I need to know in detail how are processes described in Ubuntu? I have tried Google, but no luck. As I require it for research purposes, please help. Thank you.
2 Answers
When you issue a command or execute a shell script in any Unix-like operating system, you start, or create, a process. In short, a process is an instance of a running program. Attributes of processes include a process-id (pid) and a parent process-id (ppid), and there are others. Processes are also associated with a terminal (tty) from which they were executed, unless they are daemons.
I suggest you read more about processes and their attributes at the Unix School or at these university user-pages. (All of these pages and more were found with Google, so it is unclear why you were unable to find them.)
In Unix , there are two things
- files
- Process
"files has places and processes have life" by Kaare Christian
A running file that is executed as a program is termed as process (set of instructions). Processes have children, parents, and grandchildren (no, I am not joking :) )
To see all the current processes, press Ctrl+Alt+T and enter ps
.
For more details , read Sumitabha Das, Unix Applications (3rd edition), section 2.5.1, and/or go to Google Books and search there, but the above book really does explain what you want.
If you really want to go more deeper, read Modern OS by Tanenbaum or Operating System Concepts by Silberschatz (but before reading these books make sure you have basics of computer organization subject; or else read Computer System Architecture by Morris Mano).
/proc
, there's no/etc/proc