Process Management

Question 1

What is a process?

Answer 1

A running executable

Question 2

What is process management?

Answer 2

It’s controlling the execution of a process

Question 3

What are some examples of process management?

Answer 3

Starting (spawning) a new process
Stopping a process
Pausing a process
Modifying the behavior of a process using signals

Question 4

What can manage processes?

Answer 4

Users, with shell commands

Other programs or processes, using system calls

Question 5

What does each process have?

Answer 5

A unique process identifier (PID)
A parent process (has a PPID)
Its own address space and virtual memory (code segment, data segment, etc..)
Control flows (could be multi-threaded)

Question 6

From a shell, a user can:

Answer 6

Start a process (foreground, background)

Send a signal to a process (to suspend, stop, etc)

Question 7

How can a process start a new process?

Answer 7

Cloning itself (fork() )
Morphing itself (exec() )

Question 8

What are some system calls related to process management?

Answer 8

fork()
exec()
wait()
system()