Assignment 2 Pstree

Assignment 2
Pstree
Important Notes
1. This is an individual project. Do your own work!
2. The project is based on the Linux operating system.
3. Make sure your program works on linprog.cs.fsu.edu because that is where it will
be graded.
Acknowledgment
This project is designed by Prof Zhi Wang in FSU Tallahassee which being derived
from 600.318/418: Operating Systems at John Hopkins University.
Overview
In this assignment, you will get to know Xv6 (git://github.com/mit-pdos/xv6-
public.git), a simple Unix-like teaching operating system from MIT. You’ll do three
things in this assignment:
• You’ll get xv6 to run on a system emulator, QEMU. This is a pretty quick and
painless process.
• You’ll trace the getpid() system call of xv6 and document what goes on at each
step.
• You’ll implement the pstree program which displays the list of processes
currently in the system in a tree structure; for this to work, you’ll have to
introduce a new system call.
Words of Wisdom: First, please start early! Second, please make minimal changes to
xv6; you do not want to make it hard for us to grade!
Part 1: Xv6 on QEMU (20%)
The first part is easy. You need to clone, compile it and make a disk image, and get
that disk image to run on QEMU. Cloning the xv6 source as being directed in course
module 5. Extract the sources, then take a quick look around.
On linprog.cs.fsu.edu, compiling xv6 should work fine by just typing make in the
xv6 directory. You’ll see a lot of lines fly by, and eventually you’ll have an image
file xv6.img. Running xv6 on QEMU should work fine by typing make qemu-nox in the
xv6 directory. And there you have it. Try running ls and mkdir. You can even run sh
to get a new shell process (use CTRL-D to leave it as there’s no exit command). To
quit from QEMU to linprog (or your local ubuntu), type ctrl-a x. Document this process.
Part 2: The Life of getpid (30%)
The second part is a bit harder, but I will provide additional help trace a system
call close using the GDB.
Using the same debugging technique, you need to describe how the getpid()
system call is implemented. Assume that a user program executes the line getpid();.
You need to document in the submission exactly which lines in which source files of
xv6 are executed as a result of this system call. Please don’t skip anything. Try
to explain each coherent chunk of lines, i.e. tell us why that chunk runs and what
purpose it serves. Your description must start in the user-space with the
fictitious line above, go to the kernel-space, and return back to the user-space.
Please make your report in no more than 200 words.
Part 3: Pstree (50%)
Type man pstree in linprog.cs.fsu.edu and read the documentation. Read it to
understand what pstree does. Now relax, there is no need to implement all those
command line options: we’ll simply print one fixed set of interesting values about
each process. But you should become aware of all the stuff a real Unix system keeps
track of, xv6 is a lot simpler than that.
If you examine the source code for xv6 you’ll find the file proc.h somewhere.
In it, you find what we are looking for: struct proc. When xv6 is running, all that
information is around for each process, in the kernel! Since pstree is a user
space program, it cannot access the process table in the kernel. In modern Unixes,
for example in Linux, the /proc file system provides all the information to
implement pstree, but we don’t want to add a whole new file system to the kernel.
Instead we’ll have to add the next best thing, a new system call. But before we get
to that, let’s agree on the output of pstree. For each process, pstree prints the
process name and the process id. It prints all the processes in a tree structure,
using indents (three whitespaces) to show the parent/child relation. Here is an
example (this is just an example, your output will be different in details.):
init[1]
 sh[4]
 pstree[7]
 sh[5]
 usertests[6]
 cat[8]
In this example, init is the root of the process tree (i.e., it is the first
process ever created by the kernel.) Its process id is 0. It has two child
processes, sh (pid=4) and sh (pid=5). pstree, cat, and usertests are its
grandchildren. This essentially is a depth-first traverse of the process tree.
Now, you will add just one system call and the necessary implementation in the
kernel. In C, the system call you need to add to xv6 has the following interface:
int getprocs(int max, struct uproc table[]);
struct uproc is defined as (add it to a new file uproc.h):
struct uproc {
int pid;
int ppid;
char name[16];
};
Your pstree program calls getprocs with an array of struct uproc objects and
sets max to the size of that array (in the unit of struct uproc objects). For
example, your program can malloc 64 struct uproc objects (assuming the returned
pointer is saved in pcs) and call getprocs with getprocs(64, pcs);. The kernel
stores up to max entries of the process information into your array, starting at
the first slot of the array and filling it consecutively. The kernel returns the
actual number of processes in existence at that point in time, or -1 if there was
an error. After receiving the process information from the kernel, your pstree in
the user-space formats it into the tree structure as shown in the example.
The problem with this system call is that if there are more processes than you have
space for, you will miss some. But then if you use the returned integer to allocate
a new struct uproc array and call getprocs again, some processes may have died or
(worse!) new ones may have been created in the meantime. So you’ll have to be lucky
to get the perfect listing for a busy system. In this assignment, let’s assume the
system has less than 64 processes.
Delverables
Place two pdf format documents for part1 and part2 in xv6 project folder for
pstree. You must ensure that this xv6 project folder includes all files necessary
for building pstree. Then, submit modified xv6 project folder for pstree project as
a gzip compressed tarball. Make sure clean all object files by “make clean” before
creating this tarball. The name of your attachment should be
cop4610-project2-yourname.tar.gz
with yourname is replaced by your CS account name in linprog.cs.fsu.edu.
Your submission will be graded by compiling and running it. We will check the
presence of the pstree command and that it returns the correct results.
• Please make sure your source code can compile. Absolutely no credit for part 3
if it does not compile.
• Please don’t include the binary files. Do a make clean before submission.
You’ll make grading harder for us if you do.
• Please don’t leave out any files! You’ll make grading harder for us if you do.
• Please don’t modify any files you don’t need to! You’ll make grading harder for
us if you do.
• Please don’t send us the meta-information from your revision control system!
You’ll make grading harder for us.