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Friday, August 24, 2012

Process In Linux


A Process is a running instance of a program. So whenever we start something, there is a process associated with that. If you have two files opened on your window, then we have 2 process belonging to those files available. A process started will contain all of its variables and also states.

The CPU runs switches from one process to other process making the user think that it is running multiple processes at a time, but a cpu is capable of running only one process at a time.

Process ID

Process ID : Each process in a linux is identified by a process ID which is also referred as pid.This is 16bit number that are assigned to process whenever a new one starts. To find the process id , we can use 'ps' command like

[root@vx111a ~]# ps
  PID TTY          TIME CMD
 3477 pts/1    00:00:00 bash
 5333 pts/1    00:00:00 ps

The PID column gives the process ID of the instance running (bash terminal has process ID 3477).

Every process has a parent process associated to it. A process will look much like a tree in linux. The parent process Id is referred as ppid.

[root@vx111a ~]# ps -eo pid,ppid | head
  PID  PPID
    1     0
    2     1
    3     1
    4     1

The PID is the process id and PPID is the parent process that started the process.

Viewing Process: In order to view the process, as i said above we can use 'ps' command.

We can various sort of information about the process by passing parameters to the ps command like ,

[root@vx111a ~]# ps -e -o pid,ppid,command  | head
  PID  PPID COMMAND
    1     0 init [5]                            
    2     1 [migration/0]
    3     1 [ksoftirqd/0]
    4     1 [watchdog/0]
    5     1 [migration/1]
    6     1 [ksoftirqd/1]

This gathers information like pid,ppid and command running that process. 

Killing a process

We can kill a process using the 'kill' command like,

kill -9 3477

Process Scheduling

In Linux, we are never aware that which process will be completed first either the child or parent. We cant even say which process will be given more time for its execution. We have facilities in linux to start a process with less priority or high.

Every process can be associated with a niceness value to it. Every process has a niceness of zero. A higher niceness value means that the process is given a lesser execution priority. A process with a lower value (that is, negative) niceness gets more execution time. Priorities run from 19 (lowest) to -20 (highest). Only root may set the negative (higher) priorities.

A niceness should not be confused with a scheduling priority, which lets applications determine the order in which threads are scheduled to run. Unlike a priority, a niceness is merely advice to the scheduler, which the scheduler is free to ignore.

In order to check the nice values for the processes running, we can use

[root@vx111a ~]# ps axl | head
F   UID   PID  PPID PRI  NI    VSZ      RSS WCHAN  STAT TTY        TIME COMMAND
4     0     1     0      15   0      10364  640     ?             Ss   ?          0:09 init [3]
1     0     2     1     -100  -      0         0        migrat     S<   ?          0:07 [migration/0]
1     0     3     1       34  19     0         0        ksofti       SN   ?          0:01 [ksoftirqd/0]
6th column (NI) with value 0 is the nice.

When we run a process on background it takes the nice value as '0'

[root@vx111a ~]# ./sam.sh &
[1] 1789

[root@vx111a ~]# ps axl | grep sam
0     0  1789  3769  16   0   4488   988 wait   S    pts/2      0:00 /bin/bash ./sam.sh

We can give a nice value (greater) by using,

nice --10 ./test.sh & (-10). The negative values can only be provided by the root user.

Linux also provides facilities for increasing or decreasing the nice values by using renice command.
if you run CPU-bond processes you must use nice command used to start process with modified scheduling priority / nicenesses. renice command is used to change the priority of a process that's already running. To increase the nice value (thus reducing the priority), execute the renice command as shown below.

[root@vx111a ~]# ps axl | grep sam
0     0  1789  3769  16   0   4488   988 wait   S    pts/2      0:00 /bin/bash ./sam.sh
[root@vx111a ~]# renice 16 -p 1789
1789: old priority 0, new priority 16
[root@vx111a ~]# ps axl | grep sam
0     0  1789  3769  33  16   4488   988 wait   SN   pts/2      0:00 /bin/bash ./sam.sh

Signals

Signals are mechanisms for communicating with and manipulating processes in Linux.When ever we give a kill command to a process , it sends a signal (9 : force kill) to the process.when a process receives a signal, it processes the signal immediately, without finishing the cur-rent function.We can also use

kill -s pid

Some of the linux signals and Id's are

0          SIGNULL
1          SIGHUP                       wake up an idling program
2          SIGINT                        Interrupt
3          SIGQUIT                      quit,Terminate with core dump
9          SIGKILL                       Force Termination
15        SIGTERM                     Terminate
24        SIGSTOP                     stop
26        SIGCONT                     continue
            SIGBUS                       bus error
            SIGSEGV                     segmentation violation
            SIGFPE                        floating point exception


Process Termination

A process terminates in one of two ways. Either the executing program calls the exit function, or the program’s main function returns. Each process has an exit code: a number that the process returns to its parent. The exit code is the argument passed to the exit function, or the value returned from main.

Zombie Processes

A zombie process is a process that has terminated but has not been cleaned up yet. It is the responsibility of the parent process to clean up its zombie children.

The status of the zombie process will be in 'z' state. We can find the zombie process using ,

ps aux | awk '{ print $8 " " $2 }' | grep -w Z

BackGround and ForeGround Jobs

Executing a background job : Appending an ampersand ( & ) to the command runs the job in the background.

[root@vx111a ~]# ./sam.sh &
[1] 2105

Move a foreground job to background by,

Press ‘CTRL+Z’ which will suspend the current foreground job.
Execute bg to make that command to execute in background.

[root@vx111a ~]# ./sam.sh
[1]+  Stopped                 ./sam.sh (ctrl +z Pressed)

[root@vx111a ~]# bg
[1]+ ./sam.sh &

View all the background jobs: To view all the jobs running background ,we can use the 'jobs' command like

[root@vx111a ~]# jobs
[1]+  Running                 ./sam.sh &

job from the background to the foreground

[root@vx111a ~]# jobs
[1]+  Running                 ./sam.sh &
[root@vx111a ~]# fg %1
./sam.sh

Kill a specific background job using kill %
[root@vx111a ~]# ./sam.sh

[1]+  Stopped                 ./sam.sh
[root@vx111a ~]# jobs
[1]+  Stopped                 ./sam.sh
[root@vx111a ~]# kill %1
[1]+  Terminated              ./sam.sh


display a tree of processes : To display a tree of process from parent to child ,we can pstree command like

[root@vx111a ~]# ./sam.sh

[1]+  Stopped                 ./sam.sh
[root@vx111a ~]# ps ux | grep sam
root      2229  0.0  0.0   4488   984 pts/2    T    02:26   0:00 /bin/bash ./sam.sh
root      2232  0.0  0.0   3920   664 pts/2    S+   02:26   0:00 grep sam
[root@vx111a ~]# pstree 2229
sam.sh───sleep

Process Status Code : For every process In Linux , there is a status code available.When ever we run 'ps ux' command , the 'STAT' column in the output says about the status of the Process.The available status codes in linux are

D : Un interruptiable Sleep ( usually I/O ) 
R : Running Or Runnable ( On Run Queue )
S : Interruptible Sleep (Waiting for an Event to complete)
T : Stopped
X : dead
Z : Zombie


sleep

sleep is a command in linux which delays some thing for a specified amount of time.we can use sleep like

sleep 5 && echo "jagadesh"

usleep

    Micro sleep (the u may be read as the Greek mu, or micro- prefix). This is the same as sleep, above, but "sleeps" in microsecond intervals. It can be used for fine-grained timing, or for polling an ongoing process at very frequent intervals.

Happy learning, more to come.