ITBP 315 – Operating Systems Fundamentals

Lab 5 – Process Management

Objective:
Practice common UNIX commands.

Procedure:

Wildcards

Type

$ ls *list

This will list all files in the current directory ending with ....list

The character ? will match exactly one character.

So ls ?ouse will match files like house and mouse, but not grouse.
Try typing

$ ls ?list

Filename conventions

A directory is merely a special type of file. So the rules and conventions for
naming files apply also to directories.

In naming files, characters with special meanings such as / * & $ , should be

avoided. Also, avoid using spaces within names. The safest way to name a file is
to use only alphanumeric characters, that is, letters and numbers, together with _
(underscore) and . (dot).

For example, all files consisting of C code may be named with the ending .c, for
example, prog1.c . Then in order to list all files containing C code in your home
directory, you need only type ls *.c in that directory.

1
On-line Manuals

There are on-line manuals which gives information about most commands. The
manual pages tell you which options a particular command can take, and how
each option modifies the behaviour of the command. Type man command to
read the manual page for a particular command.

For example, to find out more about the wc (word count) command, type

$ man wc

Alternatively

$ whatis wc

gives a one-line description of the command, but omits any information about
options etc.

File system security (access rights)

In your unixstuff directory, type

$ ls -l (l for long listing!)

You will see that you now get lots of details about the contents of your
directory, similar to the example below.

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Changing access rights

chmod (changing a file mode)

Only the owner of a file can use chmod to change the permissions of a file. The
options of chmod are as follows

Symbol Meaning
u user
g group
o other
a all
r read
w write (and delete)
x execute (and access directory)
+ add permission
- take away permission

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For example, to remove read write and execute permissions on the file biglist
for the group and others, type

$ chmod go-rwx biglist

This will leave the other permissions unaffected.

To give read and write permissions on the file biglist to all,

$ chmod a+rw biglist

Processes and Jobs

A process is an executing program identified by a unique PID (process

identifier). To see information about your processes, with their associated PID
and status, type

$ ps

A process may be in the foreground, in the background, or be suspended. In

general the shell does not return the UNIX prompt until the current process has
finished executing.

Some processes take a long time to run and hold up the terminal.
Backgrounding a long process has the effect that the UNIX prompt is returned
immediately, and other tasks can be carried out while the original process
continues executing.

Running background processes

To background a process, type an & at the end of the command line. For
example, the command sleep waits a given number of seconds before
continuing. Type

$ sleep 10

This will wait 10 seconds before returning the command prompt $. Until the
command prompt is returned, you can do nothing except wait.

4
To run sleep in the background, type

$ sleep 10 &

[1] 6259

The & runs the job in the background and returns the prompt straight away,
allowing you do run other programs while waiting for that one to finish.

The first line in the above example is typed in by the user; the next line,
indicating job number and PID, is returned by the machine. The user is be
notified of a job number (numbered from 1) enclosed in square brackets,
together with a PID and is notified when a background process is finished.
Backgrounding is useful for jobs which will take a long time to complete.

Backgrounding a current foreground process

At the prompt, type

$ sleep 100

You can suspend the process running in the foreground by holding down the
[control] key and typing [z] (written as ^Z) Then to put it in the background,
type

$ bg

Listing suspended and background processes

When a process is running, backgrounded or suspended, it will be entered onto

a list along with a job number. To examine this list, type

$ jobs

To restart (foreground) a suspended processes, type

$ fg $jobnumber

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For example, to restart sleep 100, type

$ fg $1

Typing fg with no job number foregrounds the last suspended process

Killing a process

kill (terminate or signal a process)

It is sometimes necessary to kill a process (for example, when an executing

program is in an infinite loop)

To kill a job running in the foreground, type ^C (control c). For example, run

$ sleep 100
^C

To kill a suspended or background process, type

$ kill $jobnumber

For example, run

$ sleep 100 &

$ jobs

If it is job number 4, type

$ kill $4

To check whether this has worked, examine the job list again to see if the
process has been removed.

ps (process status)

Alternatively, processes can be killed by finding their process numbers (PIDs)

and using kill PID_number

$ sleep 100 &

$ ps

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PID TT S TIME COMMAND
20077 pts/5 S 0:05 sleep 100
21563 pts/5 T 0:00 netscape
21873 pts/5 S 0:25 nedit

To kill off the process sleep 100, type

$ kill 20077

and then type ps again to see if it has been removed from the list.

If a process refuses to be killed, uses the -9 option, i.e. type

$ kill -9 20077

Note: It is not possible to kill off other users' processes!!!

Summary
* match any number of characters
? match one character
man command read the online manual page for a command
whatis command brief description of a command
apropos keyword match commands with keyword in their man pages

ls -lag list access rights for all files

chmod [options] file change access rights for named file
command & run command in background
^C kill the job running in the foreground
^Z suspend the job running in the foreground
bg background the suspended job
jobs list current jobs
fg %1 foreground job number 1
kill %1 kill job number 1
ps list current processes
kill 26152 kill process number 26152

7
Assignment: (Due date: 1 week)

Practice the UNIX COMMANDS listed in this document on your virtual

machine. Submit a details report. Your report should contain the commands you
have executed and result you obtained and also a brief explanation of your
understanding of the result. Use ‘Ctrl+Shift’ key combination to copy the result
from your terminal and ‘Ctrl+Insert’ key combination to paste on to your word
document.

Source: http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Teaching/Unix/index.html