
Processor

Pause

Event 1 Queue

Event n Queue

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 Five State Model

Dispatch
Admit Release
NEW Ready Running Exit
Time Out

Event Occurs Event Wait

Blocked

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Why do we need “New” state

• Whenever a job is submitted , OS creates data

structure for keeping track of the process
context and then it tries to load the process.
While loading the process
– System May not have enough memory to hold the
process
– To efficiently execute processes, system may put a
maximum limit on processes in ready queue

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 Valid State Transitions

• New to ready
• Ready to running
• Running to exit
• Running to ready
• Running to blocked
• Blocked to ready
• Ready to exit
• Blocked to exit
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Consider a scenario

All ready processes get blocked on I/O one by

one, the system tries to bring in a process from
new to ready state and it is found no memory
is available to accommodate this process

Q. What do we do ?
Ans. Swapping

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One Suspend State

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Two Suspend State

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 State Transitions

• Blocked Blocked/suspended:
– If Ready queue is empty and insufficient memory
is available then one of the blocked process can be
swapped out
– If currently running process requires more memory

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State Transitions

• Blocked/ Suspended Ready/suspended

– When the event for which process has been
waiting occurs
• Note
– State information concerning to suspended
process must be accessible to the OS.
• Ready-suspended Ready
– If Ready queue is empty
– If Process in Ready-suspended state has higher
priority than process in Ready state

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State Transitions

• Ready Ready/Suspend
– Normally a blocked process is suspended
– Suspend Ready process if it is the only way to free
memory
– Suspend a lower priority ready process than higher
priority blocked process ?
• Blocked Suspended Blocked
• Running Ready suspended
• Various Exit

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 Thank you

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Process Management

Prof J P Misra
BITS, Pilani

Operating Systems BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus

Seven state process state
transition Diagram

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Unix Process State Transition Diagram

8
7

1
3 5

9 4 6

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 Unix System V
• Unix uses two categories of process
– System Process :
• Runs in kernel mode and
• performs administrative and house keeping functions such
as memory allocation, process swapping, scheduling etc.
– User Process :
• Runs in user Mode to execute user program and utilities
• Runs in kernel mode to execute instructions belonging to
kernel
• A user process enters in kernel mode
– by issuing a system call or
– exception / interrupt
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 Process 0 & Process 1

• Process 0 (Swapper Process) is predefined as

data structure, loaded at boot time .
• Process 0 spawns process 1
• Process 1(Init Process) is ancestor of all other
processes except process 0

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 Process Summary
• Process is an instance of executing program
• In multiprogramming environment number of process
can reside in system
• At any instance of time processes can be in different
state such as ready, Blocked, Running etc. and
processes move from one state to another state
depending upon certain conditions.
• Processes use available system resources
• OS is responsible for managing all the processes in
the system

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Process & Resource at some
instance of time

Process & resource snapshot at some instance of time

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 OS as Process Manager
• OS must have information about
– the current state of processes
– the current state of Resources in the system
• OS must keep track of utilization of resources
by processes
• OS must constructs tables (control structure)
to maintain information about each entity it is
managing

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OS as Process Manager
• To manage processes, OS maintains following
tables
– Memory Tables
– I/O Table
– File Table
– Process table

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Memory Table & I/O Table

• Memory Tables keep track

– of allocation of main memory to processes
– of Allocation of secondary memory to processes
– Of protection attributes of main & secondary memory such
as which processes can access certain shared memory
region
– Information needed to manage virtual memory
• I/O Table: To keep track of
– resource allocation,
– resource availability
– I/O request

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File Table & Process Table

• File Table
– Provide information about
– Existence of file
– Location on secondary memory
– Current status and attributes of file
• Process table
– keep track of processes

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Operating Systems Control table

I/O Table
I/O devices
File File Table Process1

Processes

Memory Process 1
Process 2
Process 3

Process n
Memory Table
Process n

Primary process Table

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Process Image

• Process image consists of

– User Data
– User program
– System Stack
– Process control block
• Containing processes attributes

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Process Management

• To manage/control a process OS must know

– Where process is located
– Attributes of processes eg. Process id, state etc.
– Collection of attributes are held in Process control
block

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Process Attributes

• Process identification
• Processor State Information
• Processes control information

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 Process Identification

• Identifier of the process

• Identifier of the process that created this
process
• User identifier

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Processor State Information

• User Visible registers

• Control and status registers
– Program counter
– Flags
– Status register
• Stack pointer

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Processes Control Information

• Scheduling and state information

• Inter process communication
• Process privileges
• Memory management
• Resource ownership & utilization

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 Functions of OS kernel

• Process Management
– Process creation & termination
– Process scheduling & dispatching
– Process switching
– Process synchronization & support for IPC
– Management of process control block
• Memory Management
– Allocation of address space to process
– Swapping
– Page & segment management
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 Functions of OS kernel Cont…

• I/O Management
– Buffer management
– Allocation of I/O channels & devices to processes
• Support Services
– Interrupt handling
– Accounting
– monitoring

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 Thank you

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