Core Inter-Process

Communication Mechanisms
(Historically Important)

Fred Kuhns
([email protected], http://www.arl.wustl.edu/~fredk)

Department of Computer Science and Engineering

Washington University in St. Louis

Washington
WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST LOUIS
 Cooperating Processes
• Independent process cannot affect or be affected by the execution of
another process.

• Cooperating process can affect or be affected by the execution of

another process

• Advantages of process cooperation

– Information sharing
– Computation speed-up
– Modularity
– Convenience

• Dangers of process cooperation

– Data corruption, deadlocks, increased complexity
– Requires processes to synchronize their processing

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 Purposes for IPC
• Data Transfer
• Sharing Data
• Event notification
• Resource Sharing and
Synchronization
• Process Control

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 IPC Mechanisms
• Mechanisms used for communication and synchronization
– Message Passing
• message passing interfaces, mailboxes and message queues
• sockets, STREAMS, pipes
– Shared Memory: Non-message passing systems

• Common examples of IPC

– Synchronization using primitives such as semaphores to higher level
mechanisms such as monitors. Implemented using either shared memoru or
message passing.
– Debugging
– Event Notification - UNIX signals

• We will defer a detailed discussion of synchronization mechanisms and

concurrency until a later class

• Here we want to focus on some common (and fundamental) IPC and event
notification mechanisms

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 Message Passing
• In a Message passing system there are no shared
variables. IPC facility provides two operations for fixed
or variable sized message:
– send(message)
– receive(message)

• If processes P and Q wish to communicate, they need to:

– establish a communication link
– exchange messages via send and receive

• Implementation of communication link

– physical (e.g., shared memory, hardware bus)
– logical (e.g., syntax and semantics, abstractions)
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 Implementation Questions
• How are links established?

• Can a link be associated with more than two processes?

• How are links made known to processes?

• How many links can there be between every pair/group of communicating

processes?

• What is the capacity of a link?

• Is the size of a message that the link can accommodate fixed or variable?

• Is a link unidirectional or bi-directional?

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 Message Passing Systems
•Exchange messages over a communication link

•Methods for implementing the communication

link and primitives (send/receive):
–Direct or Indirect communications (Naming)
–Symmetric or Asymmetric communications
–Automatic or Explicit buffering
–Send-by-copy or send-by-reference
–fixed or variable sized messages

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Direct Communication – Internet and Sockets
• Processes must name each other explicitly:
– Symmetric Addressing
• send (P, message) – send to process P
• receive(Q, message) – receive from Q
– Asymmetric Addressing
• send (P, message) – send to process P
• receive(id, message) – rx from any; system sets id = sender
• Primitives:
– send(A, message) – send a message to mailbox A
– receive(A, message) – receive a message from mailbox A
• Properties of communication link
– Links established automatically between pairs
– processes must know each others ID
– Exactly one link per pair of communicating processes
• Disadvantage: a process must know the name or ID of the
process(es) it wishes to communicate with
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 Indirect Communication - Pipes

• Messages are sent to or received from mailboxes (also

referred to as ports).
– Each mailbox has a unique id.
– Processes can communicate only if they share a mailbox.
• Properties of communication link
– Link established only if processes share a common mailbox
– A link may be associated with more than 2 processes.
– Each pair of processes may share several communication links.
• Ownership:
– process owns (i.e. mailbox is implemented in user space): only the
owner may receive messages through this mailbox. Other
processes may only send. When process terminates any “owned”
mailboxes are destroyed.
– system owns – then mechanisms provided to create, delete, send
and receive through mailboxes. Process that creates mailbox owns
it (and so may receive through it) but may transfer ownership to
another process.

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 Indirect Communication
• Mailbox sharing:
– P1, P2, and P3 share mailbox A.
– P1, sends; P2 and P3 receive.
– Who gets the message?

• Solutions
– Allow a link to be associated with at most two
processes.
– Allow only one process at a time to execute a receive
operation.
– Allow the system to select arbitrarily the receiver.
Sender is notified who the receiver was

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 Synchronizing Message Flow

• Message passing may be either blocking or non-

blocking.
– blocking send: sender blocked until message
received by mailbox or process
– nonblocking send: sender resumes operation
immediately after sending
– blocking receive: receiver blocks until a message is
available
– nonblocking receive: receiver returns immediately
with either a valid or null message.

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 Buffering
• All messaging system require framework to
temporarily buffer messages. These queues are
implemented in one of three ways:
– Zero capacity – No messages may be queued within
the link, requires sender to block until receives
retrieves message.
– Bounded capacity – Link has finite number of
message buffers. If no buffers are available then
sender must block until one is freed up.
– Unbounded capacity – Link has unlimited buffer
space, consequently send never needs to block.

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 Lets Get Practical

Notes to help you with the first project

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 Conventional View
Protection domains - (virtual address space)

process n
process 2
user process 1
kernel

How can processes communicate with each

other and the kernel?
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 Universal IPC Facilities
handler

process 2
process 1
user

dbx
kernel
pipe stop
handle event

• Universal Facilities in UNIX

– Signals - asynchronous or synchronous event notification.
– Pipes - unidirectional, FIFO, unstructured data stream.
– Process tracing - used by debuggers to control control target process

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 Signals - History

• Unreliable Signals - Orignal System V (SVR2

and earlier) implementation.
– Handlers are not persistent
– recurring instances of signal are not masked, can
result in race conditions.
• Reliable Signals - BSD and SVR3. Fixed
problems but approaches differ.
• POSIX 1003.1 (POSIX.1) defined standard set
of functions.

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 Signals Overview
• Divided into asynchronous (CTL-C) and
synchronous (illegal address)
• Three phases to processing signals:
– generation: event occurs requiring process notification
– delivery: process recognizes and takes appropriate
action
– pending: between generation and delivery
• SVR4 and 4.4BSD define 31 signals, original had
15. Some commercial system support > 32.
• Signal to integer mappings differ between BSD
and System V implementations

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 Signals - Virtual Machine Model
signal handler
Process X
stack
(Signal handles)

register handlers instruction set

dispatch to handler
System call interface
kernel {read(), write(), sigaltstack() … }
(restartable system calls)

deliver signal
scheduler I/O facilities filesystem

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 Actions
• Handling, default actions
– Abort: terminate process, generate core dump
– Exit: terminate without generating core dump
– Ignore: ignore signal
– Stop: suspend process
– Continue: resume process
• User specified actions
– Default action,
– Ignore signal,
– Catch signal - invoke user specified signal handler
• User may
– not ignore, catch or block SIGKILL and SIGSTOP
– change action at any time
– block signal: signal remains pending until unblocked
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 Notes
• Signal action may only be taken within context
of receiving process
• Process must be scheduled to run
• Checks for pending signals when:
– before returning to user mode from a system call or
interrupt
– before blocking in an interruptible system event
– immediately after waking from an interruptible event
• if pending signal and process has handler, then
kernel arranges to first run handler on returning
to user mode, then resume the interrupted
instruction.

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 Signal Generation
• Exceptions - kernel notifies process with signal
• Other Process - using kill or sigsend.
• Terminal interrupts - stty allows binding of
signals to specific keys, sent to foreground
process
• Job control - background processes attempt to
read/write to terminal. Process terminate or
suspends, kernels sends signal to parent
• Quotas - exceeding limits
• Notifications - event notification (device ready)
• Alarms - process notified of alarm via signal
reception
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 Reliable Signals - BSD

• Persistent handlers
• Masking signals
– signals masked (blocked) temporarily
– user can specify mask set for each signal
– current signal is masked when handler invoked
• Interruptible sleeps
• Restartable system calls
• Allocate separate stack for handling signals
– why is this important?

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 Signals - A Few Details
• Any process or interrupt can post a signal
– set bit in pending signal bit mask
– perform default action or setup for delivery
• Signal typically delivered in context of
receiving process.
– exception is sending SIGSTOP, kernel may
perform action directly
– Pending signals are checked before returning
to user mode and just before/after certain
sleep calls.
– Produce core dump or invoke signal handler

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 UNIX Pipes
• Unidirectional, FIFO, unstructured data stream
• Fixed maximum size
• Simple flow control
• pipe() system call creates two file descriptors. Why?
• Implemented using filesystem, sockets or STREAMS
(bidirectional pipe).
• Named Pipes:
– Lives in the filesystem - that is, a file is created of
type S_IFIFO (use mknod() or mkfifo())
– may be accessed by unrelated processes
– persistent
– less secure than regular Pipes. Why?
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 Process Tracing
• ptrace()
• used by debuggers such as dbx and gdb.
• Parent process controls execution of child
– child must notify kernel that it will be traced by
parent
• Modern systems use the /proc file system.
– Allows process to trace unrelated processes

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