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Lecture 3

The document discusses the process API provided by operating systems to user programs. It describes system calls that allow access to hardware and blocking operations. Standard system calls like fork, exec, exit and wait are explained along with how they work and how processes are created and terminated. The role of shells in process execution is also covered.

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Rajon
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7 views

Lecture 3

The document discusses the process API provided by operating systems to user programs. It describes system calls that allow access to hardware and blocking operations. Standard system calls like fork, exec, exit and wait are explained along with how they work and how processes are created and terminated. The role of shells in process execution is also covered.

Uploaded by

Rajon
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Lecture 3: Process API

What API does the OS provide to user


programs?
• API = Application Programming Interface
= functions available to write user programs
• API provided by OS is a set of “system calls”
– System call is a function call into OS code that runs at
a higher privilege level of the CPU
– Sensitive operations (e.g., access to hardware) are
allowed only at a higher privilege level
– Some “blocking” system calls cause the process to be
blocked and descheduled (e.g., read from disk)

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So, should we rewrite programs for
each OS?
• POSIX API: a standard set of system calls that an OS
must implement
– Programs written to the POSIX API can run on any POSIX
compliant OS
– Most modern OSes are POSIX compliant
– Ensures program portability
• Program language libraries hide the details of invoking
system calls
– The printf function in the C library calls the write system
call to write to screen
– User programs usually do not need to worry about
invoking system calls

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Process related system calls (in Unix)
• fork() creates a new child process
– All processes are created by forking from a parent
– The init process is ancestor of all processes
• exec() makes a process execute a given
executable
• exit() terminates a process
• wait() causes a parent to block until child
terminates
• Many variants exist of the above system calls with
different arguments

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What happens during a fork?
• A new process is created
by making a copy of
parent’s memory image
• The new process is added
to the OS process list and
scheduled
• Parent and child start
execution just after fork
(with different return
values)
• Parent and child execute
and modify the memory
data independently
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Waiting for children to die…
• Process termination scenarios
– By calling exit() (exit is called automatically when
end of main is reached)
– OS terminates a misbehaving process
• Terminated process exists as a zombie
• When a parent calls wait(), zombie child is
cleaned up or “reaped”
• wait() blocks in parent until child terminates
(non-blocking ways to invoke wait exist)
• What if parent terminates before child? init
process adopts orphans and reaps them
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What happens during exec?
• After fork, parent and child
are running same code
– Not too useful!
• A process can run exec() to
load another executable to its
memory image
– So, a child can run a different
program from parent
• Variants of exec(), e.g., to
pass commandline arguments
to new executable

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Case study: How does a shell work?
• In a basic OS, the init process is created after initialization
of hardware
• The init process spawns a shell like bash
• Shell reads user command, forks a child, execs the command
executable, waits for it to finish, and reads next command
• Common commands like ls are all executables that are
simply exec’ed by the shell

prompt>ls
a.txt b.txt c.txt

11
More funky things about the shell
• Shell can manipulate the
child in strange ways
• Suppose you want to redirect
output from a command to a
file
• prompt>ls > foo.txt
• Shell spawns a child, rewires
its standard output to a file,
then calls exec on the child
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