Process Create
Process Create ¶do_fork( ) makes use of an auxiliary function called copy_process( ) to set up the process descriptor and any other kernel data structure required for child's execution. Here are the main steps performed by do_fork( ):
Allocates a new PID for the child by looking in the pidmap_array bitmap (see the earlier section "Identifying a Process").
Checks the ptrace field of the parent (current->ptrace): if it is not zero, the parent process is being traced by another process, thus do_fork( ) checks whether the debugger wants to trace the child on its own (independently of the value of the CLONE_PTRACE flag specified by the parent); in this case, if the child is not a kernel thread (CLONE_UNTRACED flag cleared), the function sets the CLONE_PTRACE flag.
Invokes copy_process() to make a copy of the process descriptor. If all needed resources are available, this function returns the address of the task_struct descriptor just created. This is the workhorse of the forking procedure, and we will describe it right after do_fork( ).
If either the CLONE_STOPPED flag is set or the child process must be traced, that is, the PT_PTRACED flag is set in p->ptrace, it sets the state of the child to TASK_STOPPED and adds a pending SIGSTOP signal to it (see the section "The Role of Signals" in Chapter 11). The state of the child will remain TASK_STOPPED until another process (presumably the tracing process or the parent) will revert its state to TASK_RUNNING, usually by means of a SIGCONT signal.
If the CLONE_STOPPED flag is not set, it invokes the wake_up_new_task( ) function, which performs the following operations:
Adjusts the scheduling parameters of both the parent and the child (see "The Scheduling Algorithm" in Chapter 7).
If the child will run on the same CPU as the parent,[1] and parent and child do not share the same set of page tables (CLONE_VM flag cleared), it then forces the child to run before the parent by inserting it into the parent's runqueue right before the parent. This simple step yields better performance if the child flushes its address space and executes a new program right after the forking. If we let the parent run first, the Copy On Write mechanism would give rise to a series of unnecessary page duplications.
[2] The parent process might be moved on to another CPU while the kernel forks the new process.
Otherwise, if the child will not be run on the same CPU as the parent, or if parent and child share the same set of page tables (CLONE_VM flag set), it inserts the child in the last position of the parent's runqueue.
If the CLONE_STOPPED flag is set, it puts the child in the TASK_STOPPED state.
If the parent process is being traced, it stores the PID of the child in the ptrace_message field of current and invokes ptrace_notify( ), which essentially stops the current process and sends a SIGCHLD signal to its parent. The "grandparent" of the child is the debugger that is tracing the parent; the SIGCHLD signal notifies the debugger that current has forked a child, whose PID can be retrieved by looking into the current->ptrace_message field.
If the CLONE_VFORK flag is specified, it inserts the parent process in a wait queue and suspends it until the child releases its memory address space (that is, until the child either terminates or executes a new program).
Terminates by returning the PID of the child.
Creating a kernel thread ¶The kernel_thread( ) function creates a new kernel thread. It receives as parameters the address of the kernel function to be executed (fn), the argument to be passed to that function (arg), and a set of clone flags (flags). The function essentially invokes do_fork( ) as follows:
do_fork(flags|CLONE_VM|CLONE_UNTRACED, 0, pregs, 0, NULL, NULL);
The CLONE_VM flag avoids the duplication of the page tables of the calling process: this duplication would be a waste of time and memory, because the new kernel thread will not access the User Mode address space anyway. The CLONE_UNTRACED flag ensures that no process will be able to trace the new kernel thread, even if the calling process is being traced.
The pregs parameter passed to do_fork( ) corresponds to the address in the Kernel Mode stack where the copy_thread( ) function will find the initial values of the CPU registers for the new thread. The kernel_thread( ) function builds up this stack area so that:
The ebx and edx registers will be set by copy_thread() to the values of the parameters fn and arg, respectively.
The eip register will be set to the address of the following assembly language fragment:
movl %edx,%eax
pushl %edx
call *%ebx
pushl %eax
call do_exit
Therefore, the new kernel thread starts by executing the fn(arg) function. If this function terminates, the kernel thread executes the _exit( ) system call passing to it the return value of fn( ) (see the section "Destroying Processes" later in this chapter).
Process 0 ¶The ancestor of all processes, called process 0, the idle process, or, for historical reasons, the swapper process, is a kernel thread created from scratch during the initialization phase of Linux (see Appendix A). This ancestor process uses the following statically allocated data structures (data structures for all other processes are dynamically allocated):
A process descriptor stored in the init_task variable, which is initialized by the INIT_TASK macro.
A thread_info descriptor and a Kernel Mode stack stored in the init_thread_union variable and initialized by the INIT_THREAD_INFO macro.
The following tables, which the process descriptor points to:
The start_kernel( ) function initializes all the data structures needed by the kernel, enables interrupts, and creates another kernel thread, named process 1 (more commonly referred to as the init process ):
kernel_thread(init, NULL, CLONE_FS|CLONE_SIGHAND);
The newly created kernel thread has PID 1 and shares all per-process kernel data structures with process 0. When selected by the scheduler, the init process starts executing the init( ) function.
After having created the init process, process 0 executes the cpu_idle( ) function, which essentially consists of repeatedly executing the hlt assembly language instruction with the interrupts enabled (see Chapter 4). Process 0 is selected by the scheduler only when there are no other processes in the TASK_RUNNING state.
In multiprocessor systems there is a process 0 for each CPU. Right after the power-on, the BIOS of the computer starts a single CPU while disabling the others. The swapper process running on CPU 0 initializes the kernel data structures, then enables the other CPUs and creates the additional swapper processes by means of the copy_process( ) function passing to it the value 0 as the new PID. Moreover, the kernel sets the cpu field of the tHRead_info descriptor of each forked process to the proper CPU index.
Process 1 ¶The kernel thread created by process 0 executes the init( ) function, which in turn completes the initialization of the kernel. Then init( ) invokes the execve( ) system call to load the executable program init. As a result, the init kernel thread becomes a regular process having its own per-process kernel data structure (see Chapter 20). The init process stays alive until the system is shut down, because it creates and monitors the activity of all processes that implement the outer layers of the operating system.
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