Processor Management in UNIX Operating System (Essay Sample)

Processor Management in UNIX Operating System
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Processor Management in UNIX Operating System
The UNIX system is family of multitasking and multiuser operating systems in the IT industry (Sachen, Vijay). UNIX V follows the model, which completes most of the work around a user process. It has two processes: one is system process which uses kernel mode and other is user process which operates in user mode to perform its activities.
Process States
There are approx. nine states that exist in the UNIX SVR 4 operating system (Stallings, William). They are: User running, kernel running, ready to run, asleep in memory, ready to run (swapped), sleeping (swapped), preempted, created and zombie. In UNIX operating system, two types of process states exist. They are because when kernel is ready to give control back to the system, it chooses one of them depending on the conditions. Normally it delivers control to preempted state process unless in case of dispatching where ready to run processes are in same line. UNIX is inappropriate in real time scenarios as it only allows preemption when process is changing its state. Two distinctive processes are also present which process 0 and 1 are.
Process Description
Processes in the UNIX have a structure that provides complete information to operating system on how to control its operations. Processes contain three types of elements. First are user level contexts which comprise of text and data areas. Second are register context are which are used when process is not in operating form. Last one is system level context containing process table entry and U Area and others. There exists a difference in process table entry and U Area which means that kernel executes instructions keeping in view concerns of the process and information about other process which is provided by process entry table on certain conditions. System level context has third static portion used for memory management system and follows kernel stack which is last portion of this element.
Process Control
In UNIX process is created through kernel system call. When a fork call is given by process, the operating system then performs 6 steps in the kernel mode in the parent process. During the process file sharing is done between parent and child. Parent normally waits for child to complete its operations and waits is signals.
Memory management
UNIX is an operating system (OS) that is used worldwide in order to manage different resources used by the computers these days. The goal of memory management is too keep track of which memory is in use and which are not. In UNIX, it is done through swapping and demanding pages by the processes. The easiest process of memory management is to break main memory into partitions of two types that are single and multiple. Multiple pa...