What's the UNIX command to see the processes table, remember that table contains:
process status
pointers
process size
user ids
process ids
event descriptors
priority
etc
The "process table" as such lives in the kernel's memory. Some systems (such as AIX, Solaris and Linux--which is not "unix") have a /proc filesystem which makes those tables visible to ordinary programs. Without that, programs such as ps (on very old systems such as SunOS 4) required elevated privileges to read the /dev/kmem (kernel memory) special device, as well as having detailed knowledge about the kernel memory layout.
Your question is open ended, and an answer to a specific question you may have had can be looked up in any man page as #Alfasin suggests in his answer. A lot depends on what you are trying to do.
As #ThomasDickey points out in his response, in UNIX and most of its' derivatives, the command for viewing processes being run in the background or foreground is in fact the ps command.
ps stands for 'process status', answering your first bullet item. But the command uses over 30 options and depending on what information you seek, and permissions granted to you by the systems administrator, you can get various types of information from the command.
For example, for the second bullet item on your list above, depending on what you are looking for, you can get information on 3 different types of pointers - the session pointer (with option 'sess'), the terminal session pointer (tsess), and the process pointer (uprocp).
The rest of your items that you have listed are mostly available as standard output of the command.
Some UNIX variants implement a view of the system process table inside of the file system to support the running of programs such as ps. This is normally mounted on /proc (see #ThomasDickey response above)
Typical reasons for understanding the working of the command include system-administration responsibilities such as tracking the origin of the initiated processes, killing runaway or orphaned processes, examining the file size of the process and setting limits where necessary, etc. UNIX developers can also use it in conjunction with ipc features, etc. An understanding of the process table and status will help with associated UNIX features such as the kvm interface to examine crash dump, etc. or to get or set the kernal state.
Hope this helps
Related
I am calling a shell script that does some processing from JCL using BPXBATCH like this:
//STEP2 EXEC PGM=BPXBATCH,
// PARM='SH PATHTOSCRIPT.SH MYARGUMENT'
The JCL has the service class with the highest priority. However, the shell script enters in a queue waiting for resources. Sometimes it runs quickly, and other times waits a lot of time for resources. The priority of the JCL seems to be independent of the shell script. I read maybe using the "nice" command in Unix would increase the priority of the shell script.
I want to be sure first, that the priority of a JCL from z/OS doesn't affect the priority of Unix process that was called from that JCL through BPXBATCH. I cannot find any documentation about it.
Short Answer
To answer your question first: BPXBATCH runs in one address space, and the shell runs in a second address space. Commands issues by the shell may run in the same address space as the shell, or may run in more additional address spaces.
The BPXBATCH address space has got a service class, and the shell address space(s) has got a service class, probably a different one. Each service class has its own performance goal, and this tells the system how to manage that work.
Detailed Answer
The z/OS workload manager (WLM) is responsible to assign work to a service classes when it is presented the new work. Service classes specify performance goals, and importance levels, not priorities. WLM manages all work in the system according to is performance goal based on the importance of the goal.
There are a couple (workload management) subsystems, that may start new work. Examples of such subsystems are
JES, which manage batch work, i.e. batch jobs.
TSO, which manages interactive TSO user work (TSO login).
OMVS, which manages forked, and non-locally spawned z/OS UNIX work.
STC, which manages started job workload.
This list is not complete; I listed only the subsystems that I need to answer the question.
When JES2/3 receives a job that shall run on the system, it presents some job attributes to WLM, and WLM assigns the job to a service class. It does so using WLM classification rules for subsystem type JES, and the attributes given.
Everything that runs in this job, i.e. in the job's address space will be managed towards the performance goal of the sercive class assigned. This includes z/OS UNIX work that is run in this very address space, i.e. work that is not started via UNIX fork(), or non-local spawn().
When a z/OS UNIX process starts an new process via fork(), or via non-local spawn(), this new work is handled by the WLM subsystem OMVS. The OMVS subsystem presents some attributes of the new process to WLM, and WLM assigns the process to a service class. It does so using WLM classification rules for subsystem type OMVS, and the attributes given. This kind of work is always runs in a separate, new address space.
BPXBATCH starts the (first) UNIX command it is told via PARM=, or //STDPARM, as a new process using either fork(), or spawn(). The spawn() may be a local spawn(), or a non-local spawn(). Which one is done depends on many factors, too complex to explain here.
The important point here is, when running BPXBATCH with PARM='SH ...', the shell proces will always run in a separate, new address space and will be classified via WLM subsystem OMVS.
The result is BPXBATCH is running in one address space with its service class, and the shell is run in a second address space with its service class. The service classes may be the same, but usually they are different WLM defintions with different performance goals.
As a starter, have a look at z/OS MVS Planning: Workload Management
nice() on z/OS UNIX
nice() has no effect on z/OS UNIX, unless the system has been setup to support it. There is parameter PRIORITYGOAL(...) in BPXPRMxx parmlib member to setup a list of up to 40 WLM service classes that will be used in conjunction with nice(). I have never heard of anyone having set this parameter.
See z/OS MVS Initialization & Tuning Reference for details about BPXPRMxx member
I am learning by myself introduction of OS, I have the following two questions:
(1) Since Fork() system call is used to duplicate the current process for the sake of multitasking, I'd like to see a example that shows without forking, we will not have such multitasking? In other word, I would like to see an example (or an external link) that shows how important Fork() is.
(2) DoesZombie process exist because of the child's process crash?
Thank you very much
There is no need for fork, fork is just the Unix way of creating process. Older and different systems used something different as spawn (Vax/VMS) for example.
Zombies are just traces of died processes, this is useful for parents to be aware of died children after having been busy. Remember that in Unix, a process that terminates let its parents be aware of the cause of its termination. So there is a need to let died process store that information somewhere, Unix way is to maintain a process entry named zombie as that process is reduced to this small entry and no other resources are linked to.
Stdin and stdout are single files that are shared by multiple processes to take in input from the users. So how does the OS make sure that only the input give to a particular program is visible in the stdin for than program?
Your assumption that stdin/stdout (while having the same logical name) are shared among all processes is wrong at best.
stdin/stdout are logical names for open files that are forwarded (or initialized) by the process that has started a given process. Actually, with the standard fork-and-exec pattern the setup of those may occur already in the new process (after fork) before exec is being called.
stdin/stdout usually are just inherited from parent. So, yes there exist groups of processes that share stdin and/or stdout for a given filenode.
Also, as a filedescriptor may be a side of a pipe, you need not have file from a filesystem (or a device node) linked to any of the well known standard channels (you also should include stderr into your considerations).
The normal way of setup is:
the parent (e.g. your shell) is calling fork
the forked process (child) is setting up environment, standard I/O channels and anything else.
the child then executes exec to overlay the process with the target image to be executed.
When setting up: it either will keep the existing channels or replace them with new ones e.g. creating a pipe and linking the endpoints appropriately. (To be honest, creating the pipe need to happen before the fork in that simplified description)
This way, most of the process have their own I/O channels.
Nevertheless, multiple processes may write into a channel they are connected to (have a valid filedescriptor to). When reading each junk of data (usually lines with terminals or blocks with files) is being read by a single reader only. So if you have several (running) processes reading from a terminal as stdin, only one will read your typing, while the other(s) will not see this typing at all.
Consider the following:
Where I'm getting confused is in the step "child duplicate of parent". If you're running a process such as say, skype, if it forks, is it copying skype, then overwriting that process copy with some other program? Moreover, what if the child process has memory requirements far different from the parent process? Wouldn't assigning the same address space as the parent be a problem?
I feel like I'm thinking about this all wrong, perhaps because I'm imagining the processes to be entire programs in execution rather than some simple instruction like "copy data from X to Y".
All modern Unix implementations use virtual memory. That allows them to get away with not actually copying much when forking. Instead, their memory map contains pointers to the parent's memory until they start modifying it.
When a child process exec's a program, that program is copied into memory (if it wasn't already there) and the process's memory map is updated to point to the new program.
fork(2) is difficult to understand. It is explained a lot, read also fork (system call) wikipage and several chapters of Advanced Linux Programming. Notice that fork does not copy the running program (i.e. the /usr/bin/skype ELF executable file), but it is lazily copying (using copy-on-write techniques - by configuring the MMU) the address space (in virtual memory) of the forking process. Each process has its address space (but might share some segments with some other processes, see mmap(2) and execve(2) ....). Since each process has its own address space, changes in the address space of one process does not (usually) affect the parent process. However, processes may have shared memory but then need to synchronize: see shm_overview(7) & sem_overview(7)...
By definition of fork, just after the fork syscall the parent and child processes have nearly equal state (in particular the address space of the child is a copy of the address space of the parent). The only difference being the return value of fork.
And execve is overwriting the address space and registers of the current process.
Notice that on Linux all processes (with a few exceptions, like kernel started processes such as /sbin/modprobe etc) are obtained by fork-ing -from the initial /sbin/init process of pid 1.
At last, system calls -listed in syscalls(2)- like fork are an elementary operation from the application's point of view, since the real processing is done inside the Linux kernel. Play with strace(1). See also this answer and that one.
A process is often some machine state (registers) + its address space + some kernel state (e.g. file descriptors), etc... (but read about zombie processes).
Take time to follow all the links I gave you.
I manage Unix systems where, sometimes, programs like CGI scripts run forever, sometimes eating a lot of CPU time and wasting resources.
I want a program (typically invoked from cron) which can kill these runaways, based on the following criteria (combined with AND and OR):
Name (given by a regexp)
CPU time used
elapsed time (for programs which are blocked on an I/O)
I do not really know what to type in a search engine for this sort of program. I certainly could write it myself in Python but I'm lazy and there is may be a good program already existing?
(I did not tag my question with a language name since a program in Perl or Ruby or whatever would work as well)
Try using system-level quota enforcement instead. Most systems will allow to set per-process CPU time limit for different users.
Examples:
Linux: /etc/security/limits.conf
FreeBSD: /etc/login.conf
CGI scripts can usually be run under their own user ID, for example using mod_suid for Apache.
This might be something more like what you were looking for:
http://devel.ringlet.net/sysutils/timelimit/
Most of the watchdig-like programs or libraries are just trying to see whether a given process is running, so I'd say you'd better off writing your own, using the existing libraries that give out process information.