Table of Contents

Corning Community College

CSCS1730 UNIX/Linux Fundamentals

Lab 0x7: Job Control and Multitasking

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Objective

To become familiar with the multitasking capabilities of UNIX/Linux systems.

Note

Although one UNIX system implementations have a lot in common, within each implementation there are differences. These can range from kernel or library call implementations all the way down to particular behaviors (or default behaviors) of commands to the organization of system scripts.

With this in mind, we have the potential to encounter some of those differences with respect to the ps(1) utility. Depending on the type of system you are on (or documentation you are referencing) potentially both the behavior and arguments to ps(1) may vary.

So be wary if the book(s) indicate a particular invocation of ps, and you see a different result on lab46. Be sure to reference the manual page for ps(1) on lab46 for best results.

Reading

In “UNIX for the Beginning Mage”, please read:

In “Harley Hahn's Guide to UNIX and Linux”, please read:

In “Learning the UNIX Operating System, 5th Edition”, please read:

Background

UNIX is a multitasking, multiuser operating system.

So far in this course you have dealt with the multiuser aspect of the system (through the who(1) utility from Lab #0 and with the write(1), talk(1), and ytalk(1) utilities. Through this usage you have seen that many users can be on the system simultaneously, each doing individual tasks.

So what is multitasking? Multitasking is the ability of the system's processor to allocate cycles of CPU time efficiently enough in order to give the appearance that many processes are running simultaneously.

What is a process?

A process is the term given to a running UNIX application (ie a “program in action”).

UNIX provides a mechanism for viewing these processes running in memory. The top(1) and ps(1) utilities allow you to view various perspectives of the process list.

Terminology

Instead of saying “list of running programs”, you would say “the process list”. You can manipulate the process, as it is a unique instance of a real program on the system.

In a way, the multiuser aspect of UNIX already proves it is multitasking, as each user is doing their own task independent of any other user.

However, each user can multitask their own session. This ability to run and manage more than one process within your login terminal is known as Job Control.

More Terminology

Some additional terminology you should be familiar with:

Viewing Processes

The ps(1) is used to list the running processes on the system. Running with no arguments will show the current processes attached to your login session.

1. Do the following:
a.List your current processes with ps(1). How did you do this? (Provide the output)
b.If you were logged onto the system multiple times, would your invocation of ps(1) also show any processes being run in your other shells?
c.How would you instruct ps(1) to give you this information?

ps(1) can also be used to list all the processes on the system.

2. Do the following:
a.Using ps(1), list all processes on the system in user-oriented format. Tell me how you did it.
b.What PID is the process inetd (inet daemon)? Include the entire matching line from ps.
c.Run top(1), and check it out for a while. Any observations? What are the most active processes? (q to quit)

Running in the background

When used by itself following a command on the command-line, the & will instruct the shell to run the command in the background.

For example:

lab46:~$ head -n4 /etc/motd > file1 &
[1] 12956
lab46:~$ 

Instead of 12956, you will get the next available process number at the time of execution.

Will take the first 4 lines of /etc/motd and redirect its STDOUT to a file called file1. This will run in the background, and will give the PID of the process.

This particular command-line should complete quickly.

In the multitask/ subdirectory of the UNIX Public Directory, you will find the count.c file. Copy it to your home directory and take a look at it.

3. Using the tools available to you, determine:
a.What type of file is this? How did you determine this?
b.Follow the instructions inside on how to compile it to create an executable.
c.Did it work? How do you run it?
d.What could you do to make your $PATH see this executable file? Explain.

NOTE: If you have problems, there is an existing binary (called count) located in the same place you found count.c

Now let us compare the benefits of using the & to background processes:

4. Do the following:
a.Run: time ./count > output and wait for it to finish. What is in “output”? How long did it take?
b.Do the same, but this time add an & to the end. Anything change? Get a process listing with top, does it show up? What is its CPU utilization?

The Command Separator

The command separator is another useful feature, represented as a semi-colon (;). You can use this to string commands together to execute one after the other.

For example:

lab46:~$ ls -l; cat /etc/motd

Will execute ls with the -l argument, then once it is complete, will go and cat out the contents of /etc/motd. Each command is run separately, and therefore has its own unique PID.

Command Grouping per process

Finally, the parenthesis come in use. If you enclose an entire command-line in parenthesis (excluding the &, as seen on page 132 in Learning the UNIX Operating System, 5th Edition) will cause the shell to treat that sequence of commands as one unique command, and give ALL commands involved just one unique PID!

Task 1

Devise a command-line to do the following:

Confused? Be sure to ask questions.

5. Devise a command-line to implement task 1:
a.Show me the command-line incantation you came up with, and explain your reasoning.

Job Control: Suspending a foreground process

Not only can you background processes, but you can suspend and manipulate foreground processes. By using the SUSPEND character, you can cause most applications running in the foreground to stop, giving you back control of you prompt.

When at the prompt using the bourne shell, you can use the built-in command jobs to list any suspended jobs that can be manipulated. If you have any, they will be preceded by a job number, allowing you to foreground (fg) or background (bg) that job.

Task 2

Set up the following situation:

So far we've put some things in the background, and if we're lucky, we'll just have gotten a message from the shell.

6. Do task 2, along with the following:
a.Try logging out by hitting CTRL-D.
b.Are you able to immediately log out?
c.What happens?
d.What might be the purpose behind this action by the shell?

If you ended up logging out, please repeat Task 2 to do the following question.

7. Let's do some diagnostics:
a.What number is the links job?
b.Type fg # to foreground it. Did it work? Suspend it again.
c.Is links still listed in the jobs list?
d.Foreground the cat job and tell me how you did it.
e.With cat running in the foreground, end it with the end of file character.
f.Is cat still listed in the jobs list?
g.Foreground and end links (you may have to use the interrupt character)
h.Is the jobs list empty?

Once the jobs list is empty, you should be able to logout again without a problem. Test this then log back in again to continue with the lab.

Killing Processes

Finally, we are going to determine how to terminate processes on the system using the kill(1) utility.

The kill utility works on a series of signals that applications use to communicate with the operating system. The most common signals you will encounter are the Hangup (SIGHUP), Kill (SIGKILL), and Terminate (SIGTERM) signals.

Hangup is one of the lowest level signals. It instructs the process to re-run, often used to get programs to re-read configuration files.

Kill is among the most powerful of the signals as far as normal processes go. When used on a running process, it basically means “kill process with no mercy” – instant and immediate termination.

Terminate is the default signal, when none are supplied. It informs the process that it is to terminate, allowing the process to clean up and take care of any matters it needs to attend to before it exits.

kill understands a series of signals, but for the purposes of this class we will only be dealing with the above 3 on a regular basis.

8. Running kill -l (lowercase L) on the command line, answer me the following:
a.What number is the Hangup signal?
b.What number is the Terminate signal?
c.What number is the Kill signal?
d.What number is the Interrupt signal?
9. Do the following:
a.Log in again, so you have two instances of your user logged into the system. Are both instances listed in a who(1) output? Show me your output.
b.Using the tty(1) utility, determine the terminal device of both login sessions. What are they?
c.Using the x argument to ps(1), determine the PID of both your login shells. What are they? (Associate PID with terminal device).

Now that we've viewed the current situation, let's change it up a bit:

10. Do the following:
a.Using kill(1), terminate one of your login sessions.
b.Which one did you kill and how did you do it?
c.Any messages generated to your console, and what ones if so?
d.Using who(1), are you still logged in twice?

Process management is an important feature of any multitasking operating system. Having a handle on how it works not only helps you to better understand how to use UNIX, but to better manage your resources on a system.

Applying your skills

Putting these new skills together with those learned in prior weeks, we can start to make the system work for us:

11. Using ps(1) and grep(1), figure out (and tell me how you got) the following:
a.All the processes on the system that are owned by user statd.
b.The PID of the init process. Anything noteworthy about the PID this process?
c.Who owns the cron process and what is its PID? What purpose does cron(1) serve on the system?

HINT: pipes are good. And be sure to list your incantations.

There are additional commands that deal with processes on the system. You may want to familiarize yourself with the pkill(1) and pgrep(1) utilities.

Conclusions

This assignment has activities which you should tend to- document/summarize knowledge learned on your Opus.

As always, the class mailing list and class IRC channel are available for assistance, but not answers.