UNIT II ESSENTIAL LINUX COMMANDS
Processes in Linux & Process Fundamentals
Linux is a multiprocessing/multi-user OS,
processes are separate tasks with their own right
and responsibilities. A program in execution is
called process. All processes communicate with
each other and with the kernel to co ordinate
their activities. Linux supports a large number of
Inter Process Communication mechanisms. (IPC)
Scheduler: There are several processes running in
memory at any given moment, the CPU
can cater to only one of these processes, as others
should wait their turn. There is a program called
scheduler running in memory deciding which
process should get the cpu attention and when.
Linux process states: At any given moment a
process in memory can be in any one of the
following states:
1) Submit state: When you execute a program the
scheduler submits your process to a queue
called process queue. At this instant the process is
said to be in submit state.
2) Hold state: Once submitted the process waits its
turn in the queue for sometime. This is the
hold state.
3) Ready state: As the process advances in the
queue at some instant it would become the
next one in the queue to receive CPU attention.
This is the ready state.
4) Run state: Finally the process gets the attention
of cpu and starts execution there by attains
the run state.
5) Wait state: some processes might be required
to do an I/O operation. Since I/O is a slow
operation the cpu cant lie idle till the time I/O is
over. So such processes are put in wait state until
their I/O is over and are then placed in the ready
state.
6) Complete state: A process whose execution
comes to an end goes into complete state and is
then removed from the process queue. (stopped)
The process can be stopped by sending a signal.
Connecting processes with pipes
Redirection helps to commands to files. Piping
facility lets us connect commands to other
commands and operations. To send the output of
one command as input to another command, the
two commands must be joined using a pipe symbol
(|) It is possible to join commands using a pipe
since many commands accept input from standard
input and send output to standard output. Such
commands are known as Filters. A filter is a
program that takes input from the standard input
file, processes it and sends the output to the
standard output file. Linux provides various filters
like cat, grep, wc, tr cut etc to enable you to work
effectively with data.
Redirecting input/output
In all OS there is a standard input device and a
standard output device. In Unix also standard
input device is keyboard and standard output
device is monitor (display screen). The standard
error device is also the display screen.
Unix and Linux allow you to change the
standard input and output temporarily by using
redirection and piping. Redirection is the process
of changing the assignment of standard input
device, standard output device, and standard error
device. There are three types of redirection: Input
redirection, Output redirection, Error redirection.
Sometimes it is useful to redirect the input or
output to a file or printer. You may have to
redirect a directory listing to a file. Unix and
Linux provide redirection symbols for this
purpose:
The symbol > implies redirection of output. It
sends the output of a command to a file or a
device like printer.
The symbol < implies redirection of input. It takes
the input needed for a command from a
printer or file rather than from the keyboard.
The symbol >> adds output from a command
to the end of a file without deleting the
information already in the file.
Background Processing
Most of the system processes run in the
background, while the user executes their
processes in the foreground. If the user so desires
even he can run his processes in the background.
The user can run time-consuming tasks like
sorting a huge file and storing the sorted output
in a file in the background. This way he would not
be required to wait till the sorting is over to be
able to run the next process. He can
immediately concentrate on another task the
moment sorting process is submitted to run in the
background.
To run a process in the background, UNIX
provides the ampersand (&) symbol.While
executing a command, if this symbol is placed at
the end of the command then the command will be
executed in the; background. When you run a
process in the background a number is displayed
on the screen. This number is the PID of the
process that you have executed in the
background.
Scheduling Of Processes
Linux can schedule processes to get
executed within next few-seconds to next few
years. Once the user-has submitted a process to
'Linux directing it to execute the process at a
specified time and date in future, there
onwards Linux takes over. Linux manages to
remember the processes to be executed and goes
about executing them whenever the time arises
without needing any further directions from
the user. That's the philosophy of scheduling
processes. Execute the following command:
$ ps -e | grep cron
$ sort employee.dat > emp.out &
17653
$
147 ? 0:01 cron
Here the process cron stands for
chronograph. This system process is
responsible for scheduling the other processes.
Neither user nor super user can execute the
executable file (/etc/cron) of this process directly.
During booting Linux executes this file and
displays the message 'cron started' on the host
terminal. Once Linux launches this process there
onwards cron is activated once every minute.
When cron wakes up it checks whether any
scheduled job is available for it to execute. If it is,
it executes the job and goes back to sleep again,
only to wake up the next minute to once again
carry out the check. This cycle goes on till the
Linux system isn't shut down on the host machine.
There are three commands which make use of the
cron daemon's scheduling capability. These are at,
batch and crontab.
The nohup command
To ensure that the processes that we have
executed should not die even when we log out, use
the nohup command. Using this command we can
submit the time consuming commands in the
background, log out and leave the terminal and
come next day to see our output ready.
Appropriately, nohup stands for no hang
ups. The nohup command's usage is shown below:
$ nohup sort employee.dat > output.emp
Now we can safely log out (without any
hang-ups) without our process getting terminated
on logging out. The output would be ready in
output.emp which can be verified when we log in
next time. If we do not redirect the output of
our background process the command acts
intelligently and stores the output in the file
‗nohup.out‘.
$ nohup sort employee.dat &
16779
Sending output to nohup.out
The ‗nohup.out‟ file is always created in
the current directory.
If the nohup command is used in a pipeline
care should be taken to precede every command in
the pipeline by word nohup as shown below:
$ nohup cat employee.dat | nohup grep
‗Nagpur‘ | sort > address &
12695
Here all processes in the pipeline remain
alive when user logout. If not, command which is
not preceded by nohup will die when you log out.
If one of the processes in the pipeline dies the
entire pipeline will collapse.
PSTREE COMMAND
The pstree command shows the
processes and parent – child relationship. It
displays the
running process in tree format.
kill command
Some of the reasons why you would like
to terminate a process in the middle of its
execution are given below:
a) The terminal has hung. A typical e.g.: of
this is when you attempt to cat a directory file.
b) The program, which is running, has
gone in an indefinite loop and hence is not
getting terminated.
c) The system performance has gone
below acceptable limits because of too many
processes running in the background. To carry out
killing a process first note the PID of the
process to be killed using the ps command and
use kill command.