Chapter 3: Processes

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne

 Outline
 Process Concept
 Process Scheduling
 Operations on Processes
 Interprocess Communication
 IPC in Shared-Memory Systems
 IPC in Message-Passing Systems
 Examples of IPC Systems
 Communication in Client-Server Systems

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.2 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Objectives
 Identify the separate components of a process and
illustrate how they are represented and scheduled in an
operating system.
 Describe how processes are created and terminated in
an operating system, including developing programs
using the appropriate system calls that perform these
operations.
 Describe and contrast interprocess communication using
shared memory and message passing.
 Design programs that uses pipes and POSIX shared
memory to perform interprocess communication.
 Describe client-server communication using sockets and
remote procedure calls.
 Design kernel modules that interact with the Linux
operating system.

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.3 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Process Concept
 An operating system executes a variety of programs
that run as a process.
 Process – a program in execution; process execution
must progress in sequential fashion. No parallel
execution of instructions of a single process
 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

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.4 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Process Concept (Cont.)
 Program is passive entity stored on disk (executable
file); process is active
• Program becomes process when an executable
file is 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

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.5 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Process in Memory

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.6 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Memory Layout of a C Program

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.7 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.8 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Diagram of Process State

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.9 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.10 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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
 Explore in detail in Chapter 4

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.11 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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 */

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.12 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Process Scheduling
 Process scheduler selects among available
processes for next execution on CPU core
 Goal -- Maximize CPU use, quickly switch
processes onto CPU core
 Maintains scheduling queues of processes
• Ready queue – set of all processes residing
in main memory, ready and waiting to
execute
• Wait queues – set of processes waiting for an
event (i.e., I/O)
• Processes migrate among the various
queues

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.13 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Ready and Wait Queues

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.14 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Representation of Process Scheduling

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.15 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Medium-Term Scheduler

Long-term scheduler
Short-term scheduler
Medium-term scheduler
Degree of Multiprogramming

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.16 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 CPU Switch From Process to Process
A context switch occurs when the CPU switches from
one process to another.

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.17 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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 pure 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

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.18 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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,
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition3.19
small memory use
Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Operations on Processes

 System must provide mechanisms for:

• Process creation
• Process termination

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.20 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.21 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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
• Parent process calls wait()waiting for the child to
terminate

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.22 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 A Tree of Processes in Linux

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.23 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 C Program Forking Separate Process

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.24 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Creating a Separate Process via Windows API

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.25 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.26 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.27 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Android Process Importance Hierarchy

 Mobile operating systems often have to terminate

processes to reclaim system resources such as memory.
From most to least important:
• Foreground process
• Visible process
• Service process
• Background process
• Empty process
 Android will begin terminating processes that are least
important.

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.28 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.29 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.30 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Communications Models
(a) Shared memory. (b) Message passing.

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.31 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Producer-Consumer Problem
 Paradigm for cooperating processes:
• producer process produces information that is
consumed by a consumer process
 Two variations:
• unbounded-buffer places no practical limit on
the size of the buffer:
 Producer never waits
 Consumer waits if there is no buffer to
consume
• bounded-buffer assumes that there is a fixed
buffer size
 Producer must wait if all buffers are full
 Consumer waits if there is no buffer to
consume

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.32 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 IPC – 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.
 Synchronization is discussed in great details in
Chapters 6 & 7.

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.33 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.34 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Producer Process – Shared Memory

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;
}

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.35 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Consumer Process – Shared Memory

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 */

}

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.36 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 What about Filling all the Buffers?
 Suppose that we wanted to provide a solution to
the consumer-producer problem that fills all the
buffers.
 We can do so by having an integer counter that
keeps track of the number of full buffers.
 Initially, counter is set to 0.
 The integer counter is incremented by the producer
after it produces a new buffer.
 The integer counter is and is decremented by the
consumer after it consumes a buffer.

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.37 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Producer

while (true) {
/* produce an item in next produced */

while (counter == BUFFER_SIZE)

; /* do nothing */
buffer[in] = next_produced;
in = (in + 1) % BUFFER_SIZE;
counter++;
}

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.38 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Consumer

while (true) {
while (counter == 0)
; /* do nothing */
next_consumed = buffer[out];
out = (out + 1) % BUFFER_SIZE;
counter--;
/* consume the item in next consumed */
}

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.39 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Race Condition
 counter++ could be implemented as
register1 = counter
register1 = register1 + 1
counter = register1
 counter-- could be implemented as
register2 = counter
register2 = register2 - 1
counter = register2

 Consider this execution interleaving with “count = 5” initially:

S0: producer execute register1 = counter
{register1 = 5}
S1: producer execute register1 = register1 + 1
{register1 = 6}
S2: consumer execute register2 = counter
{register2 = 5}
S3: consumer execute register2 = register2 – 1
{register2 = 4}
S4: producer execute counter = register1
{counter = 6 }
S5: consumer execute counter = register2 {counter
= 4}
Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.40 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Race Condition (Cont.)
 Question – why was there no race condition
in the first solution (where at most N – 1)
buffers can be filled?
 More in Chapter 6.

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.41 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 IPC – Message Passing

 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

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.42 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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?

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.43 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Implementation of Communication Link

 Physical:
• Shared memory
• Hardware bus
• Network
 Logical:
• Direct or indirect
• Synchronous or asynchronous
• Automatic or explicit buffering

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.44 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.45 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.46 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Indirect Communication (Cont.)

 Operations
• Create a new mailbox (port)
• Send and receive messages through mailbox
• Delete a mailbox
 Primitives are defined as:
• send(A, message) – send a message to mailbox A
• receive(A, message) – receive a message from
mailbox A

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.47 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Indirect Communication (Cont.)

 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
was.

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.48 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Synchronization
Message passing may be either blocking or non-blocking

 Blocking is considered synchronous

• Blocking send -- the sender is blocked until the
message is received
• Blocking receive -- the receiver is blocked until a
message is available
 Non-blocking is considered asynchronous
• Non-blocking send -- the sender sends the message
and continue
• Non-blocking receive -- the receiver receives:
 A valid message, or
 Null message
 Different combinations possible
• If both send and receive are blocking, we have a
rendezvous

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.49 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Producer-Consumer: Message Passing

 Producer
message next_produced;
while (true) {
/* produce an item in next_produced
*/

send(next_produced);
}

 Consumer
message next_consumed;
while (true) {
receive(next_consumed)

/* consume the item in next_consumed

*/
}

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.50 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.51 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Examples of IPC Systems - POSIX

 POSIX Shared Memory

• Process first creates shared memory segment
shm_fd = shm_open(name, O CREAT | O RDWR, 0666);
• Also used to open an existing segment
• Set the size of the object
ftruncate(shm_fd, 4096);
• Use mmap() to memory-map a file pointer to the
shared memory object
• Reading and writing to shared memory is done by
using the pointer returned by mmap().

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.52 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 IPC POSIX Producer

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.53 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 IPC POSIX Consumer

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.54 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Examples of IPC Systems - Mach
 Mach communication is message based
• Even system calls are messages
• Each task gets two ports at creation - Kernel and
Notify
• Messages are sent and received using the mach_msg()
function
• Ports needed for communication, created via
mach_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

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.55 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Mach Messages

#include<mach/mach.h>

struct message {
mach_msg_header_t header;
int data;
};

mach port t client;

mach port t server;

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.56 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Mach Message Passing - Client

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.57 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Mach Message Passing - Server

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.58 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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.

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.59 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Local Procedure Calls in Windows

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.60 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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.

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.61 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Ordinary Pipes
 Ordinary Pipes allow communication in standard
producer-consumer style
 Producer writes to one end (the write-end of the pipe)
 Consumer reads from the other end (the read-end of the
pipe)
 Ordinary pipes are therefore unidirectional
 Require parent-child relationship between
communicating processes

 Windows calls these anonymous pipes

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.62 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.63 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Communications in Client-Server Systems

 Sockets
 Remote Procedure Calls

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.64 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.65 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Socket Communication

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.66 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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 in Java:

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.67 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Sockets in Java
The equivalent Date client

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.68 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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)

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.69 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 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

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.70 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 Execution of RPC

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition 3.71 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
 End of Chapter 3

Operating System Concepts – 10th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne