Operating Systems 2017F Lecture 17

Midterm Review

1. Execve and no it does not create a new process

6. uses of signals:

• kill process
• find out when child process is terminated
• start/stop a process
• detect when a program has made a ptr error

7. Pointers in C contain virtual memory addresses because the memory of a process is a virtual address space. Each process thinks it has its own stretch of memory.

8. processes make a sys call to allocate memory. execve -> then mmap and/or sbreak to allocate memory

9. shell opens the file output.txt.

10. mmap contents of file can allocate the contents of it into ram.

• comparing 1 mb of both files at a time will be less expensive
• only makes sense to mmap if you will access files multiple times

11. producer and consumer now have no way of talking to each other because they do not share the same memory.

12. no. there is a race condition. while loop loops while sem < 0. someone else could access and modify the variable between the while and the sem--;.

• you need special instructions to test and set the variable at the same time.
• also, int sem parameter isn't a ptr so it's a local variable.

Additional Notes

How do you do kernel hacking? Some tips for low level kernel code: Be humble; You cannot know how everything works
Verify your assumptions as you go
Perform lots of experiments
Incremental Development, compile and run often

Check for errors ALWAYS or they will cascade and hurt you later
This will save you from later errors
Kernel has to live cleanly

Find another part of the kernel that is close to what you want to do (Search online! This is a good link: http://elixir.free-electrons.com/linux/v4.4.83/source
You do not understand all abstractions and assumptions, so "pattern match" to minimize trouble

Realize that the assumptions behind code you don't necessarily match to your own. Spend the time reading other people's code.
Understand the "flow of control" inside the program

• Architecture
  
• Division of responsibilities
  
• Purpose of data structures/objects
  

For the tutorial 6 he gave us a link for a reason. If you click on it you can search getpid and then dig deeper! For example cut and paste the line inside getuid function.

Scheduling
Scheduler decides when what process should run at a high level
Questions: How does the scheduler work/kernel control when a program runs/how can you make sure one program does not take over CPU from anyone else?
CPU is given entirely to userspace processes to run most of the time
Kernel needs to run when it needs to run and no process should be able to stop it

• The interrupt table: pointers to code that the CPU runs when it receives different hardware or software interrupts. Since the kernel runs first it gets to set the interrupt table. Only supervisor code can change the table not user code.

When the Ethernet card receives data:
1) The Ethernet card sends an interrupt to the kernel
2) The CPU calls the kernel code for handling Ethernet data

When the clock generates a timer interrupt:
1) The CPU calls the kernel code for handling timer interrupts

In order to process an interrupt, a CPU core has to be taken over
That core was probably running a userspace process
Scheduling is all about what to do after having kicked a userspace process off of a core

Normally on a core:

• Userspace is happening
  
• Interrupt happens
  
• core switches to supervisor mode, runs kernel code
  
• last part of kernel code is scheduler, chooses which userspace code to run. Repeat the process
  

Kernel is entered via interrupts, exited via the scheduler
Scheduler needs to be efficient because interrupts are frequent and we do not want to waste resources that could be put towards actual computing
Entry and exit to kernel has to do low-level tasks like changing CPU modes, manage CPU registers. This is Assembly code.
Go to http://elixir.free-electrons.com/linux/v4.4.83/source
Go into arch: code specific to CPU architecture. Two most commons are arm and x86
Go up one level
Drivers directory have drivers for all kinds of things
Linux Kernel designed for x86 but it now abstracted to support different architectures. GO into architecture -> x86 -> entry
Open entry.s: Large assembly language file. This is the code that runs before system call specific code.