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Chapter 6
Process and Memory
Control
ITP3901 OPERATING SYSTEMS FUNDAMENTALS
(AY 2019/20)
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Process
Management

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The Linux Multitasking Model

 Process
 A program running on system
 Started from:
 Command line
 Graphical desktop
 Kernel itself
 Another process
 Kernel maintains information about processes

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The Linux Multitasking Model
(Cont.)

 Linux is a multitasking operating system

 Single microprocessor can only perform one task at a time
 Time slice
 A few microseconds
 Allocated to each process by kernel
 Common to all operating systems that do not have multiple microprocessors

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Creating Processes

 Kernel starts the process called systemd

 When Linux first started PID of “systemd” is “1”
 Every process running on Linux is “descendant” of init process
 Process id (PID)
 Unique number identifying process within Linux kernel
 End Process
 When process ends
 Information about process that kernel was maintaining would be discarded
 Resources that kernel had allocated to process would be released

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Process States

 Running (R)
 Sleeping (S)
 Stopped (T)
 Multi-threaded (I)
 Zombie (Z)

A zombie process is one which is no longer in effect. It is represented by

“z” state in ps command. It is a process which has been killed.

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Managing Linux Processes

 View information about Linux processes (ps command)

 Control status of processes (nice, renice commands)

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Starting Processes from the Shell

 When you start a program

 Program takes control of command line
 Parent process pauses to wait for new process to finish
 A process can be executed as a background task by adding a & following
the command
 Shell forks new process without pausing itself
 Called process will be placed in background
 Can start another command immediately

e.g. myprocess&
run in background

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Starting Processes from the Shell
(Cont.)

 What is job ?
 Process associated with shell

 jobs command
 Lists all jobs or processes running as descendants of current shell
 Also called child processes
 Ctrl+Z key combination
 Suspend job that shell is running

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bg and fg Commands

 bg command
 Run suspended program in background
 fg command
 Place suspended job in foreground
 Must specify:
 Job number using %
 Or PID

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Daemon

 Daemon is a process that runs on background

 Not under the direct control of an interactive user
 Does not have any screen output but waits for certain system activity
then acts on it
 The parent process of a daemon is usually the init process
 launched during booting (i.e., computer startup) and run unobtrusively
in the background until they are activated by a particular event or
condition.

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Process information – ps command

 ps (process status) command

 This command comes in two versions, BSD and SVR4 (the options are
different).
 Lists processes currently running on system
 Output:
 PID
 Terminal that process is using for output
 CPU time that process has used so far
 Command that started process
 ……

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Options for ps command (SVR4)

Option Description
-e Display all processes running on terminals as well as processes that
do not run on a terminal (i.e. daemons)
-f Display a full list of information about each process, including the
UID, PID, PPID, CPU utilization, start time, terminal, processor time
and command name
-l Display a long list of information about each process, including flag,
state, UID, PID, PPID, CPU utilization, priority, nice value, address,
size, WCHAN, terminal and command name

The -l option generates a long listing. and when used together with the -e
and -f options creates a table with 15 columns

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Example of ps command

ps –el
Process ID of the parent process
Process ID
Nice Value

F S UID PID PPID C PRI NI ADDR SZ WCHAN TTY TIME CMD

4 S 0 1 0 0 76 0 - 497 - ? 00:00:03 systemd
… … … …
4 S 0 1875 1872 0 75 0 - 1113 wait pts/0 00:00:00 bash
0 S 0 1897 1875 0 76 0 - 1101 wait pts/0 00:00:00 process.sh
0 S 0 1902 1897 0 76 0 - 909 358270 pts/0 00:00:00 sleep
4 R 0 1903 1875 0 77 0 - 1035 - pts/0 00:00:00 ps

Owner of this process

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Options for ps command (BSD)

Option Description
a Display all processes running on terminals

x Display all process that do not run on terminals

u Display the process for a specific user.

Note: “-” is not required!

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Example of ps command

 A common and convenient way of using ps to obtain much more complete

information about the processes currently on the system is to use the
following:
ps ax | more
 The a option tells ps to list the processes of all users on the system.
 The x option adds to the list processes that have no controlling terminal,
such as daemons

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Example of ps command (Cont.)

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Example of ps command (Cont.)

 An alternative set of options for viewing all the processes running on a system
is
ps -ef | more
 The -e option generates a list of information about every process currently
running. The -f option generates a listing that contains fewer items of
information for each process than the -l option (explained in next slide).
 Among the columns displayed by ps -ef, UID contains the username of the
account that owns the process (which is usually the same user that started the
process) and STIME displays the time the process started, or the starting date if
it started more than 24 hours ago.

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Example of ps command (Cont.)

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top command

 top command
 Displays list of running processes
 Arranged by how much CPU time each is using
 Process consuming greatest amount of CPU time shown at top of list
 Updated regularly
 Normally started without any options
 Cannot run in background
 Can be used to monitor the processes of only one user
 Can be used to kill processes

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top command (Cont.)

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top command (Cont.)

 %CPU field
 Compares amount of CPU time used by process with total time elapsed since
previous computation of %CPU field
 Form of percentage
 Does not show average amount of CPU time used by process since it was started
 %WCPU field
 Weighted to show 30-second average of percentage of CPU time used by
process
 Helpful for showing overall usage pattern

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top command (Cont.)

 TIME field
 Provides cumulative measure of amount of CPU time consumed by
process

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Controlling Processes – kill
command

 kill command can be used to send signal to a running process, usually to

request termination of a process.
 Controls any process
 Sends signals to processes
 -l option views all signals
 Examples:
$kill -9 1482
$kill -SIGTERM 1482

Process ID
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Controlling Processes - kill
command (Cont.)
 Signals
 Messages sent between processes
 About 30 different signals available
 Has name and number associated with it
 Software developer decides to which signals program responds
 SIGTERM signal
 Number 15
 Requests that program end
 Almost all programs respond

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Controlling Processes - kill
command (Cont.)

 SIGKILL signal
 Number 9
 Handled by Linux kernel
 Shuts down indicated process
 Unsaved data in program will be lost
 Renegade program virtually never crashes Linux kernel

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Popular kill signals

Name Number Description

SIGTERM 15 The software termination signal is the most common kill
signal used by program to kill other processes. It is the default
kill signal used by the kill command (i.e. when there is no
option, kill assumes -15).

SIGKILL 9 Also known as the absolute kill signal, it forces the Linux
kernel to stop executing the process by sending the process’s
resources to a special device file called /dev/null.

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Controlling Processes - killall
command

 killall command
 Sends signal to all processes started by given command
 Useful when program makes copies of itself faster than you can locate PIDs and
use kill to shut them down
 The assigned priority of a process determines how much CPU time granted
to process
 Normally all processes have same priority

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How to find Process ID (PID)

 ps command ( e.g. ps aux | grep sshd)

 top command
 pidof command
 finds the process id's (pids) of the named programs.
 e.g. pidof sshd

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Controlling Process Priority

 Nice Level
 Another name for process priority
 Standard level is 0
 Highest level 19 (Large value means slower)
 For general user, nice value is in the range of 0 to 19.
 For superuser/root, it can be negative value (up to -20)
 System administrator can make any process nicer (by nice and
renice commands)
 User can raise nice level of process that he or she started

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nice and renice Commands

 Alter process priority by adjusting the nice value

 nice command (to change the nice level when starting a new process)
$nice –n 5 myprocess(or nice -5 myprocess)
$nice –n -10 myprocess
 renice command (to change the nice level of a running process)
$renice +10 1776
$renice -8 1776

PID

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System Monitor

 System Monitor is a GUI system monitoring utility that will display running
processes, memory usage, file system usage.  Apart from monitoring, you can
also take several actions from the system monitor user interface — such as
killing a running process.

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Memory
Management

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Memory

 When a program runs in a computer, data are read from hard disk drive and
placed into the temporary storage of RAM. The computer uses its memory to
execute the program and frees the memory space once the program exits.
 Since memory is a limited system resource, the administrator may solve the
lack of memory by using virtual memory.

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Virtual Memory

 Virtual memory is hard disk space that is used to supplement RAM.

 A swap file is an area of the hard disk that is used for virtual memory.

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Swap Files

 Although Windows uses a swap file, it does not have to be configured. The
swap file is created as a file in the NOS partition.
 Linux system typically dedicates an entire partition to swap space.
 This partition is called the swap partition.
 Usually the size of the swap partition should be equal to twice the computer RAM on
a Red Hat (including Fedora) Linux system.

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Swap Space in Linux

 Swap space in Linux is used when the amount of physical memory is full. If
the system needs more memory resources and the physical memory is full,
inactive pages in memory are moved to the swap space.
 While swap space can help machines with a small amount of RAM, it should
not be considered a replacement for more RAM.
 Swap space is located on hard drives, which have a slower access time than
physical memory.

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Swap Space in Linux (Cont.)

 Swap space can be a dedicated swap partition, a swap file, or a combination

of swap partitions and swap file.
 Acts like extension of system’s RAM
 Swapped-out process cannot run until swapped again
 Thrashing
 Kernel spends so much time moving processes to and from swap
space that kernel and processes bog down and work inefficiently

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Swap

 Can use swap file (512MB) instead of swap partition

 dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile bs=1024 count=512k
 mkswap /swapfile
 Enable swap
 swapon /swapfile
 swapon /dev/sda2
 Disable swap
 swapoff /swapfile
 swapoff /dev/sda2
 Check swap resource usage
 cat /proc/swaps

Chapter 6 - Process and Memory Control ITP3901 Operating Systems Fundamentals