Linux System Programming

Reference

• System Programming in Perl: The Unix Process Model (slides)

Process

A process contains:

• A unique process ID number ('pid')
• A current working directory ('cwd')
• A user ID and group ID number (actually more than one of each)
• An open file table
• An environment' (just a bunch of string data)
• A signal table
• An alarm clock
• Lots of other equipment

Why fork & exec

• 2 main primitives of kernel to manage processes:
  • fork: create a new process
  • exec: replace a process's object code with the contents of a file
• Launching a new process is done in 2 steps:
  1. Fork the current process
  2. In the child process, exec the new file that will then replace the code of the current child but keep environment.
• Why fork and exec with 2 separate commands?
  Because the child process can alter its environment before it does the exec. For example:
  

  ps > /tmp/procs                # The child shell will first change the output FD, without ps knowing