Translated from French to English -www.onlinedoctranslator.

com

The process
Part 1
Objectives:

• Understand the concept of “process”,

• Know the principles of management and process control;

• Learn basic process manipulation commands

 What is a process?
• You write a program in Pascal, C or JAVA language…etc,
• You start the compilation,
• At the end, you start the execution of this program:

➢ At this stage, we talk about processes (task, process, task, job).

A process is a running program.

 Multi-task systems
• Linux is a multitasking system;

• A multi-task system is a system that ensures the execution of several

programs at the same time (several processes);

• In this type of systems, the processor (CPU) is shared between the

different processes residing in memory →they are ready to be
executed,
 Multi-task systems
The basic principle is described as follows:
➢ the processor (CPU) is allocated to a process residing in
memory for a fixed duration.
➢ After the end of the fixed duration, the system will choose
(by election principle) the next process to execute among
several waiting processes;
➢ Waiting processes are queued;

→Hence a process has a momentary life (from its creation until its
termination; it passes from one state to the other before its end of
execution.
 States of a process

• During the life of a process, it can be in different states:

‒ Active: the process controls the processor, it is running;
‒ Blocked (waiting): the process is suspended, however the central processor
(CPU) cannot reactivate it as long as the process is waiting for an external
event which can unblock it. For example, a process does an input/output
operation (waiting for data from keyboard),
‒ Ready (or passive): the process is temporarily suspended, it waits for
the processor to be freed (CPU executes the instructions of another
process), it is put on hold in RAM.
 States of a process

1. A process is created (new).

2. A process is passive Or ready;
3. A process active (the CPU executes the program instructions
whose data it has in central memory).
4. A process is blocked(he is waiting for data).
5. A process is destroyed (finished).

ready
unblocking
The role of an operating system in process management

➢ It is the OS which must ensure complete management of the creation, destruction and
state transitions of a process.

➢ It is always up to the OS to allocate the memory space necessary for the residence of each
process.

➢ It is still the OS which ensures the organization and inter-process communication.

 Processes in Linux
Linux kernel launchesba first process (init) when starting the machine.

➢ this process is the ancestor (the father) of all processes launched on the Linux
system;

➢ This process creates child processes which builds a tree structure.

→All processes running on a Linux system are organized in the form of a tree.
 Processes in Linux

Each process has:

• A number (its PID,Process ID, “process identifier”),
• The identifier of its parent (PPID,Parent Process ID, “parent
process identifier”) the one who created it.

• Its owner: user number (IUD), and group number (GIUD),

• The processing time (TIME), the reference to a working directory.
• The particularity of a process is to run with rights granted to the
user who initiated the command; (important for system security).
 The process tree in Linux
❑ The first process init (having a PID=1) launches the following process:
➢ The process called “login», he is responsible for opening the session.

• The shell process (bash) is the child of the login process (the
process that is waiting for a command to interpret it):

✓ In the case of an internal command, it will not launch a new process (since it is
internal to the shell).
✓ In the case of an external command, the shell process launches a new process(execution of the
program linked to the command launched).
Remark:
Built-in (internal) commands are integrated directly into the shell and are executed more quickly
(cd, echo,pwd), while external commands are separate programs that require the creation of a
separate process for their execution (ls,grep,sed). Both types of commands are essential in the
use of Linux, and each has its own advantages and specific use cases.
 Example

The command pstree displays the current process tree

of execution:

$pstree
init├
│- - -
├login---bash+
│pstree (it's an external command)
 Process control:
The ps command

The “ps” (Process status) command allows you to display information

about the process ;

Syntax: ps [options]
Some options:
• -a : Shows processes associated with a terminal,
• -A: Shows all processes on the system, including those without a terminal.
• x: show processes that do not have a controlling terminalt ttyn: list of processes on the ttyn
terminal
• u: show the processes running under the specified user,
• f: option adds additional columns to the output, including the parent process ID (PPID),
the controlling terminal (TTY)
 Example 1

$ps
PID TTY TIME CMD
2726 tty1 00:00:00 bash
2758 tty1 00:00:02 gedit
2770 tty1 00:00:00 p.s.

identifier Associated CPU The command

of Terminal consumed
process time
Displays only the processes related to the current terminal (TTY), which typically includes
the shell and any commands run within it.
 Example Output:

Let's imagine a system with the following processes:

• bash (a terminal session)

• nginx (a system daemon running in the background)

• cron (another background system process)

Running the following commands:

1.ps -a: This might show processes like:

bash

PID TTY TIME CMD

1234 pts/0 00:00 bash

5678 pts/0 00:00 ps

2.ps -A: This would show all processes of all terminals and those without
terminals:

bash

PID TTY TIME CMD

1234 pts/0 00:00 bash

4321 ? 00:00 nginx

5678 pts/0 00:00 ps

9101 ? 00:00 cron

As you can see, ps -A lists processes like nginx and cron, which aren't
associated with a terminal, while ps -a excludes them.
 Example 2
•This option allows you to show processes belonging to a specific user.
•You can provide the username or the user ID (UID).

State of
Time of
% of
process creation of
owner calculation time consumption
process
of the process in % RAM
 Example 3
Default Behavior: If run without additional options, ps -f shows only processes

associated with your current terminal session.

Excludes background processes: System daemons and processes without a terminal

(unless combined with other options like -x).

ps -Af # Full details of all processes on the system

ps -f -u username # Full details of processes for a specific user