Linux Task Management

Process, Thread and Task

Managing unit	Description
Task	Resource acquisition unit
Thread	Running unit
Process	Running or runnable program
Program	Executable file stored in disk

• Executable file is compiled to be a set of binary machine instructions and data

• Program and Process

$ gcc -o test test.c
$ file test
test: ELF 64-bit LSB shared object, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, interpreter /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2, for GNU/Linux 3.2.0, BuildID[sha1]=c1919678864f40218323926252afd86ca1cc01dc, with debug_info, not stripped
$ ls test # Program
test
$ ps
  PID TTY          TIME CMD
  814 pts/3    00:00:00 bash
 6507 pts/3    00:00:00 test    # Process
 6508 pts/3    00:00:00 ps

• Scheduling is determining processes to acquire CPU resource by the Kernel.

Process structure

• Virtual address space structure
  • One of the representative resource being allocated by the kernel to run process

  CPU	Virtual memory allocation	User space	Kernel space
  32bit	4 GB 2^(2+10+10+10)	0 ~ 3 GB	3 ~ 4 GB
  64bit	16 EB (Exa = 1024^6)	0 ~ 128 TB	128 TB ~ 16 EB

  

  Segment (Virtual Memory Area Structure)	Location	Contents
  Stack region	Growing down from 3GB(32bit) or 128TB(64bit)	Local variables and arguments for functions
  Heap region	Growing up from the top of Data region	Dynamically allocated memory with malloc() / new()
  Data region	Fixed region on top of Text region	Global variables
  Text region	Fixed region at the beginning of user space	CPU instructions

Creation and Execution of Process and Thread

• fork()

  #include <sys/types.h>
  #include <unistd.h>
  #include <stdio.h>
  #include <stdlib.h>
  
  int global_cnt = 2;
  
  int main(void)
  {
    pid_t pid;
    int local_cnt = 3;
  
    printf("PID(%d): Parent global_cnt=%d, local_cnt=%d \n", getpid(), global_cnt, local_cnt);
  
    if (pid = fork() < 0) {
      perror("fork error");
      exit(1);
    }
    else if (pid == 0) {
      global_cnt++
      local_cnt++
    }
    else {
      wait();
    }
  
    printf("PID(%d): global_cnt=%d, local_cnt=%d \n", getpid(), global_cnt, local_cnt);
  
    return 0;
  }
  

  $ gcc -o fork fork.c
  $ ./fork
  PID(10404): Parent global_cnt=2, local_cnt=3
  PID(10405): global_cnt=3, local_cnt=4
  PID(10404): global_cnt=2, local_cnt=3
  

• clone()

  // #include <sys/types.h>
  #include <unistd.h>
  #include <stdio.h>
  #include <stdlib.h>
  #include <sched.h>
  
  int global_cnt = 2;
  
  int sub_func(void *arg)
  {
    global_cnt++;
    printf("PID(%d): Child global_cnt=%d \n", getpid(), global_cnt);
    sleep(2);
    return 0;
  }
  
  
  int main(void)
  {
    pid_t pid;
    int child_stack[4096];
    int local_cnt = 3;
  
    printf("PID(%d): Parent global_cnt=%d, local_cnt=%d \n", getpid(), global_cnt, local_cnt);
  
    clone(sub_func, (void *)(child_stack+4095), CLONE_VM | CLONE_THREAD | CLONE_SIGHAND, NULL);
    sleep(1);
  
    printf("PID(%d): Parent global_cnt=%d, local_cnt=%d \n", getpid(), global_cnt, local_cnt);
  
    return 0;
  }
  

  $ gcc -o clone clone.c
  $ ./clone
  PID(17351): Parent global_cnt=2, local_cnt=3
  PID(17351): Child global_cnt=3
  PID(17351): Parent global_cnt=3, local_cnt=3
  

  	Forked Process	Cloned Thread
  Virtual memory address space	Create another	Share the same
  Resource cost	Doubled	Minimized
  Error propagation	Parent is not affected	Parent can be affected

• execl()

#include <sys/types.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

int main(void)
{
  pid_t pid;
  int exit_status;

  if (pid = fork() < 0) {
    perror("fork error");
    exit(1);
  }
  else if (pid == 0) {
    printf("Before execl() \n");
    execl("./fork", "fork", (char *)0);
    printf("After execl() \n");
  }
  else {
    pid = wait(&exit_status);
  }

  printf("Parent \n");

  return 0;
}

$ gcc -o fork_exec fork_exec.c
$ ./fork_exec
Before execl()
PID(17453): Parent global_cnt=2, local_cnt=3
PID(17454): global_cnt=3, local_cnt=4
PID(17453): global_cnt=2, local_cnt=3
Parent

• After execl() is not printed because “execl()” replace the process image “fork_exec” (including text, data, stack) with the previous image “fork”.
• In this case, “vfork()” can be used for the same address space with parent’s so that redundant memory space does not created before being replaced with the previous image “fork”.

Linux task model