CSCI 332
Operating Systems
Process system calls
Prof. Dimitrios Zorbas
In the previous class
●
Processes
– Definition
– States
– PCB, Context switch
– System calls for creation, termination etc.
Diagram of Process States
Today’s class
●
Week 2: Processes
– Orphan and zombie processes
– Examples with fork(), exec(), wait(), and
exit() system calls
Process Termination
●
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 is waiting (did not invoke wait()), the child
process is a zombie
●
If the parent terminated without invoking wait(), the
child process is an orphan
fork() in UNIX
●
Fork is a system call used for creating a new process
– The new process is called child process,
– Children processes run concurrently with the parent process.
– After a new child process is created, both processes will execute the next instruction following the fork()
system call.
– A child process uses the same program counter, same CPU registers, same open files that are used in the
parent process.
●
It takes no parameters and returns an integer value. Below are different values returned by fork().
– Negative Value: creation of a child process was unsuccessful.
– Zero: Returned to the newly created child process.
– Positive value: Returned to parent or caller. The value contains the process ID of the newly created child
process.
Examples with fork()
#include <stdio.h> #include <stdio.h>
#include <sys/types.h> #include <sys/types.h>
#include <unistd.h> #include <unistd.h>
int main()
int main()
{
{
fork();
fork();
fork();
fork();
printf("Hello world!\n"); printf("Hello world!\n");
return 0; return 0;
} }
What will be the output?
Hello from Child!
#include <stdio.h>
●
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <unistd.h> Hello from Parent!
void forkexample(){
if (fork() == 0)
printf("Hello from Child!\n");
●
Hello from Parent!
else Hello from Child!
printf("Hello from Parent!\n");
} ●
Any of the two
int main(){
forkexample();
return 0;
}
getpid() and getppid()
#include <stdio.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <unistd.h>
int main( void ) {
printf( "The pid of the parent process is %d\n", getpid() );
int p = fork();
if ( p == 0 ) {
printf( "After the fork, the pid of the child is %d\n", getpid() );
} else {
printf( "After the fork, the pid of the parent is %d\n", getpid() );
}
return 0;
}
wait()
#include<stdio.h>
#include<sys/wait.h>
#include<unistd.h>
int main(){
int p = fork();
if (p == 0) {
printf("Hello from child\n");
sleep(2);
} else {
printf("Hello from parent\n");
wait(NULL);
printf("Child has terminated\n");
}
printf("Bye\n");
return 0;
}
exec() and wait()
#include <stdio.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/wait.h>
#include <unistd.h>
int main(){
char *argv[3] = {"Command", "-l", NULL};
int status = 1;
int p = fork();
if ( p == 0 ) {
execvp( "ls", argv );
}
wait( &status );
printf( "Finished executing the parent process\n");
return 0;
}
Change the following code to create a
zombie process
#include<stdio.h>
#include<sys/wait.h>
#include<unistd.h>
int main(){
int p = fork();
if (p == 0) {
printf("Hello from child\n");
sleep(2);
} else {
printf("Hello from parent\n");
wait(NULL);
printf("Child has terminated\n");
}
printf("Bye\n");
return 0;
}
Change the following code to create an
orphan process
#include<stdio.h>
#include<sys/wait.h>
#include<unistd.h>
int main(){
int p = fork();
if (p == 0) {
printf("Hello from child\n");
sleep(2);
} else {
printf("Hello from parent\n");
wait(NULL);
printf("Child has terminated\n");
}
printf("Bye\n");
return 0;
}
Any questions?
What to read
●
Re-run the examples and play with fork(),
exec(), wait() etc.
●
Read the documentation of those system calls
Next class
●
Friday: Lab about processes
– Have your VM or native Linux installation ready
– You will need to run some commands and develop
some code
