Chapter 6

Structure of Processes
Process State and Transition
Data Structure for Process
Layout of System Memory

THE DESIGN OF THE UNIX OPERATING SYSTEM

Maurice J. bach Prentice Hall
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Process States and Transitions

User Running
system call,
interrupt

interrupt,
interrupt return

9
Zombie

Asleep
in
Memory

sleep

1
return

Kernel
Running

6
Sleep, Swapped

preempt

3
swap
out

wakeup

Preempted

reschedule
process

wakeup
swap
out

return
to user

Ready to
Run in Memory
enough mem
Created
swap
in

fork

not enough mem

(swapping system only)

Ready to Run, Swapped

2

Data Structures for Process

Kernel Process
Table

Kernel Region
Table

A Process

Per Process Region Table

Text
File Descriptor Table

Data
Stack

U Area
3

Data Structure for Process (contd.)

per process
region table

Kernel region table

u area

Kernel
process table

main memory

State of a Process
Process table entry
Contains general fields of processes that must be
always be accessible to the kernel

U area
further characteristics of the process only need to be
accessible to the running process itself

Process table entry

State field: user running, kernel running etc.
Fields that allow the kernel to locate the
process and u area. Requires while context
switch
Process size : kernel know how much space
to allocate for the process.
User ID
Process ID
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Process table entry (contd.)

Event descriptor.
Used when the process is in the "sleep" state.

Scheduling parameters.
Allow the kernel to determine the order in which
processes move to the states "kernel running" and "user
running

A signal field.
keeps the signals sent to a process but not yet handled.

Various timers: process execution time, resource

utilization etc.
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U Area
A pointer to the process table entry
User IDs
various Timer:
Execution time in user mode
Execution Time in kernel mode

An error field: keeps error during system call

Return value field: result of system call

U Area (contd.)
I/O parameters
Amount of data transfer
Address of source and target etc.

The current directory and current root

User file descriptor table
Limit fields
Restrict process size
Restrict size of the file it can write

The control terminal field:

login terminal associated with the process, if one exists

An array indicates how the process wishes to react to

signal
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Per Process Region Table (Pregion)

Each pregion entry points to the kernel
region table
Starting virtual (absolute) address of the
region
Permission filed:
read-only, read-write, read-execute

10

Kernel Region table

Kernel region table contains the pointer to
the page table which keeps the physical
memory address

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Regions
Region

Per Proc Region Tables

(Virtual Addresses)
Process
A

Text

8K

Data 16K

Stack 32K

a
Text

4K

Stack

32K

Process
Data 8K
B

e
d

<Processes and Regions>

12

Pages and Page Tables

Logical Page Number

0
1
2
3

Physical Page Number

177
54
209
17

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Pages and Page Tables (contd.)

Per Proc Region Table
Text

Page Tables(Physical Addresses)

8K

empty

Data 32K

137K

Stack 64K

852K
87K

764K

541K

552K

433K

783K

727K

333K

986K

941K

897K

1096K

Virtual Addresses

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

2001K

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

<Mapping Virtual Addresses to Physical Address>

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