CS631 - Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment Slide 1

CS631 - Advanced Programming in the UNIX

Environment
Interprocess Communication I

Department of Computer Science

Stevens Institute of Technology
Jan Schaumann
[email protected]
https://stevens.netmeister.org/631/

Lecture 08: Interprocess Communication I October 22, 2018

 CS631 - Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment Slide 2

System V IPC

Three types of asynchronous IPC originating from System V:

Semaphores
Shared Memory
Message Queues

All three use IPC structures, referred to by an identifier and a key; all
three are (necessarily) limited to communication between processes on
one and the same host.

Since these structures are not known by name, special system calls
(msgget(2), semop(2), shmat(2), etc.) and special userland commands
(ipcrm(1), ipcs(1), etc.) are necessary.

Lecture 08: Interprocess Communication I October 22, 2018

 CS631 - Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment Slide 3

System V IPC: Semaphores

A semaphore is a counter used to provide access to a shared data object

for multiple processes. To obtain a shared resource a process needs to
do the following:

1. Test semaphore that controls the resource.

2. If value of semaphore > 0, decrement semaphore and use resource;
increment semaphore when done
3. If value == 0 sleep until value > 0

Semaphores are obtained using semget(2), properties controlled using

semctl(2), operations on a semaphore performed using semop(2).

Lecture 08: Interprocess Communication I October 22, 2018

 CS631 - Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment Slide 4

System V IPC: Semaphores

$ cc -Wall semdemo.c
1$ ./a.out

2$ ./a.out

$ ipcs -s

$ ipcrm -s 1234

1$ ./a.out
^Z

2$ ./a.out

Lecture 08: Interprocess Communication I October 22, 2018

 CS631 - Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment Slide 5

IPC data flow

Lecture 08: Interprocess Communication I October 22, 2018

 CS631 - Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment Slide 6

System V IPC: Shared Memory

Lecture 08: Interprocess Communication I October 22, 2018

 CS631 - Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment Slide 7

System V IPC: Shared Memory

fastest form of IPC

access to shared region of memory often controlled using
semaphores
obtain a shared memory identifier using shmget(2)
catchall for shared memory operations: shmctl(2)
attach shared memory segment to a processes address space by
calling shmat(2)
detach it using shmdt(2)

Lecture 08: Interprocess Communication I October 22, 2018

 CS631 - Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment Slide 8

System V IPC: Shared Memory

$ cc -Wall shmdemo.c
$ ./a.out "Cow says: ’Moo!’"
$ ./a.out
$ ipcs -m

Lecture 08: Interprocess Communication I October 22, 2018

 CS631 - Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment Slide 9

System V IPC: Shared Memory

$ cc -Wall memory-layout.c
$ ./a.out
array[] from 804a080 to 8053cc0
stack around bffff9e4
malloced from 8053cc8 to 806c368
shared memory attached from 40162000 to 4017a6a0

Lecture 08: Interprocess Communication I October 22, 2018

 CS631 - Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment Slide 10

System V IPC: Message Queues

linked list of messages stored in the kernel

create or open existing queue using msgget(2)
add message at end of queue using msgsnd(2)
control queue properties using msgctl(2)
receive messages from queue using msgrcv(2)

The message itself is contained in a user-defined structure such as

struct mymsg {
long mtype; /* message type */
char mtext[512]; /* body of message */
};

Lecture 08: Interprocess Communication I October 22, 2018

 CS631 - Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment Slide 11

System V IPC: Message Queues

$ cc -Wall msgsend.c -o msgsend

$ cc -Wall msgrecv.c -o msgrecv
$ ipcs -qo
$ ./msgsend 1 ’Hello!’
$ ipcs -qo
$ ./msgsend 1 ’How are you?’
$ ipcs -qo
$ ./msgrecv 1
$ ipcs -qo
$ ./msgrecv 1
$ ipcs -qo
$ ./msgrecv 1
^C
$ ipcs -q
$ ./msgsend 2
$ ipcrm -q <msqid>

Lecture 08: Interprocess Communication I October 22, 2018

 CS631 - Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment Slide 12

POSIX Message Queues

mq(3) provides an real-time IPC interface similar to System V message

queues. Notably:
message queues are identified by a named identifier (no ftok(3)
needed); may or may not be exposed in the file system (e.g.
/dev/mqueue)
mq send(3) and mq receive(3) allow both blocking and non-blocking
calls
mq send(3) lets you specify a priority; equal priority messages are
queued as a FIFO, but higher priority messages are inserted before
those of a lower priority
mq(3) provides an asynchronous notification mechanism:
mq notify(3)

Lecture 08: Interprocess Communication I October 22, 2018

 CS631 - Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment Slide 13

POSIX Message Queues

$ cc $CFLAGS mqrecv.c -o mqrecv -lrt

$ cc $CFLAGS -DWAIT mqsend.c -o mqsend
$ ./mqrecv

$ ./mqsend bacon avocado

$ ./mqrecv wait

$ ./mqsend bacon avocado

$ cc $CFLAGS mqsend.c -o mqsend

$ ./mqsend bacon avocado

Lecture 08: Interprocess Communication I October 22, 2018

 CS631 - Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment Slide 14

Pipes: pipe(2)
#include <unistd.h>
int pipe(int filedes[2]);
Returns: 0 if OK, -1 otherwise

oldest and most common form of UNIX IPC

half-duplex (on some versions full-duplex)

Lecture 08: Interprocess Communication I October 22, 2018

 CS631 - Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment Slide 15

Pipes: pipe(2)

Lecture 08: Interprocess Communication I October 22, 2018

 CS631 - Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment Slide 16

Pipes: pipe(2)

Lecture 08: Interprocess Communication I October 22, 2018

 CS631 - Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment Slide 17

Pipes: pipe(2)

Lecture 08: Interprocess Communication I October 22, 2018

 CS631 - Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment Slide 18

Pipes: pipe(2)

$ cc -Wall pipe1.c
$ ./a.out
P=> Parent process with pid 23988 (and its ppid 7474).
P=> Sending a message to the child process (pid 23989):
C=> Child process with pid 23989 (and its ppid 23988).
C=> Reading a message from the parent (pid 23988):
Hello child! I’m your parent pid 23988!
$

Lecture 08: Interprocess Communication I October 22, 2018

 CS631 - Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment Slide 19

Pipes: pipe(2)

$ cc -Wall pipe1.c
$ ./a.out
P=> Parent process with pid 23984 (and its ppid 7474).
P=> Sending a message to the child process (pid 23985):
C=> Child process with pid 23985 (and its ppid 1).
C=> Reading a message from the parent (pid 1):
Hello child! I’m your parent pid 23984!
$

Lecture 08: Interprocess Communication I October 22, 2018

 CS631 - Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment Slide 20

Pipes: pipe(2)

$ cc -Wall pipe1.c
$ ./a.out
P=> Parent process with pid 23986 (and its ppid 7474).
P=> Sending a message to the child process (pid 23987):
C=> Child process with pid 23987 (and its ppid 23986).
C=> Reading a message from the parent (pid 1):
Hello child! I’m your parent pid 23986!
$

Lecture 08: Interprocess Communication I October 22, 2018

 CS631 - Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment Slide 21

Pipes: pipe(2)

A more useful example: displaying some content using the user’s

preferred pager. (Look, Ma, no temporary files!)
$ cat pipe2.c | ${PAGER:-/usr/bin/more}
$ cc -Wall pipe2.c
$ echo $PAGER

$ ./a.out pipe2.c
[...]
^Z
$ ps -o pid,ppid,comm
PID PPID COMMAND
22306 26650 ./a.out pipe2.c
22307 22306 more
23198 26650 ps -o pid,ppid,comm
26650 26641 -ksh
$ fg
$ env PAGER=/bin/cat ./a.out pipe2.c

Lecture 08: Interprocess Communication I October 22, 2018

 CS631 - Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment Slide 22

Pipes: pipe(2)
#include <unistd.h>
int pipe(int filedes[2]);
Returns: 0 if OK, -1 otherwise

oldest and most common form of UNIX IPC

half-duplex (on some versions full-duplex)
can only be used between processes that have a common ancestor
can have multiple readers/writers (PIPE BUF bytes are guaranteed to
not be interleaved)

Behavior after closing one end:

read(2) from a pipe whose write end has been closed returns 0 after
all data has been read
write(2) to a pipe whose read end has been closed generates
SIGPIPE signal. If caught or ignored, write(2) returns an error and
sets errno to EPIPE.

Lecture 08: Interprocess Communication I October 22, 2018

 CS631 - Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment Slide 23

Pipes: popen(3) and pclose(3)

#include <stdio.h>
FILE *popen(const char *cmd, const char *type);
Returns: file pointer if OK, NULL otherwise

int pclose(FILE *fp);

Returns: termination status cmd or -1 on error

historically implemented using unidirectional pipe (nowadays

frequently implemented using sockets or full-duplex pipes)
type one of “r” or “w” (or “r+” for bi-directional communication, if
available)
cmd passed to /bin/sh -c

Lecture 08: Interprocess Communication I October 22, 2018

 CS631 - Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment Slide 24

Pipes: popen(3) and pclose(3)

$ cc -Wall popen.c
$ echo $PAGER

$ ./a.out popen.c
[...]
$ env PAGER=/bin/cat ./a.out popen.c
[...]
$

Lecture 08: Interprocess Communication I October 22, 2018

 CS631 - Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment Slide 25

Pipes: popen(3) and pclose(3)

$ cc -Wall popen.c
$ echo $PAGER

$ ./a.out popen.c
[...]
$ env PAGER=/bin/cat ./a.out popen.c
[...]
$ env PAGER=/bin/cat/foo ./a.out popen.c
sh: /bin/cat/foo: Not a directory
$ env PAGER="more; touch /tmp/boo" ./a.out popen.c
$ env PAGER="more; rm /etc/passwd 2>/dev/null" ./a.out popen.c

Lecture 08: Interprocess Communication I October 22, 2018

 CS631 - Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment Slide 26

FIFOs: mkfifo(2)
#include <sys/stat.h>
int mkfifo(const char *path, mode t mode);
Returns: 0 if OK, -1 otherwise

aka “named pipes”

allows unrelated processes to communicate
just a type of file – test for using S ISFIFO(st mode)
mode same as for open(2)
use regular I/O operations (ie open(2), read(2), write(2),
unlink(2) etc.)
used by shell commands to pass data from one shell pipeline to
another without creating intermediate temporary files

Lecture 08: Interprocess Communication I October 22, 2018

 CS631 - Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment Slide 27

FIFOs: mkfifo(2)

Example: split input into sets

Lecture 08: Interprocess Communication I October 22, 2018

 CS631 - Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment Slide 28

FIFOs: mkfifo(2)

Example: split input into sets

$ mkfifo fifo
$ grep pattern fifo > match &
$ gzcat file.gz | tee fifo | grep -v pattern > nomatch

Lecture 08: Interprocess Communication I October 22, 2018

 CS631 - Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment Slide 29

In-class coding exercise

Implement the ’command’ function:

https://stevens.netmeister.org/631/f18-hw2.html

Lecture 08: Interprocess Communication I October 22, 2018

 CS631 - Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment Slide 30

Reading

https://stevens.netmeister.org/631/ipctut.pdf
https://stevens.netmeister.org/ipc.pdf
https://beej.us/guide/bgipc/html/single/bgipc.html
https://is.gd/M2dkju

Lecture 08: Interprocess Communication I October 22, 2018