Basic UNIX

Concepts

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 What is UNIX good for?
• Supports many users running many programs at the same time, all
sharing (transparently) the same computer system
• Promotes information sharing
• More than just used for running software … geared towards facilitating
the job of creating new programs. So UNIX is “expert friendly”
• Got a bad reputation in business because of this aspect

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 History (Introduction)
• Ken Thompson working at Bell Labs in 1969 wanted a small
MULTICS for his DEC PDP-7
• He wrote UNIX which was initially written in assembler and could
handle only one user at a time
• Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson ported an enhanced UNIX to a
PDP-11/20 in 1970
• Ritchie ported the language BCPL to UNIX in 1970, cutting it down to
fit and calling the result “B”
• In 1973 Ritchie and Thompson rewrote UNIX in “C” and enhanced it
some more
• Since then it has been enhanced and enhanced and enhanced and …
• See Wang, page 1 for a brief discussion of UNIX variations
• POSIX (potable operating system interface) - IEEE, ANSI
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 Some Terminology
• Program: executable file on disk
• Process: executing instance of a program
• Process ID: unique, non-negative integer identifier (a handle by which
to refer to a process)
• UNIX kernel: a C program that implements a general interface to a
computer to be used for writing programs (p6)
• System call: well-defined entry point into kernel, to request a service
• UNIX technique: for each system call, have a function of same name in
the standard C library
– user process calls this function
– function invokes appropriate kernel service

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 Concurrency
• Most modern developments in computer systems & applications rely on:
– communication: the conveying of info by one entity to another
– concurrency: the sharing of resources in the same time frame
note: concurrency can exist in a single processor system as well as in
a multiprocessor system.

• Managing concurrency is difficult, as execution behaviour (e.g. relative

order of execution) is not always reproducible

• More details on this in the last 1/3 or the course

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 Fork (11.10)
• The fork system call is used to create a duplicate of the currently
running program
process
A #1
process
A fork
process
A #2

• The duplicate (child process) and the original (parent process) both
proceed from the point of the fork with exactly the same data
• The only difference between the two processes is the fork return value,
i.e. (… see next slide)

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 Fork example
int i, pid;
i = 5;
printf( “%d\n”, i );
pid = fork();

if( pid == 0 )
i = 6; /* only the parent gets to here */
else
i = 4; /* only the child gets to here */

printf( “%d\n”, i );

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 Exec (11.11)
• The exec system call replaces the program being run by a process by a
different one
• The new program starts executing from its beginning

process A process A
exec(“Y”)
running running

program X program Y

• Variations on exec: execl(), execv(), etc. which will be

discussed later in the course
• On success, exec never returns; on failure, exec returns with value -1

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 Exec example
PROGRAM X
int i;
i = 5;
printf( “%d\n”, i );

exec( “Y” );

i = 6;
printf( “%d\n”, i );

PROGRAM Y
printf( “hello” );

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 Processes and File Descriptors
• File descriptors (11.1) belong to processes, not programs
• They are a process’ link to the outside world

0
1
process 2
A
3
4
5

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 PIDs and FDs across an exec
• File descriptors are maintained across exec calls:

process A process A
running exec(“Y”) running
program X program Y
3 3

/u/culhane/file /u/culhane/file

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 PIDs and FDs across a fork
• File descriptors are maintained across fork calls:

process A
#1
fork
3

process A
#2

/u/culhane/file

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More UNIX
Concepts

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 Initializing UNIX
• The first UNIX program to be run is called “/etc/init” (11.17)
• It forks and then execs one “/etc/getty” per terminal
• getty sets up the terminal properly, prompts for a login name, and then
execs “/bin/login”
• login prompts for a password, encrypts a constant string using the
password as the key, and compares the results against the entry in the
file “/etc/passwd”
• If they match, “/usr/bin/csh” (or whatever is specified in the
passwd file as being that user’s shell) is exec’d
• When the user exits from their shell, the process dies. Init finds out
about it (wait system call), and forks another process for that terminal

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 Initializing UNIX

init init init init init

init getty login csh

• See “top”, “ps -aux”, etc. to see what’s running at any given time
• The only way to create a new process is to duplicate an existing
process, therefore the ancestor of ALL processes is init, with pid=1

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 How csh runs commands
> date
Sun May 25 23:11:12 EDT 1997

• When a command is typed csh forks and then execs the typed command:

csh csh csh csh

csh date

• After the fork and exec, file descriptors 0, 1, and 2 still refer to the
standard input, output, and error in the new process
• By UNIX programmer convention, the executed program will use these
descriptors appropriately
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 How csh runs (cont.)
process running shell, duplicate:
PID 34 fork()

parent process running shell, child process running shell, PID 35

PID 34, waiting for child
differentiate:
exec()
wait for child:
child process running utility, PID 35
wait()
terminate:
exit()
signal
parent process running shell,
child process terminates PID 35
PID 34, awakens

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 Fork: PIDs and PPIDs (11.10)
• System call: int fork()
• If fork() succeeds, it returns the child PID to the parent and returns
0 to the child; if it fails, it returns -1 to the parent (no child is created)

• System call: int getpid()

int getppid()
• getpid() returns the PID of the current process, and getppid()
returns the PID of the parent process (note: ppid of 1 is 1)
• example (see next slide …)

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 PID/PPID example
#include <stdio.h>
int main( void )
{
int pid;
printf( "ORIGINAL: PID=%d PPID=%d\n", getpid(), getppid() );
pid = fork();
if( pid != 0 )
printf( "PARENT: PID=%d PPID=%d child=%d\n",
getpid(), getppid(), pid );
else
printf( "CHILD: PID=%d PPID=%d\n", getpid(), getppid() );

printf( "PID %d terminates.\n\n", getpid() );

return( 1 );
}

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 Concurrency Example
Program a: Program b:
#!/usr/bin/csh -f #!/usr/bin/csh -f
@ count = 0 @ count = 0
while( $count < 200 ) while( $count < 200 )
@ count++ @ count++
echo -n "a" echo -n "b"
end end

• When run sequentially (a;b) output is as expected

• When run concurrently (a&;b&) output is interspersed, and re-running
it may produce different output

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 Producer/Consumer Problem
• Simple example:
who | wc -l
• Both the writing process (who) and the reading process (wc) of a
pipeline execute concurrently
• A pipe is usually implemented as an internal OS buffer
• It is a resource that is concurrently accessed by the reader and by the
writer, so it must be managed carefully

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 Producer/Consumer (cont.)
• consumer should be blocked when buffer is empty
• producer should be blocked when buffer is full
• producer and consumer should run independently so far as the buffer
capacity and contents permit
• producer and consumer should never both be updating the buffer at the
same instant (otherwise, data integrity cannot be guaranteed)
• producer/consumer is a harder problem if there is more than one
consumer and/or more than one producer

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 Machine Language
• CPU interprets machine language programs:
1100101 11111111 11100110 00000000
1010001 00000010 01011101 00000000
1100101 00000000 11111111 00100100
• Assembly language instructions bear a one-to-one correspondence
with machine language instructions
MOVE FFFFDC00, D0 % b = a * 2
MUL #2, D0
MOVE D0, FFFDC04

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 Compilation
• High Level Language (HLL) is a language for expressing algorithms
whose meaning is (for the most part) independent of the particular
computer system being used
• A compiler translates a high-level language into object files (machine
language modules).
• A linker translates object files into a machine language program (an
executable)
• Example:
– create object file “fork.o” from C program “fork.c”:
gcc -c fork.c -o fork.o
– create executable file “fork” from object file “fork.o”:
gcc fork.o -o fork

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 Tools and Applications

vi cat more date gcc gdb …

csh (or any other shell)

UNIX system services

UNIX kernel in C

computer

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 C and libc
C Application Programs

libc - C Interface to UNIX system services

UNIX system services

UNIX kernel in C

computer

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 Miscellaneous
• We haven’t gone over these in any detail yet:

– ln (symbolic links)
– chmod (permissions)
– man -k fork and man 2 fork (ie: viewing specific pages)
– du (disk space usage)
– quota -v username and pquota -v username
– noglob
– … any others ?????

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