Unit 4- PROCESSES

(I think Context Switching is important topic in this unit)

In "The Design of the Unix Operating System" book-

As per syllabus-
THE STRUCTURE OF PROCESSES - Chap 6 in text book- Pg 161 - Pg 204
PROCESS CONTROL- Chap 7 in text book- Pg 205- Pg 260
PROCESS SCHEDULING AND TIME- Chap 8 in text book- Pg 262- Pg 272- half of this unit
for syllabus

- Process States and Transitions- Pg 161- Pg 165

- Layout of System Memory– Pg 165- Pg 172

(Sub topics: Regions-Pg 166, Pages and Page Table- 167, Layout of the Kernel- 170,
The U Area- 171)

- The Context of a Process- Pg 173- Pg 176

- Saving the Context of a Process- Pg 176- Pg 185

(Sub topics: Interrupts and Exception- Pg 176, System Call Interface- 179, Context
Switch- 182, Saving Context for Abortive Return- 184, Copying Data between System
and User Address Space- 185)

- Manipulation of the Process Address Space- Pg 185- Pg 196

(Sub topics: Locking and Unlocking a Region- Pg 186, Allocating a Region- 186,
Attaching a Region to a Process- 187, Changing the Size of a Region- 188, Loading a
Region- 190, Freeing a Region- 194, Detaching a Region from a Process- 195,
Duplicating a Region- 196)

'Sleep' is there next in text book. But this is NOT in syllabus.

Summary- Pg 202

- EXERCISES- Pg 203- 204

- Process Control (unit name)- ** Pg 205 (learn italics terms), * Fig 7.1 in 206

- Process Creation- Pg 206 - Pg 214

- Signals- Pg 214- Pg 225

(Sub topics: Handling Signals- Pg 217, Process Groups- 224, Sending Signals from
Process- 224)

- Process Termination- Pg 226- Pg 227

- Awaiting Process Termination- Pg 227- Pg 231

- Invoking other programs- Pg 231- Pg 241

- User Id of a Process- Pg 241- Pg 243

- Changing the Size of a Process- Pg 243- Pg 246

- The Shell- Pg 246- Pg 249

- System Boot and the INIT Process- Pg 249- Pg 252

Summary- Pg 252- Pg 253 (learn italics terms)

- EXERCISES- Pg 253- 260

- Process Scheduling- Pg 262- 272

(Sub topics: Algorithm- Pg 262, Scheduling Parameters- 263, Examples of Process
Scheduling- 266, Controlling Process Priorities- 268, Fair Share Scheduler- 269,
Real-Time Processing- 271)

'Time' and 'Clock' come next in the text book in this Unit. But they are NOT in
syllabus. So I have not marked- learn those IF needed

Summary- Pg 282 (1st para is enough)

- EXERCISES- Pg 282- 284 - learn only the relevant ones

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Solve below from syllabus- (if required)

o Implement the algorithm for allocating and freeing memory pages and page tables.
Which data structures would allow best performance?
o Design an algorithm that translates virtual address to physical addresses, given
the virtual address and the address of the region entry.
o Implement an algorithm that exchange messages over pipe (use of pipe and dup and
fork).
o Write a program to communicate between two process using signals.