Unix_Concepts: Only mark up I/O operations as code and not comma

[aple.git] / Unix_Concepts.m4

TITLE(«

        Unix is user-friendly. It's just very selective about who
        its friends are. -- Unknown

», __file__)

SECTION(«History and Philosophy»)

SUBSECTION(«Early Unix History»)

<p> Unix was created in 1969 as a successor of Multics, the
<em>MULTiplexed Information and Computing Service</em>, which had been
in use since the mid 1960s as the successor of CTSS, the <em>Compatible
Time-Sharing System</em> of the early 1960s. Multics aimed to get
CTSS right, but failed in this regard and was eventually discontinued
because of its complexity. The Unix approach was very different as it
was brainstormed by only three people and then implemented by Ken
Thompson at Bell Laboratories in two days. Unlike its predecessors it
focused on elegance and simplicity. The name was originally spelt
UNICS (<em>UNiplexed Information and Computing Service</em>) to
emphasize the contrast to Multics. </p>

<p> The original Unix implementation was written in assembly
language for the 18 bit processor of the PDP-7 "minicomputer", a
device of the size of a wardrobe which was considered small by the
standards of the day. Like all computers of this era, the PDP-7 was
not connected to a video screen. Instead, input had to be typed in on
the <em>console</em>, a device which looked much like an electric
typewriter. Output from the computer was printed on rolls of paper.
Since the assembly instructions could not easily be ported to different
hardware, Dennis Ritchie invented the C programming language in
1971. By 1973 the complete Unix implementation had been rewritten in C.
The C language was another corner stone in the history of Unix which
turned out to be very successful. While other programming languages
of that time have long been abandoned or play merely a niche role, C
is still one of the most widely used programming languages today. The
first Unix application was <code>roff</code>, a typesetting program
which is still ubiquitous as the manual pages which ship with every
Unix system are formatted with roff. </p>

<p> From the beginning, Thompson and his early collaborators encouraged
close communication between programmers, creating an early form of
community. Up to the present day, this "hacker culture" has been a
stimulus for countless improvements. Copies of Unix were distributed
on tapes, hand-signed with "Love, Ken". Over time many universities
contributed to Unix. By the end of the 1970s, Unix accumulated a
whole bunch of utilities that made it a fully flavored operating
system which was also free of any copyright claims. </p>

<p> Despite the primitive hardware of the time, the early Unix was
remarkably similar to modern Linux systems. For example, the task
scheduler, the hierarchical filesystem tree and the shell already
existed back then. </p>

SUBSECTION(«Networking»)

<p> The <em>Advanced Research Projects Agency</em> (ARPA) was a
military research unit that was part of the USA's department of
defence. It was established in the early 1960s with the mandate to
create systems that could survive a nuclear war. The agency created
the <em>arpanet</em>, the predecessor of today's internet, which was
designed to stay operational after subordinate network losses. By
the end of the 1960s and the early 1970s, the fundamental networking
protocols were established: telnet for remote login was standardized
in 1969, email (SMTP) in 1971, and the file transfer protocol (FTP)
in 1973. </p>

<p> By the end of the 1970s many Unix installations existed in
all parts of the world. However, the arpanet was mostly powered by
commercial Multics systems because Unix only had rudimentary network
support (UUCP, the <em>Unix to Unix copy</em>) which could copy files
over telephone lines via modems but not much more. This changed in
1983 when TCP/IP networking was developed by the ARPA to replace the
arpanet. Unix support for TCP/IP was developed at Berkeley University
which had become the "Mecca" for Unix development and started already
in 1977 to release their own Unix system named BSD, the <em>Berkeley
Software Distribution</em>. </p>

SUBSECTION(«Commercialization, POSIX and GNU»)

<p> With excellent networking support and no licensing issues, it
was only a matter of time until companies became interested in Unix
in order to make money. Several companies started to commercialize
Unix by adding features to the common code base but keeping their
improvements closed, effectively stopping the source code from being
freely distributable. At the same time Microsoft began to sell their
DOS operating system, targeting small businesses and the home market.
DOS lacked many features that Unix already had for a decade, like
multi-tasking and multi-user support, but it did run on the cheap
Intel 286 processors that were too weak for Unix. </p>

<p> By 1985 the commercialization of Unix and the success of Microsoft
had damaged the Unix community badly. But also the various companies
that sold their particular proprietary Unix brand realized that
too many incompatible Unix implementations would only hurt their
business. That's where the Computer Society of the <em>Institute of
Electrical and Electronics Engineers</em> (IEEE) became involved
in Unix. The IEEE is an organization which was already founded in
1946 to advance the theory, practice, and application of computer
technology. This organization created POSIX, the <em>Portable Operating
System Interface for Unix</em>, which is a family of specifications
for maintaining compatibility between operating systems. The first
version of POSIX was published in 1988. It covered several command
line utilities including <code>vi(1)</code> and <code>awk(1)</code>,
the shell scripting language, application programmer interfaces (APIs)
for I/O (input/output) and networking, and more. Up to the present
day POSIX is maintained by the IEEE and new revisions of the POSIX
standard are published regularly. </p>

<p> In 1983 Richard Stallman launched the GNU project and the Free
Software Foundation as a reaction to the ongoing commercialization
of Unix. GNU, which is is a recursive acronym for "GNU's not Unix",
aimed to keep the Unix source code free, or to replace non-free parts
by open source equivalents. To this aim the GNU project created
the <em>GNU General Public License</em> (GPL), which requires not
only the source code to stay free, but also that all subsequent
modifications to the code base remain free. By the end of the 80s,
the GNU toolset had become a full developer software stack licensed
under the GPL. This set of software packages was complemented by
the <em>X window system</em>, which was also released under a free
license and enabled programmers to build graphical applications for
desktop systems.  Moreover, the first open source scripting language,
<em>perl</em>, was released in 1987. </p>

SUBSECTION(«Linux»)

<p> In 1985 Intel announced the 386 processor which, unlike its 286
predecessor, was powerful enough to run Unix. There were efforts to
port the Unix operating system kernel to this hardware, but these
efforts were impaired by pending lawsuits about who owns the copyright
on the BSD source code. Due to the unclear legal situation of the BSD
code, the major missing piece in the GNU toolset was a free operating
system kernel. This hole was filled in 1991 when Linus Torvalds,
a student from Helsinki in Finland, announced the first version of
his <em>Linux</em> kernel. </p>

<p> Linux did not repeat the licensing problems of the original Unix
because the Linux source code was written from scratch and licensed
under the GPL. Due to this difference many developers moved from
Unix to Linux, so Linux grew quickly and started soon to outperform
the commercial Unix kernels in almost every benchmark. The cheap 386
hardware, the Linux kernel, the GNU toolset and the graphical user
interface based on the X window system facilitated cheap workstations
which ran a complete open source software stack. </p>

<p> The success of Linux, or <em>GNU/Linux</em> as some prefer to
call it for reasons that should now be clear, steadily increased over
time. In 2003 the SCO group, a company which sold a proprietary Unix
system, was unhappy about this progress and sued IBM, which offered
various Linux products. SCO claimed to be the owner of Unix, and that
Linux contained "millions of lines" of code copied from Unix. SCO's
lawyers argued that the success of Linux originated from this theft
of intellectual property and asked for $5 billion as compensation
for the resulting losses. The company also tried to collect taxes
from other Linux users. Microsoft funded SCO in these efforts. </p>

<p> In the end SCO lost the lawsuit since it was evident that all that
copied code never existed. In fact, the court ruled that SCO did not
even own the Unix copyrights to begin with. Another fun fact is that
the large number of bugs in the early Linux code actually helped to
prove that Linux was original work. The long term effects of this
lawsuit, an improved position of Linux and its ecosystem, last until
the presence. Commercial Unix systems have become irrelevant as Linux
runs on a wide variety of machines ranging from supercomputers to
workstations, smart phones and IOT (internet of things) devices with
very limited resources. </p>

<p> While SCO went bankrupt eventually, some of the companies which
almost killed Unix by maximizing their own profit still exist, and
make money with Linux today. However, they had to adjust their
business model in order to comply with the GPL. Rather than selling
proprietary software, they bundle open source software and sell
support to paying customers. Some companies also sell hardware with
Linux pre-installed. </p>

SUBSECTION(«Linux Distributions»)

<p> A <em>Linux Distribution</em> is a conglomeration of free software,
including the Linux kernel, the GNU toolset and the X window system,
plus possibly other, proprietary software on top of that. Usually a
distribution also includes an installer and a package manager to
make it easy to install and update packages according to the users'
needs. </p>

<p> There are hundreds of Linux distributions, and new distributions
are created all the time while others are discontinued. Many
distributions are backed by companies which target specific
classes of users or hardware, but there are also non-commercial
Linux distributions which are solely driven by a community of
volunteers. </p>

<p> One of the most popular company-backed Linux distributions is
<em>Ubuntu</em>, which is led since 2004 by the UK-based Canonical Ltd.
It targets unskilled desktop users which would like to switch away
from Microsoft Windows. One reason for the popularity of Ubuntu
is that it is very easy to install on standard desktop and laptop
hardware. A distinguishing feature of Ubuntu is its strict release
cycles: New versions are released in April and October of each year,
and every fourth release is a <em>long-term support</em> (LTS) release
which will be supported for at least five years. Ubuntu also features
a variant for server hardware which contains a different Linux kernel
and ships with most desktop packages excluded. </p>

<p> The main community-driven Linux distribution is
<em>Debian</em>. The Debian project was founded in 1993 and the first
stable version was released in 1996. Debian is used as the basis for
many other distributions. In fact, Ubuntu is based on Debian. The
development of Debian closely follows the Unix culture in that it
is developed openly and distributed freely. A team of about 1000
core developers work together with countless package maintainers
according to the Debian Social Contract, the Debian Constitution,
and the Debian Free Software Guidelines. </p>

EXERCISES()

<ul>
        <li> Run <code>uname -a</code> on various Unix machines to see the
        OS type and the kernel version. </li>

        <li> Explore the <a
        href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Unix_history-simple.svg">Unix
        time line</a>. </li>

        <li> Try out the <a
        href="http://www.gnu.org/cgi-bin/license-quiz.cgi">Free Software
        licensing quiz</a>. </li>

        <li> On a Debian or Ubuntu system, run <code>aptitude search
        python</code> to list all python-related Ubuntu packages. Run
        <code>aptitude show python-biopython</code> to see the description
        of the biopython package. Repeat with different search patterns and
        packages. </li>

        <li> The Debian Social Contract (DSC) describes the agenda of Debian.
        Find the DSC online, read it and form your own opinion about the key
        points stated in this document. </li>
</ul>

SECTION(«Characteristics of a Unix system»)

<p> After having briefly reviewed the history of Unix, we now look
closer at the various components which comprise a Unix system and
which distinguish Unix from other operating systems. We focus on
general design patterns that have existed since the early Unix days
and are still present on recent Linux systems. </p>

SUBSECTION(«Single Hierarchy of Files»)

<p> The most striking difference between Unix and Windows is perhaps
that on Unix the files of all devices are combined to form a single
hierarchy with no concept of drive letters. When the system boots,
there is only one device, the <em>root device</em>, which contains the
<em>root directory</em>. To make the files of other devices visible,
the <em>mount</em> operation must be employed. This operation attaches
the file hierarchy of the given device to the existing hierarchy
at a given location which is then called the <em>mountpoint</em>
of the device. Mountpoints are thus the locations in the hierarchy
where the underlying storage device changes. </p>

<p> The root directory contains a couple of well-known subdirectories,
each of which is supposed to contain files of a certain type or for
a certain purpose. The following table lists a subset:

<ul>
        <li> <code>/bin</code>: Essential commands for all users </li>
        <li> <code>/sbin</code>: Essential system binaries </li>
        <li> <code>/lib</code>: Essential libraries </li>
        <li> <code>/usr</code>: Non-essential read-only user data </li>
        <li> <code>/etc</code>: Static configuration files </li>
        <li> <code>/home</code>: Home directories </li>
        <li> <code>/tmp</code>: Temporary files </li>
        <li> <code>/run</code>: Files which describe the state of running programs </li>
        <li> <code>/var</code>: Log and spool files </li>
</ul>

<p> The <em>Filesystem Hierarchy Standard</em> describes the various
subdirectories in more detail. The exercises ask the reader to become
acquainted with this directory structure. </p>

SUBSECTION(«POSIX Commands and Shell»)

<p> The Filesystem Hierarchy Standard lists <code>/bin</code>
and <code>/sbin</code> and several other directories for executable
files. The POSIX standard defines which executables must exist in one
of these directories for the system to be POSIX-compliant.  Well over
100 <em>POSIX commands</em> are listed in the XCU volume of this
standard. Besides the names of the commands, the general behaviour
of each and the set of command line options and their semantics are
described.  POSIX versions are designed with backwards compatibility
in mind. For example, a new POSIX version might require a command
to support additional command line options, but existing options are
never dropped and never change semantics in incompatible ways. The
target audience of the POSIX document are programmers who implement
and maintain the POSIX commands and users which want to keep their
software portable across different Unix flavors. </p>

<p> One of the POSIX commands is the <em>shell</em>,
<code>/bin/sh</code>, an interpreter that reads input expressed in
the <em>shell command language</em>, which is also part of POSIX.
The shell transforms the input in various ways to produce commands
and then executes these commands. The user may enter shell code
(i.e., code written in the shell command language) interactively at
the <em>command prompt</em>, or supply the input for the shell as a
<em>shell script</em>, a text file which contains shell code. Shell
scripts which only contain POSIX commands and use only POSIX options
are portable between different shell implementations and between
different Unix flavors. They should therefore never cease to work after
an upgrade. Among the many available POSIX shell implementations,
<em>GNU bash</em> is one of the more popular choices. Bash is fully
POSIX compatible and offers many more features on top of what is
required by POSIX. </p>

<p> Several implementations of the POSIX commands exist. On Linux
the GNU implementation is typically installed while FreeBSD, NetBSD
and MacOS contain the BSD versions. Although all implementations
are POSIX-compliant, they differ considerably because different
implementations support different sets of additional features and
options which are not required by POSIX. These extensions are not
portable, and should thus be avoided in shell scripts that must work
on different Unix flavors. </p>

<p> In addition to the POSIX commands, a typical Unix system might well
contain thousands of other commands. This illustrates another aspect
that is characteristic for Unix: Tools should do only one specific
task, and do it well. The operating system provides mechanisms
to combine the simple commands in order to form more powerful
programs. For example, commands can be <em>chained</em> together so
that the output of one command becomes the input for the next command
in the chain. This is the idea behind <em>pipes</em>, a Unix concept
which dates back to 1973 and which is also covered by POSIX. We shall
come back to pipes and related concepts in a later section. </p>

SUBSECTION(«Multi-User, Multi-Tasking, Isolation»)

<p> From the very beginning Unix was designed to be a multi-user
and a multi-tasking operating system. That is, it could run multiple
programs on behalf of different users independently of each other and
isolated from each other. This design was chosen to improve hardware
utilization and robustness. In contrast, DOS and early versions
of Windows were designed for <em>personal computing</em> (PC) and
had no notion of user accounts, access permissions or isolation.
This resulted in an unstable system because a single misbehaving
program was enough to take down the whole system. Therefore these
features had to be retrofitted later.  </p>

<p> While multi-tasking makes all tasks appear to run simultaneously
even if there are more tasks than CPUs, isolation refers to
<em>memory protection</em>, a mechanism which prevents applications
from interfering with each other and with the internals of the
operating system. A running Unix system maintains two sets of
running tasks: besides the <em>application tasks</em> there is
also a set of <em>kernel tasks</em>. Unlike the application tasks,
the kernel tasks are privileged in that they can access the memory
of the application tasks while applications tasks can only access
their own memory. Isolation is achieved by a hardware concept called
<em>protection domains</em>, which existed already in Multics and thus
predates Unix. In the simplest case, there are only two protection
domains: a privileged domain called <em>ring 0</em> for the kernel
tasks, and an unprivileged domain for application tasks, also called
<em>user processes</em> in this context. The CPU is always aware
of the current protection domain as this information is stored in a
special CPU register.

SUBSECTION(«System Calls and the C POSIX Library»)

<p> Only when the CPU is running in the privileged ring 0 domain
(also known as <em>kernel mode</em>, as opposed to <em>user mode</em>
for application tasks), it can interact directly with hardware and
memory. If an application wants to access hardware, for example read a
data block from a storage device, it can not do so by itself. Instead,
it has to ask the operating system to perform the read operation
on behalf of the application. This is done by issuing a <em>system
call</em>. Like function calls, system calls interrupt the current
program, continue execution at a different address and eventually
return to the instruction right after the call. However, in addition
to this, they also cause the CPU to enter kernel mode so that it can
perform the privileged operation. When the system call has done its
work and is about to return to the application, the protection domain
is changed again to let the CPU re-enter user mode. </p>

<p> The system calls thus define the interface between applications
and the operating system. For backwards compatibility it is of utmost
importance that system calls never change semantics in an incompatible
way. Moreover, system calls must never be removed because this would
again break existing applications. The syntax and the semantics
of many system calls are specified in POSIX, although POSIX does
not distinguish between functions and system calls and refers to
both as <em>system functions</em>. This is because system calls are
typically not performed by the application directly. Instead, if an
application calls, for example, <code>read()</code>, it actually calls
the compatibility wrapper for the <code>read</code> system call which
is implemented as a function in the <em>C POSIX Library</em> (libc),
which ships with every Unix system. It is this library which does the
hard work, like figuring out which system calls are supported on the
currently running kernel, and how kernel mode must be entered on this
CPU type. Like the POSIX commands, the system functions described in
POSIX never change in incompatible ways, so programs which exclusively
use POSIX system functions are portable between different Unix flavors
and stay operational after an upgrade. </p>

SUBSECTION(«Multi-Layer Configuration Through Text Files»)

<p> On a multi-user system it becomes necessary to configure programs
according to each user's personal preferences. The Unix way to
achieve this is to provide four levels of configuration options
for each program. First, there are the built-in defaults which are
provided by the author of the program. Next, there is the system-wide
configuration that is controlled by the administrator. Third,
there is the user-defined configuration, and finally there are the
command line options. Each time the program is executed, the four
sets of configuration options are applied one after another so
that the later sets of options override the earlier settings. The
system-wide configuration is stored in <code>/etc</code> while the
user-defined configuration is stored in that user's home directory.
Both are are simple text files that can be examined and modified with
any text editor. This makes it easy to compare two configurations
and to transfer the configuration across different machines or user
accounts. </p>

SUBSECTION(«Everything is a File»)

<p> Another mantra which is often heard in connection with Unix is
<em>everything is a file</em>. This phrase, while certainly catchy,
is slightly incorrect. A more precise version would be <em>everything
is controlled by a file descriptor</em>, or, as Ritchie and Thompson
stated it, Unix has <em>compatible file, device, and inter-process
I/O</em>. Modern Unix systems have pushed this idea further and employ
file descriptors also for networking, process management, system
configuration, and for certain types of events. The file descriptor
concept is thus an abstraction which hides the differences between the
objects the file descriptors refer to. It provides a uniform interface
for the application programmer who does not need to care about whether
a file descriptor refers to a file, a network connection, a peripheral
device or something else because the basic I/O operations like open,
read, write are the same. </p>

<p> File descriptors are ubiquitous since every Unix program uses
them, albeit perhaps implicitly via higher-level interfaces provided
by a scripting language. We shall return to this topic when we discuss
processes. </p>

SUBSECTION(«Manual Pages»)

<p> All POSIX commands and most other programs are installed along
with one or more <em>man pages</em> (short for <em>manual pages</em>),
which are plain text files that can be formatted and displayed in
various ways. This concept was introduced in 1971 as part of the
<em>Unix Programmer's Manual</em>.  The characteristic page layout
and the typical sections (NAME, SYNOPSIS, DESCRIPTION, EXAMPLES,
SEE ALSO) of a man page have not changed since then. The POSIX
<code>man</code> command is used to view man pages in a terminal. For
example, the command <code>man ls</code> opens the man page of the
<code>ls</code> command, and <code>man man</code> shows the man page
of the <code>man</code> command itself. Most implementations also
maintain a database of the existing man pages and provide additional
commands to query this database. For example, the <code>whatis</code>
command prints the one-line description of all man pages which match
a pattern while the <code>apropos</code> command searches the manual
page names and descriptions. </p>

<p> In addition to the man pages for commands, there are man pages for
system calls, library functions, configuration files and more. Each
man page belongs to one of several <em>man sections</em>. For example,
the aforementioned man pages for <code>ls</code> and <code>man</code>
are part of section 1 (user commands) while section 2 is reserved for
system calls and section 8 for administration commands that can only be
executed by privileged users. By convention, to indicate which section
a command or a function belongs to, the man section is appended in
parenthesis as in <code>mount(8)</code>. Most Unix systems also offer
translated man pages for many languages as an optional package. Note
that the same name may refer to more than one man page. For example
there is <code>kill(1)</code> for the user command that kills processes
and also <code>kill(2)</code> which describes the corresponding system
call. To open the man page of a specific section, one may use a command
like <code>man 2 kill</code>.  The <code>MANSECT</code> environment
variable can be set to a colon-delimited list of man sections to
change the order in which the man sections are searched. </p>

<p> Consulting the local man pages rather than searching the web has
some advantages. Most importantly, the local pages will always give
correct answers since they always match the installed software while
there is no such relationship between a particular web documentation
page and the version of the software package that is installed on the
local computer. Working with man pages is also faster, works offline
and helps the user to stay focused on the topic at hand. </p>

EXERCISES()

<ul>
        <li> Run <code>df</code> on as many systems as possible to see the
        mount points of each filesystem. Then discuss the pros and cons of
        a single file hierarchy as opposed to one hierarchy per device. </li>

        <li> Run <code>ls /</code> to list all top-level subdirectories of
        the root file system and discuss the purpose of each. Consult the
        Filesystem Hierarchy Standard if in doubt. </li>

        <li> Execute <code>cd / && mc</code> and start surfing at the root
         directory.  </li>

        <li> Compare the list of top-level directories that exist on different
        Unix systems, for example Linux and MacOS. </li>

        <li> Find out which type of files are supposed to be stored in
        <code>/usr/local/bin</code>. Run <code>ls /usr/local/bin</code>
        to list this directory.  </li>

        <li> Find out what the term <em>bashism</em> means and learn how to
        avoid bashishms. </li>

        <li> Find the POSIX specification of the <code>cp(1)</code> command
        online and compare the set of options with the options supported by
        the GNU version of that command, as obtained with <code>man cp</code>
        on a Linux system. </li>

        <li>&nbsp;
                <ul>
                        <li> Run <code>time ls /</code> and discuss the meaning of
                        the three time values shown at the end of the output (see
                        <code>bash(1)</code>). </li>

                        <li> Guess the user/real and the sys/real ratios for the following
                        commands. Answer, before you run the commands.

                                <ul>
                                        <li> <code>time head -c 100000000 /dev/urandom > /dev/null</code> </li>

                                        <li> <code>i=0; time while ((i++ &lt; 1000000)); do :; done</code>
                                        </li>
                                </ul>
                        </li>

                        <li> Run the above two commands again, this time run
                        <code>htop(1)</code> in parallel on another terminal and observe the
                        difference. </li>
                </ul>
        </li>

        <li> On a Linux system, check the list of all system calls in
        <code>syscalls(8)</code>. </li>

        <li> The <code>strace(1)</code> command prints the system calls that
        the given command performs. Guess how many system calls the command
        <code>ls -l</code> will make.  Run <code>strace -c ls -l</code> for
        the answer. Read the <code>strace(1)</code> man page to find suitable
        command line options to only see the system calls which try to open
        a file. </li>

        <li> Guess how many man pages a given system has. Run <code>whatis -w
        '*' | wc -l</code> to see how close your guess was. </li>

        <li> Search the web for "cp(1) manual page" and count how many
        <em>different</em> manual pages are shown in the first 20 hits. </li>
</ul>

HOMEWORK(«

Think about printers, sound cards, or displays as a file. Specifically,
describe what <code>open, read</code>, and <code>write</code> should
mean for these devices.

», «

Opening would establish a (probably exclusive) connection
to the device.  Reading from the file descriptor returned by
<code>open(2)</code> could return all kinds of status information,
like the type, model and capabilities of the device. For example,
printers could return the number of paper trays, the amount of toner
left etc. Writing to the file descriptor would cause output on the
device. This would mean to print the text that is written, play the
audio samples, or show the given text on the display. The point to
take away is that the <code>open, read, write</code> interface is a
generic concept that works for different kinds of devices, not only
for storing data in a file on a hard disk.

»)

SECTION(«Paths, Files and Directories»)

In this section we look in some detail at paths, at a matching
language for paths, and at the connection between paths and files. We
then describe the seven Unix file types and how file metadata are
stored. We conclude with the characteristics of soft and hard links.

SUBSECTION(«Paths»)

<p> The path concept was introduced in the 1960s with the Multics
operating system. Paths will be familiar to the reader because
they are often specified as arguments to commands. Also many
system calls receive a path argument. A path is a non-empty
string of <em>path components</em> which are separated by slash
characters. An <em>absolute path</em> is a path that starts with a
slash, all other paths are called <em>relative</em>. A relative path
has to be interpreted within a context that implies the leading
part of the path. For example, if the implied leading part is
<code>/foo/bar</code>, the relative path <code>baz/qux</code> is
equivalent to the absolute path <code>/foo/bar/baz/qux</code>. </p>

<p> Given a path, there may or may not exist a file or a
directory that corresponds to the path. <em>Path lookup</em> is the
operation which determines the answer to this question, taking the
implied leading part into account in case of relative paths. This
operation is always performed within the kernel and turns out to
be surprisingly complex due to concurrency and performance issues.
Consult <code>path_resolution(7)</code> on a Linux system to learn
more about how pathnames are resolved to files. </p>

<p> If a path was successfully looked up, each path component up to the
second-last refers to an existing directory while the last component
refers to either a file or a directory. In both cases the directory
identified by the second-last component contains an entry named by the
last component. We call those paths <em>valid</em>. The valid paths
give rise to a rooted tree whose interior nodes are directories and
whose leaf nodes are files or directories. Note that the validity of a
path depends on the set of existing files, not just on the path itself,
and that a valid path may become invalid at any time, for example if
a file is deleted or renamed. Many system calls which receive a path
argument perform path lookup and fail with the <code>No such file or
directory</code> error if the lookup operation fails. </p>

<p> It depends on the underlying filesystem whether the path components
are <em>case-sensitive</em> or <em>case-insensitive</em>. That is,
whether paths which differ only in capitalization (for example
<code>foo</code> and <code>Foo</code>) refer to the same file.
Since the hierarchy of files may be comprised of several filesystems,
some components of the path may be case-sensitive while others are
case-insensitive. As a rule of thumb, Unix filesystems are case
sensitive while Microsoft filesystems are case-insensitive even when
mounted on a Unix system. </p>

<p> Path components may contain every character except the Null
character and the slash. In particular, space and newline characters
are allowed. However, while dots are allowed in path components if
they are used together with other characters, the path components
<code>.</code> and <code>..</code> have a special meaning: every
directory contains two subdirectories named <code>.</code> and
<code>..</code> which refer to the directory itself and its parent
directory, respectively. </p>

SUBSECTION(«Globbing»)

<p> Globbing, also known as <em>pathname expansion</em>, is a pattern
matching language for paths which was already present in the earliest
Unix versions. The glob operation generates a set of valid paths from
a <em>glob pattern</em> by replacing the pattern by all <em>matching
paths</em>. </p>

<p> Glob patterns may contain special characters called
<em>wildcards</em>. The wildcard characters are: </p>

        <ul>
                <li> <code>*</code>: match any string, </li>
                <li> <code>?</code>: match any simple character, </li>
                <li> <code>[...]</code>: match any of the enclosed characters. </li>
        </ul>

<p> The complete syntax rules for glob patterns and the exact
semantics for pattern matching are described in POSIX and in
<code>glob(7)</code>. Any POSIX-compliant shell performs globbing
to construct the command to be executed from the line entered at
the prompt. However, POSIX also demands system functions which make
globbing available to other applications. These are implemented as
part of libc. </p>


<p> There are a few quirks related to globbing which are worth to
point out. First, if no valid path matches the given pattern, the
expansion of the pattern is, by definition according to POSIX, the
pattern itself. This can lead to unexpected results. Second, files
which start with a dot (so-called <em>hidden</em> files) must be
matched explicitly. For example, <code>rm *</code> does <em>not</em>
remove these files. Third, the tilde character is <em>no</em> wildcard,
although it is also expanded by the shell. See the exercises for more
examples. </p>

<p> POSIX globbing has some limitations. For example, there is no
glob pattern which matches exactly those files that start with an
arbitrary number of <code>a</code> characters. To overcome these
limitations, some shells extend the matching language by implementing
<em>extended glob patterns</em> which are not covered by POSIX. For
example, if extended globbing feature of <code>bash(1)</code> is
activated via the <code>extglob</code> option, the extended glob
pattern <code>+(a)</code> matches the above set of files. </p>

SUBSECTION(«File Types»)

We have seen that all but the last component of a valid path refer
to directories while the last component may refer to either a file
or a directory. The first character in the output of <code>ls
-l</code> indicates the type of the last path component: for
directories a <code>d</code> character is shown while files (also
called <em>regular</em> files in this context) get a hyphen character
(<code>-</code>). Besides directories and regular files, the following
special file types exist:

<dl>
        <dt> Soft link (<code>l</code>) </dt>

        <dd> A file which acts as a pointer to another file. We shall cover
        links in a dedicated subsection below. </dd>

        <dt> Device node (<code>c</code> and <code>b</code>) </dt>

        <dd> Also called <em>device special</em>. These files refer to devices
        on the local system. Device nodes come in two flavors: character
        devices (<code>c</code>) and block devices (<code>b</code>). Regardless
        of the flavor, each device node has a major and a minor number
        associated with it. The major number indicates the type of the
        device (e.g. a hard drive, a serial connector, etc.) while the
        minor number enumerates devices of the same type. On most systems
        the device nodes are created and deleted on the fly as the set of
        connected devices changes, for example due to a USB device being
        added or removed. However, device nodes can also be created manually
        with the <code>mknod(1)</code> command or the <code>mknod(2)</code>
        system call. Device nodes do not necessarily correspond to physical
        devices. In fact, POSIX demands the existence of a couple of
        <em>virtual devices</em> with certain properties. We look at some of
        these in the exercises. The access to device nodes which do correspond
        to physical devices is usually restricted to privileged users. </dd>

        <dt> Socket (<code>s</code>) </dt>

        <dd> Sockets provide an interface between a running program and the
        network stack of the kernel. They are subdivided into <em>address
        families</em> which correspond to the various network protocols. For
        example, the <code>AF_INET</code> and <code>AF_INET6</code> address
        families are for internet protocols (IP) while <code>AF_LOCAL</code>
        (also known as <code>AF_UNIX</code>) is used for communication between
        processes on the same machine. These local sockets are also called
        <em>Unix domain sockets</em>. They can be bound to a path which
        refers to a file of type socket. Regardless of the address family,
        processes can exchange data via sockets in both directions, but
        the local sockets support additional features, like passing process
        credentials to other processes. </dd>

        <dt> Fifo (<code>p</code>) </dt>

        <dd> Files of type <em>fifo</em> are also known as <em>named
        pipes</em>. They associate a path with a kernel object that provides a
        <em>First In, First Out</em> data channel for user space programs. Data
        written to the fifo by one program can be read back by another program
        in the same order. Fifos are created with the <code>mkfifo(1)</code>
        command or the <code>mkfifo(3)</code> library function. </dd>
</dl>

<p> Note that the type of a file is never inferred from the path.
In particular the suffix of the path (everything after the last
dot) is just a convention and has no strict connection to the file
type. Also there is no difference between text and binary files. </p>

SUBSECTION(«Metadata and Inodes»)

<p> The <code>stat(2)</code> system call returns the metadata
of the file or directory that corresponds to the given path. The
<code>stat(1)</code> command is a simple program which executes this
system call and prints the thusly obtained metadata in human-readable
form, including the file type. This is done without looking at the
contents of the file because metadata are stored in a special area
called the <em>inode</em>. All types of files (including directories)
have an associated inode. Besides the file type, the inode stores
several other properties prescribed by POSIX. For example the file
size, the owner and group IDs, and the access permissions are all
stored in the inode. Moreover, POSIX requires to maintain three
timestamps in each inode: </p>

<ul>
        <li> modification time (mtime): time of last content change. </li>

        <li> access time (atime): time of last access. </li>

        <li> status change time (ctime): time of last modification to the
        inode. </li>
</ul>

<p> To illustrate the difference between the mtime and the ctime,
consider the <code>chgrp(1)</code> command which changes the group
ID of the file or directory identified by its path argument. This
command sets the ctime to the current time while the mtime is left
unmodified. On the other hand, commands which modify the contents of
a file, such as <code>echo foo >> bar</code>, change both the mtime
and the ctime. </p>

<p> The inode of each file or directory contains twelve <em>mode
bits</em>, nine of which are the <em>permission bits</em> which
control who is allowed to access the file or directory, and how. The
permission bits are broken up into three classes called <em>user</em>
(<code>u</code>), <em>group</em> (<code>g</code>) and <em>others</em>
(<code>o</code>). Some texts refer to the first and last class as
"owner" and "world" instead, but we won't use this naming to avoid
confusion. Each class contains three bits. The bits of the "user"
class apply to the file owner, that is, the user whose ID is stored in
the inode. The "group" category applies to all non-owners who belong
to the group whose ID is stored in the inode. The third category
applies to all remaining users. The three bits of each class refer to
read/write/execute permission. They are therefore named <code>r</code>,
<code>w</code> and <code>x</code>, respectively. The permission
bits mean different things for directories and non-directories,
as described below. </p>

<table>
        <tr>
                <th> &nbsp;&nbsp; </th>
                <th> Directories </th>
                <th> Non-directories </th>
        </tr> <tr>
                <th> <code>r</code> </th>

                <td> The permission to list the directory contents. More precisely,
                this bit grants the permission to call <code>opendir(3)</code>
                to obtain a handle to the directory which can then be passed to
                <code>readdir(3)</code> to obtain the directory contents. </td>

                <td> If read permission is granted, the <code>open(2)</code> system
                call does not fail with the <code>permission denied</code> error,
                provided the file is opened in read-only mode. The system call may
                fail for other reasons, though.

        </tr> <tr>
                <th> <code>w</code> </th>

                <td> The permission to add or remove directory entries. That is,
                to create new files or to remove existing files. Note that write
                permission is not required for the file that is being removed. </td>

                <td> Permission to open the file in write-only mode in order
                to perform subsequent operations like <code>write(2)</code>
                and <code>truncate(2)</code> which change the contents of the
                file. Non-directories are often opened with the intention to both
                read and write. Naturally, such opens require both read and write
                permissions. </td>

        </tr> <tr>
                <th> <code>x</code> </th>

                <td> The permission to <em>search</em> the directory. Searching
                a directory means to access its entries, either by retrieving
                inode information with <code>stat(2)</code> or by calling
                <code>open(2)</code> on a directory entry. </td>

                <td> Run the file. This applies to <em>binary executables</em> as well
                as to text files which start with a <em>shebang</em>, <code>#!</code>,
                followed by the path to an interpreter. We shall cover file execution
                in more detail below. </td>

        </tr>
</table>

<p> To run the regular file <code>/foo/bar/baz</code>, search
permission is needed for both <code>foo</code> and <code>bar</code>,
and execute permission is needed for <code>baz</code>. Similarly, to
open the regular file <code>foo/bar</code> for reading, we need execute
permissions on the current working directory and on <code>foo</code>,
and read permissions on <code>bar</code>. </p>

<p> A <em>numeric permission mode</em> is a three octal digit (0-7)
number, where the digits correspond to the user, group, other classes
described above, in that order. The value of each digit is derived by
adding up the bits with values 4 (read), 2 (write), and 1 (execute).
The following table lists all eight possibilities for each of the
three digits. </p>

<table>
        <tr>
                <th> Octal Value </th>
                <th> Symbolic Representation </th>
                <th> Meaning </th>
        </tr> <tr>
                <td> 0 </td>
                <td> <code>---</code> </td>
                <td> no permissions at all </td>
        </tr> <tr>
                <td> 1 </td>
                <td> <code>--x</code> </td>
                <td> only execute permission </td>
        </tr> <tr>
                <td> 2 </td>
                <td> <code>-w-</code> </td>
                <td> only write permission </td>
        </tr> <tr>
                <td> 3 </td>
                <td> <code>-wx</code> </td>
                <td> write and execute permission </td>
        </tr> <tr>
                <td> 4 </td>
                <td> <code>r--</code> </td>
                <td> only read permission </td>
        </tr> <tr>
                <td> 5 </td>
                <td> <code>r-x</code> </td>
                <td> read and execute permission </td>
        </tr> <tr>
                <td> 6 </td>
                <td> <code>rw-</code> </td>
                <td> read and write permission </td>
        </tr> <tr>
                <td> 7 </td>
                <td> <code>rwx</code> </td>
                <td> read, write and execute permission </td>
        </tr>
</table>

<p> The <code>chmod(1)</code> command changes the permission
bits of the file identified by the path argument. For example,
<code>chmod 600 foo</code> sets the permissions of <code>foo</code> to
<code>rw-------</code>. Besides the octal values, <code>chmod(1)</code>
supports symbolic notation to address the three classes described
above: <code>u</code> selects the user class, <code>g</code> the
group class, <code>o</code> the class of other users. The symbolic
value <code>a</code> selects all three classes. Moreover, the letters
<code>r</code>, <code>w</code> and <code>x</code> are used to set or
unset the read, write and execute permission, respectively. The above
command is equivalent to <code>chmod u=rw,g=---,o=--- foo</code>. The
<code>+</code> and <code>-</code> characters can be specified instead
of <code>=</code> to set or unset specific permission bits while
leaving the remaining bits unchanged. For example <code>chmod go-rw
foo</code> turns off read and write permissions for non-owners. </p>

<p> Unprivileged users can only change the mode bits of their own
files or directories while there is no such restriction for the
superuser. </p>

SUBSECTION(«Hard and Soft Links»)

<p> Links make it possible to refer to identical files through
different paths. They come in two flavors: hard and soft. Both
types of links have advantages and disadvantages, and different
limitations. We start with hard links because these existed already
in the earliest Unix versions. </p>

<p> A file can have more than one directory entry that points to its
inode. If two directory entries point to the same inode, they are
said to be <em> hard links</em> of each other. The two entries are
equivalent in that they refer to the same file. It is impossible
to tell which of the two is the "origin" from which the "link"
was created. Hard links are created with the <code>link(2)</code>
system call or the <code>ln(1)</code> command. Both take two path
arguments, one for the existing file and one for the directory entry
to be created. The filesystem maintains in each inode a link counter
which keeps track of the number of directory entries which point to the
inode. The <code>link(2)</code> system call increases the link count
while <code>unlink(2)</code> decrements the link count and removes
the directory entry. If the decremented counter remains positive,
there is still at least one other directory entry which points to
the inode. Hence the file is still accessible through this other
directory entry and the file contents must not be released. Otherwise,
when the link counter reached zero, the inode and the file contents
may be deleted (assuming the file is not in use). </p>

<p> There are several issues with hard links. For one, hard links
can not span filesystems. That is, the two path arguments for
<code>link(2)</code> have to refer to files which reside on the
same filesystem. Second, it is problematic to create hard links to
directories. Early Unix systems allowed this for the superuser,
but on Linux the attempt to hard-link a directory always fails.
To address the limitations of hard links, <em>soft links</em>, also
called <em>symbolic links</em> (or <em>symlinks</em> for short),
were introduced. A soft link can be imagined as a special text file
containing a single absolute or relative path, the <em>target</em> of
the link. For relative paths the implied leading part is the directory
that contains the link. A soft link is thus a named reference in
the global hierarchy of files. Unlike hard links, the soft link
and its target do not need to reside on the same filesystem, and
there is a clear distinction between the link and its target. Soft
links are created with <code>symlink(2)</code> or by specifying the
<code>-s</code> option to the <code>ln(1)</code> command. </p>

<p> A soft link and its target usually point to different inodes. This
raises the following question: Should system calls which receive a
path argument that happens to be a soft link operate on the link
itself, or should they <em>follow</em> (or <em>dereference</em>)
the link and perform the operation on the target? Most system calls
follow soft links, but some don't. For example, if the path argument
to <code>chdir(2)</code> happens to be a soft link, the link is
dereferenced and the working directory is changed to the target of
the link instead. The <code>rename(2)</code> system call, however,
does not follow soft links and renames the link rather than its
target. Other system calls, including <code>open(2)</code>, allow
the caller to specify the desired behaviour by passing a flag to the
system call. For yet others there is a second version of the system
call to control the behaviour. For example, <code>lstat(2)</code> is
identical to <code>stat(2)</code>, but does not follow soft links. </p>

<p> It is possible for a soft link to refer to an invalid path. In
fact, <code>ln(1)</code> and <code>symlink(2)</code> do not consider
it an error if the target does not exist, and happily create a soft
link which points to an invalid path. Such soft links are called
<em>dangling</em> or <em>broken</em>. Dangling soft links also occur
when the target file is removed or renamed, or after a mount point
change. </p>

<p> Soft links may refer to other soft links. System calls which
follow soft links must therefore be prepared to resolve chains of
soft links to determine the file to operate on. However, this is not
always possible because soft links can easily introduce loops into the
hierarchy of files. For example, the commands <code>ln -s foo bar;
ln -s bar foo</code> create such a loop. System calls detect this
and fail with the <code>Too many levels of symbolic links</code>
error when they encounter a loop. </p>

<p> Another issue with both soft and hard links is that there is no
simple way to find all directory entries which point to the same path
(soft links) or inode (hard links). The only way to achieve this is
to traverse the whole hierarchy of files. This may be prohibitive
for large filesystems, and the result is unreliable anyway unless
the filesystems are mounted read-only. </p>

EXERCISES()

<ul>
        <li> A path can lack both slashes and components. Give an example
        of a path that lacks a slash and another example of a path that has
        no components.  </li>

        <li> Assume <code>foo</code> is an existing directory. Guess what the
        command <code>mv foo bar</code> will do in each of the following cases:
        (a) <code>bar</code> does not exist, (b) <code>bar</code> exists and
        is a regular file, (c) <code>bar</code> exists and is a directory.
        Verify your guess by running the command. </li>

        <li> Many programs check if a path is valid and act differently
        according to the result. For example, a shell script might
        check for the existence of a file with code like <code>if test
        -e "$file"; do something_with "$file"; fi</code>. Explain
        why this approach is not bullet-proof. How could this be
        fixed? </li>

        <li> Run <code>touch file-{1..100}</code> to create 100 files. Guess
        what the following commands will print. Run each command to confirm.

        <ul>
                <li> <code>ls file-</code> </li>
                <li> <code>ls file-*</code> </li>
                <li> <code>ls file-?</code> </li>
                <li> <code>ls file-[1-4]</code> </li>
                <li> <code>ls file-[1,3,5,7,9]*</code> </li>
        </ul>
        </li>

        <li> Find an extended glob pattern for <code>bash(1)</code>
        that matches all valid paths whose last component starts with
        <code>file-</code>, followed by any number of odd digits (1, 3, 5,
        7, or 9). </li>

        <li> Point out the flaw in the following shell code: <code>for
        f in file-*; do something_with "$f"; done</code>. Hint: Search
        <code>bash(1)</code> for "nullglob".

        <li> Create a file named <code>-r</code> with <code>echo >
        -r</code>. Try to remove the file with <code>rm -r</code> and
        discuss why this doesn't work as expected. Find a way to get rid
        of the file. Discuss what happens if you run <code>rm *</code> in a
        directory which contains a file named <code>-r</code>. </li>

        <li> The content of the <code>PATH</code> variable is a
        colon-separated list of directories in which the shell looks for
        commands to execute. Discuss the dangers of including the current
        working directory in this list. </li>

        <li> Run <code>id</code> to determine a group <code>G</code> you
        belong to but is not your primary group. Consider the following
        commands <code>mkdir foo; chgrp $G foo; touch foo/bar</code>. What
        is the group ID of <code>foo/bar</code>? Run the same commands, but
        insert <code>chmod g+s foo</code> as the second-to-last command. </li>

        <li> Run <code>man null</code> and <code>man zero</code> to learn
        about the properties of these two character devices. </li>

        <li> Assume the modification time stored in the inode of some file
        suggests that the file was last modified two years ago. How sure
        can you be that the file was never changed since then? Hint: See the
        <code>-d</code> option of <code>touch(1)</code>. </li>

        <li> Run the following commands <code>echo hello > foo</code>,
        <code>cat foo</code>, <code>chmod 600 foo</code>, <code>echo world >>
        foo</code>. Check the three timestamps with <code>stat foo</code>
        after each command. </li>

        <li> Determine the state of the permission bits of your own
        home directory by running <code>ls -ld ~</code>. Who can
        access its contents? Also look at the permission bits of
        other people's home directory. </li>

        <li> A file or directory is called <em>world-writeable</em>
        if the <code>w</code> bit is set in the <code>others</code>
        class of the permission bits. Create a world-writable
        directory with <code>mkdir foo; chmod 777 foo</code>
        and create a file in the new directory: <code>echo hello
        > foo/bar</code>. Is a different user allowed to create
        another file there (<code>echo world > foo/baz</code>)? Can
        he remove it again (<code>rm foo/baz</code>)? Will he succeed
        in removing <code>foo/bar</code> although it is owned by you
        and <em>not</em> writable to him? Try the same with the sticky
        bit turned on (<code>chmod 1777 foo</code>). </li>

        <li> Translate <code>rw-r--r--</code> into octal, and 755 into
        <code>rwx</code>-notation. </li>

        <li> Create a <a href="#hello_world">hello world script</a>, make it
        executable and run it. Create a subdirectory of your home directory
        and move the script into this directory. Set the permissions of the
        directory to <code>r--------</code>, check whether you still can
        list/execute it. Do the same with <code>--x------</code>. </li>

        <li> Create a file with <code>echo hello > foo</code>,
        create soft and hard links with <code>ln -s foo soft</code>
        and <code>ln foo hard</code>. Examine the inode numbers
        and link counts using the command <code>stat foo soft
        hard</code>. Remove <code>foo</code> and repeat. Try to
        access the file content through both links. Guess what
        <code>realpath foo soft hard</code> will print. Run the
        command to confirm. </li>

        <li> Create a dangling symlink with <code>ln -s /nope foo</code>. Would
        you expect the commands <code>ls -l foo</code> and <code>cat foo</code>
        succeed? Run these commands to verify your guess. </li>

        <li> One of the seven Unix file types is symlink. Why is there no
        file type for hard links? </li>
</ul>

HOMEWORK(«
How many paths are there that refer to the same file?
», «
Given the path <code>/foo/bar</code>, one may construct different paths
which refer to the same file by inserting any number of <code>/.</code>
or <code>../foo</code> after the first component. For example,
<code>/foo/./bar</code> and <code>/foo/../foo/bar</code> both refer
to the same file. If relative paths have to be taken into account as
well, even more paths can be constructed easily. Hence the answer is:
arbitrary many.

This illustrates the fundamental difference between a path and a
file. Paths can be mapped to files, but not the other way around. In
particular, there is no such thing like "the list of paths which have
changed since yesterday".

The concept of hard- and soft links complicates the situation further.
»)

HOMEWORK(«
Given two paths, how can one tell if they refer to the same file?
», «

Among other information, the metadata record of each file contains the
so-called <em>inode number</em>, which uniquely identifies the file
within the file system that contains the file. Therefore, if both
paths are known to refer to files stored on the same file system,
a comparison of the two inode numbers is sufficient to tell whether
the two paths refer to the same file. The inode number can be obtained
with the command <code>ls -i</code>.

In the general case one additionally has to check that the
two <code>device IDs</code> which identify the underlying file
systems are also identical. Like the inode number, the device ID
is part of the metadata of the file. It can be obtained by running
<code>stat(1)</code>.

»)

HOMEWORK(«
Device nodes come in two flavors: Character and block devices. Explain
the difference between the two device flavors.
»)

HOMEWORK(«

<ul>
        <li> Nine of the 12 mode bits of each file are the permission
        bits. The remaining three are the <em>sticky</em>, <em>setuid</em>
        and <em>setgid</em> bits. Explain the purpose of each. </li>

        <li> Run <code>find /usr/bin/ -perm -2000 -ls</code> to see all SUID
        executables in <code>/usr/bin</code>. Discuss why those programs have
        the SUID bit set. </li>
</ul>

»)

HOMEWORK(«
How many possible permission modes exist for a file or directory on
a Unix System?
», «
There are nine permission bits that can be turned on and off
independently. Hence we have 2^9=512 possibilities. When taking into
account the three special bits (sticky, setuid, setgid), the number
increases to 2^12=4096.
»)

HOMEWORK(«
Explain each command of the <a href="«#»symlink_madness">script</a>
below. Show the arrangement of all files and links in a figure,
drawing a directory as a circle and a file as a square.  How many
different paths exist for the file <code> a</code>? Discuss whether
the question "What's the path of a given file?" makes sense.

», «

<div>
<svg
        width="150" height="125"
        xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"
        xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
>
        <marker
                id="slm_arrow"
                viewBox="0 0 10 10" refX="5" refY="5"
                markerWidth="4" markerHeight="4"
                orient="auto-start-reverse">
                <path d="M 0 0 L 10 5 L 0 10 z" />
        </marker>
        <circle
                fill="#ccc"
                stroke-width="1"
                stroke="black"
                r=20
                cx=51
                cy=21
        />
        <text
                x="51"
                y="21"
                stroke="black"
                text-anchor="middle"
                dy="0.3em"
        >foo</text>
        <rect
                fill="#ccc"
                stroke-width="1"
                stroke="black"
                x=1
                y=81
                width="40"
                height="40"
                rx="5"
        />
        <text
                x="21"
                y="101"
                stroke="black"
                text-anchor="middle"
                dy="0.3em"
        >a</text>
        <ellipse
                cx=81
                cy=101
                rx=30
                ry=20
                fill="#ccc"
                stroke-width="1"
                stroke="black"
        />
        <text
                x="81"
                y="101"
                stroke="black"
                text-anchor="middle"
                dy="0.3em"
        >testdir</text>
        <line
                stroke="black"
                stroke-width="1"
                x1="41"
                y1="45"
                x2="24"
                y2="75"
        />
        <line
                stroke="black"
                stroke-width="1"
                x1="61"
                y1="45"
                x2="77"
                y2="75"
        />
        <path
                d="
                        M 118,101
                        C 150,90 150,30 80,20
                "
                stroke-width="2"
                stroke="black"
                fill="none"
                marker-end="url(#slm_arrow)"
        />
</svg>
</div>

Since <code> foo/a</code>, <code> foo/testdir/a</code>, <code>
foo/testdir/testdir/a </code> etc. all refer to the same file, there
are infinitely many paths for the file <code> a</code>. Hence the
question makes no sense: There is no such thing as <em> the </em>
path to a file.

»)

HOMEWORK(«

Recall that the path component <code>..</code> refers to the
parent directory. Give an example of a path to a directory where
"parent directory" and "directory identified by the path obtained by
removing the last path component" are different. Which of the two
interpretations of <code>..</code> does bash apply when you type
<code>cd ..</code> at the bash prompt?

»)

HOMEWORK(«

Is it possible to choose among all possible paths which refer to the
same file a <em>canonical</em> path? That is, a shortest (counting
characters) absolute path which does not contain any soft links?

», «

<p> The POSIX standard requires each Unix system library to provide
the <code>realpath()</code> function which performs the following
substitutions on the given path: First, the path to the current
working directory is prepended if the given path is relative
(does not begin with a slash). Second, symbolic links are replaced
by their targets. Third, any occurrences of <code>/.</code> and
<code>foo/..</code> are removed. The thusly transformed path is
returned by the function as the canonical path. </p>

<p> Although each path can be canonicalized in this way, not all paths
which refer to the same file give rise to the same canonical path. For
example, <code>/tmp/foo</code> and <code>/tmp/bar</code> could refer
to regular files which are hard links of each other. In this case the
paths refer to the same file, yet the paths are different and already
canonicalized. The same can happen when a file system (or a subtree
of it) is <em>bind mounted</em>. That is, the file system tree is
visible at two or more locations in the global directory tree. </p>

The message of this exercise is to convince the reader that it is
incorrect to assume that two files are different because their paths
are different.

»)

SECTION(«Processes»)

<p> A <em>program</em> consists of instructions and data stored in
a regular file. A <em> user process</em> is an instance of a running
program. This is in contrast to <em>kernel processes</em> which are
created directly by the kernel and have no relationship to executable
files. Since we shall only be concerned with user processes, we will
refer to these as "processes" from now on. In this section we'll see
how processes are created and removed. We will then take a closer look
at the enviroment of a process and discuss how processes communicate
with each other. </p>

SUBSECTION(«Process Tree, Zombies and Orphans»)

<p> When the system boots, there is only one process, the
<em>init</em> process, which is created by the kernel at the end
of the boot sequence by executing <code>/sbin/init</code>. All
other processess are created from existing processes by means of
the <code>fork(2)</code> system call. The process which called
<code>fork(2)</code> is said to be the <em>parent</em> of the newly
created <em>child</em>. After <code>fork(2)</code> returns, both
parent and child are executing independently of each other. Both
processes may call <code>fork(2)</code> again to create further
processes. This gives rise to a tree structure where the processes
are the nodes of the tree with init being the root node. The edges
of the tree describe the parent-child relationships. </p>

<p> If there are more processes than CPUs, not all processes can
run simultaneously. It is the mission of the kernel's <em>task
scheduler</em> to assign processes to CPUs and to perform <em>context
switches</em>. That is, to take away the CPU from a running process
in order to give another process the chance to run. The scheduler
has to choose the duration of each process' time slice and it must
pick the process to switch to when the time slice of the current
process has expired or the process gives up the CPU voluntarily, for
example because it is waiting for an I/O operation to complete. This
is a non-trivial task at least for modern multi-CPU systems with
<em>non-uniform memory access</em> (NUMA) where the memory access times
depend on the memory location and the processor core. Things don't
get easier if the CPU clock speed can vary and/or scheduling must be
power-aware to optimize battery time. To make good decisions, some
information has to be provided by the processes or by a system-wide
policy. One elementary way to prioritize certain processes over others
is via <em>nice levels</em> which we shall discuss below. </p>

<p> The normal way for a process to terminate is to call
<code>exit(3)</code> after it has done its work. This function
transfers an integer value, the <em>exit status</em>, to the
kernel. The exit status can only be retrieved by the parent of
the terminating process. To illustrate this concept, imagine an
interactive shell which creates one child each time the user enters
a command. The children are short living while the parent, the shell,
stays around for much longer. During command execution the parent needs
to wait for its child to terminate. It may then want to tell whether
the child has terminated successfully. To achieve this, the parent
calls one of the <em>wait</em> system calls (<code>wait(2)</code>,
<code>waitpid(2)</code>, <code>waitid(2)</code>) which block until the
child has terminated, then return the child's exit status. After the
child called <code>exit(3)</code> but before the parent has called
one of the wait functions, the kernel needs to keep at least the
exit status (and possibly further information) about the terminated
child. During this time window the child has already terminated but
a part of it still exists in kernel memory. Processes in this state
are aptly called <em>zombies</em>. </p>

<p> Unlike in the shell scenario outlined above, a process might well
have any number of children at the time it terminates. Its children
then become <em>orphans</em> as they lose their parent. The kernel
cannot simply remove the terminated process from the process tree
because this would disconnect its orphaned children from the other
processes in the tree, destroying the tree structure. To avoid this,
orphans are <em>reparented to init</em>, that is, made children
of the init process. This works because the init process never
terminates. </p>

<p> There are several programs which show information about
processes. The POSIX <code>ps(1)</code> command prints a list of
processes. It has many options that control which processes are
shown and how the output is formatted. Similar programs which are not
covered by POSIX are <code>pstree(1)</code>, <code>top(1)</code> and
<code>htop(1)</code>. The former shows the tree structure while the
latter two provide a dynamic real-time view of the process tree. The
exercises of this section invite the reader to become familiar with
these essential programs. </p>

SUBSECTION(«File Execution»)

<p> When a process calls <code>fork(2)</code>, the newly created
child process starts out as a copy of the calling process. However,
the reason to create a new process is usually to let the child do
something different than the parent. Therefore, <code>fork(2)</code>
is often followed by a second system call which replaces the child
process with a different program. There are several similar system
calls which do this, with slight semantic differences. We refer to
this family of system calls as the <em>exec system calls</em>. </p>

<p> All exec system calls receive a path argument from which they
determine an executable file that contains the program to run. Linux
and BSD store executables in <em>Executable and Linkable Format</em>
(ELF). Executables are typically linked <em>dynamically</em>.
That is, the dependent libraries (at least libc, but possibly many
more) are loaded at runtime from separate files. This is in contrast
to <em>static linking</em> which includes all dependencies in the
executable, making the executable self-contained but also larger
and harder to maintain. Regardless of the type of linking, when the
program is loaded, it completely replaces the previously running
program. Note that there can be more than one process at the same
time which executes the same program. </p>

<p> Files in ELF format are called <em>native</em> executables because
they contain machine instructions which can be executed directly
by the CPU. Another type of executables are <em>scripts</em>,
also known as <em>interpreter files</em>. Scripts are text files
which start with the <em>shebang</em> (<code>#!</code>). They can
not run directly but have to be <em>interpreted</em> at runtime
by another program, the <em>interpreter</em>. Nevertheless, it is
possible to execute a script as if it were a native executable:
by passing the path to one of the exec system calls or by typing
the path at the shell prompt. The exec system call recognizes that
the given file is a script by investigating the first line, which
contains the path to the interpreter after the shebang, optionally
followed by options to the interpreter. The kernel then executes the
interpreter rather than the script, passing the path to the script as
an argument. For example, if <code>/foo/bar</code> is being executed,
and the first line of this file is <code>#!/bin/sh</code>, the kernel
executes <code>/bin/sh /foo/bar</code> instead. Popular interpreters
besides <code>/bin/sh</code> include <code>/bin/bash</code>,
<code>/usr/bin/perl</code>, <code>/usr/bin/python</code> and
<code>/usr/bin/awk</code>. </p>

SUBSECTION(«File Descriptions and File Descriptors»)

<p> The kernel must always be aware of the set of all objects which are
currently in use. This set is often called the <em>system-wide table
of open files</em> although not all entries refer to files. In fact, an
entry may refer to any object that supports I/O operations, for example
a network socket. Each entry is called a <em>file description</em>,
which is a somewhat unfortunate term that was coined by POSIX. A
file description records information about the object itself as well
as the current state of the reference, including the file offset,
if applicable, and the <em>status flags</em> which affect how future
I/O operations are going to be performed through this reference. </p>

<p> The kernel maintains for each process an array of pointers to file
descriptions. Each such pointer is a <em>file descriptor</em>. Unlike
files and file descriptions, a file descriptor always corresponds
to a process and is identified by a non-negative number, the index
into the pointer array of that process. This index is returned by
system calls like <code>open(2)</code> or <code>socket(2)</code>.
As far as user space programs are concerned, a file descriptor is
synonymous with this integer. It can be regarded as an abstract
<em>handle</em> that must be supplied to subsequent I/O operations
like <code>read(2)</code> or <code>write(2)</code> to tell the system
call the target object of the operation. </p>

<p> The shell automatically creates three file descriptors for each
process which are identified by the integers 0, 1 and 2. They are
called <em>stdin</em>, <em>stdout</em>, and <em>stderr</em>, which is
short for <em>standard input/output/error</em>. It is possible, and in
fact common, that all three file descriptors point to the same file
description: the terminal device. Many command line tools read their
input from stdin, write normal output to stdout, and error messages
to stderr. For example, when the POSIX command <code>cat(1)</code>
is invoked with no arguments, it reads data from stdin and writes
the same data to stdout. </p>

SUBSECTION(«Signals»)

<p> Signals are another ancient Unix concept that dates back to the
early 1970s and was standardized in POSIX long ago. This concept
facilitates a rudimentary form of <em>inter process communication</em>
(IPC) between unrelated processes. Signals can be regarded as software
interrupts that transmit a notification event from the sending process
to the target process. The event is sent <em>asynchronously</em>,
meaning that the interruption can happen at any location of the code
flow. </p>

<p> It is fair to say that most non-trivial programs, including
scripts, have to deal with signals. All major scripting languages
(bash, python, perl, ruby, etc.) provide an API for signal
handling. The interpreter of the scripting language ends up calling
the POSIX system functions, so we will only look at these. </p>

<p> Signals are identified by name or by a numerical ID. For example,
<code>SIGINT</code> (interrupt from keyboard) is the name for signal
number 2. POSIX defines 31 <em>standard signals</em> plus at least
eight <em>real-time signals</em>. The standard signals can be
subdivided according to the origin of the signal as follows. </p>

<dl>
        <dt> hardware related signals </dt>

        <dd> These signals originate from <em>hardware traps</em> that force
        the CPU back into kernel mode. The kernel responds to the trap by
        generating a signal for the process that caused the trap. For example,
        a division by zero in a user space program triggers a hardware trap
        in the <em>floating point unit</em> (FPU) of the CPU. The kernel
        then generates the <code>SIGFPE</code> (floating-point exception)
        signal for the process. Another example for a signal that originates
        from a hardware trap is <code>SIGSEGV</code> (segmentation fault)
        which occurs when a process attempts to reference a memory address
        that has not been mapped (i.e., marked as valid) by the <em>memory
        management unit</em> (MMU) of the CPU. </dd>

        <dt> kernel generated signals </dt>

        <dd> Signals which originate from the kernel rather than from
        hardware. One example is <code>SIGCHLD</code> (child terminated),
        which is sent to the parent process when one of its child processes
        terminates. Another example is <code>SIGWINCH</code> (window resize),
        which is generated when the geometry of the controlling terminal of
        a process changes. </dd>

        <dt> user-space generated signals </dt>

        <dd> These signals can only originate from user space when a process,
        for example <code>kill(1)</code>, calls <code>raise(2)</code>
        or <code>kill(2)</code> to instruct the kernel to generate a
        signal. Examples are <code>SIGTERM</code>, which issues a termination
        request, and <code>SIGUSR1</code> and <code>SIGUSR2</code> which are
        reserved for use by application programs. </dd>
</dl>

The following signals are used frequently and deserve to the described
explicitly. We refer to <code>signal(7)</code> for the full list of
signals and their semantics.

<dl>
        <dt> <code>SIGINT, SIGTERM</code> and <code>SIGKILL</code> </dt>

        <dd> All three signals terminate the process by default.
        <code>SIGINT</code> is generated for the <em>foreground processes</em>
        when the <em>interrupt character</em> (CTRL+C) is pressed in a
        terminal. For example, if CTRL+C is pressed while the shell pipeline
        <code>find | wc </code> is executing, <code>SIGINT</code> is sent
        to both processes of the pipeline. <code>SIGTERM</code> is the
        default signal for the <code>kill(1)</code> command. It requests
        the target process to run its shutdown procedure, if any, then
        terminate. <code>SIGKILL</code> instructs the kernel to terminate the
        target process immediately, without giving the process the chance to
        clean up. This signal can originate from a process or from the kernel
        in response to running out of memory. To keep the system working, the
        kernel invokes the infamous <em>out of memory killer</em> (OOM killer)
        which terminates one memory-hungry process to free some memory. </dd>

        <dt> <code>SIGSTOP</code>, <code>SIGTSTP</code> and <code>SIGCONT</code> </dt>

        <dd> <code>SIGSTOP</code> instructs the task scheduler of the kernel to
        no longer assign any CPU time to the target process until the process
        is woken up by a subsequent <code>SIGCONT</code>. <code>SIGTSTP</code>
        (stop typed at terminal) stops all foreground processes of a terminal
        session. It is generated when the <em>stop character</em> (CTRL+Z)
        is pressed in a terminal. </dd>
</dl>

<p> Processes may set the <em>signal disposition</em> of most signals
to control what happens when the signal arrives. When no disposition
has been set, the signal is left at its <em>default disposition</em> so
that the <em>default action</em> is performed to deliver the signal.
For most signals the default action is to terminate the process,
but for others the default action is to <em>ignore</em> the signal.
If the signal is neither ignored nor left at its default disposition,
it is said to be <em>caught</em> by the process. To catch a signal the
process must tell the kernel the address of a function, the <em>signal
handler</em>, to call in order to deliver the signal. The set of
signal dispositions of a process can thus be imagined as an array
of function pointers with one pointer per possible signal. If the
process catches the signal, the pointer points to the corresponding
signal handler. A NULL pointer represents a signal that was left at
its default disposition while the special value <code>SIG_IGN</code>
indicates that the process explicitly asked to ignore this signal. </p>

<p> Signals can also be <em>blocked</em> and <em>unblocked</em>. When
a signal is generated for a process that has it blocked, it remains
<em>pending</em>. Pending signals cause no action as long as the
signal remains blocked but the action will be performed once the
signal gets unblocked. <code>SIGKILL</code> and <code>SIGSTOP</code>
can not be caught, blocked, or ignored. </p>

<p> Real-time signals are similar to <code>SIGUSR1</code> and
<code>SIGUSR2</code> in that they have no predefined meaning but
can be used for any purpose. However, they have different semantics
than the standard signals and support additional features. Most
importantly, real-time signals are <em>queued</em>, meaning that in
contrast to standard signals the same real-time signal can be pending
multiple times. Also, the sending process may pass an <em>accompanying
value</em> along with the signal. The target process can obtain this
value from its signal handler along with additional information like
the PID and the UID of the process that sent the signal. </p>

<p> Some system calls including <code>read(2)</code> and
<code>write(2)</code> may block for an indefinite time. For
example, reading from a network socket blocks until there is data
available. What should happen when a signal arrives while the process
is blocked in a system call? There are two reasonable answers: Either
the system call is <em>restarted</em>, or the call fails with the
<code>Interrupted system call</code> error. Unfortunately, different
flavors of Unix handle this case differently by default. However,
applications may request either behaviour by setting or clearing the
<code>SA_RESTART</code> flag on a per-signal basis. </p>

SUBSECTION(«Environment of a Process»)

<p> Now that we have a rough understanding of processes we look
closer at the information the kernel maintains for each process. We
already discussed the array of file descriptors and the array of
signal dispositions. Clearly both are process specific properties.
As we shall see, there is much more what constitutes the environment
of a process. </p>

<p> Each process is identified by a unique <em>process ID</em>
(PID), which is a positive integer. The <code>init</code> process is
identified by PID 1. PIDs are assigned in ascending order, but are
usually restricted to the range 1..32767. After this many processes
have been created, PIDs wrap and unused PIDs are recycled for new
processes. Thus, on a busy system on which processes are created and
terminated frequently, the same PID is assigned to multiple processes
over time. </p>

<p> Not all processes call <code>fork(2)</code> to create a child
process, but each process except the init process has a unique
parent. As described before, this is either the "real" parent (the
process which created the process earlier) or the init process that
"adopted" the orphaned process in case the real parent terminated
before the child. The process ID of the parent (PPID) is thus
well-defined. A process can obtain its PID and PPID with the
<code>getpid(2)</code> and <code>getppid(2)</code> system calls. </p>

<p> Each process runs on behalf of a user (possibly the superuser)
which is identified by its <em>user ID</em> (UID) and belongs to
one or more groups, identified by one or more <em>group IDs</em>
(GIDs). The superuser is identified by UID zero. When we talked
about the permission bits of files and directories, we said that
suitable permissions are needed for system calls which operate on
files (<code>open(2)</code>, <code>stat(2)</code>, etc.). A more
precise statement is that the <em>process</em> which calls, say,
<code>open(2)</code> needs to have these permissions. To decide this,
the kernel needs to take into account the UID and GIDs of the process
that called <code>open(2)</code>, the UID and the GID stored in the
inode of the file that is being opened, and the permission bits of
this file. The UID is also taken into account for <code>kill(2)</code>
because unprivileged processes (non-zero UID) can only send signals
to processes which run on behalf of the same user while the superuser
may target any process. </p>

<p> Each process has a <em>current working directory</em> (CWD)
associated with it. When the user logs in, the CWD of the login shell
process is set to his <em>home directory</em>, which should always
exist and have the read, write and execute permission bits set for
the user. The CWD can later be changed with <code>chdir(2)</code>
and be retrieved with <code>getcwd(3)</code>. The CWD is used as the
starting point for path searches for relative paths. It affects most
system calls which receive a path argument. For example, if the CWD
is <code>/foo/bar</code> and the relative path <code>baz/qux</code>
is passed to <code>open(2)</code>, the kernel will attempt to open
the file which is identified by <code>/foo/bar/baz/qux</code>. </p>

<p> Many programs accept arguments to control their behavior.
In addition to the path to the program that is to be executed,
all variants of the exec system calls receive an array of arguments
called the <em>argument vector</em>. For example, when the command
<code>ls -l foo</code> is executed, the argument vector contains
the two strings <code>"-l"</code> and <code>"foo"</code>. Note that
the argument vector is not part of the program but is tied to the
process. It is passed to the main function at startup so that the
program may evaluate it and act accordingly. </p>

<p> Another way to pass information to a program is via <em>environment
variables</em>. Environment variables are strings of the form
<code>name=value</code>. POSIX describes the API to maintain the
environment variables of a process. Environment variables are set
with <code>setenv(3)</code> or <code>putenv(3)</code>, the value of a
variable can be retrieved with <code>getenv(3)</code>, and a variable
and its value can be deleted with <code>unsetenv(3)</code>. The set of
environment variables is sometimes called the <em>environment</em>
of the process, although we use this term in a broader sense to
describe the entirety of all metadata maintained by the kernel about
the process, including but not limited to environment variables. </p>

<p> Each process also has about a dozen <em>resource limits</em>
that can be set and queried with the POSIX <code>setrlimit(2)</code>
and <code>getrlimit(2)</code> functions. Each limit controls a
different aspect. For example, <code>RLIMIT_CPU</code> limits the
CPU time the process is allowed to use and <code>RLIMIT_NOFILE</code>
controls how many open files it may have at a time. For each resource
there is a <em>soft</em> and a <em>hard</em> limit. The kernel
enforces the value stored as the soft limit. This value may be set
by an unprivileged process to any value between zero and the hard
limit. Unprivileged processes may also reduce (but not increase) their
hard limits. Once a hard limit is reduced, it can not be increased
any more. For <code>RLIMIT_CPU</code> a special convention applies:
If the soft limit is reached, the kernel sends <code>SIGXCPU</code>
(CPU time limit exceeded) to notify the process about this fact so
that it can terminate orderly (e.g., remove temporary files). When
the hard limit is reached, the kernel terminates the process as if
it received <code>SIGKILL</code>. </p>

<p> The <em>nice level</em> of a process provides a hint for
the task scheduler to give the process a lower or higher priority
relative to other processes. Nice levels range between -20 and 19. A
high nice level means that the process wants to be nice to other
processes, that is, should run with reduced priority. Low nice levels
indicate important processes that should be prioritized over other
processes. The default nice level is zero. Unprivileged users may
set the nice level of new processes with the <code>nice(1)</code>
command to any non-negative value. They can also increase the nice
level of their existing processes with <code>renice(1)</code>, but
never decrease it. The superuser, however, may set the nice level
of any process to an arbitrary value in the valid range. </p>

<p> The bulk of the properties discussed so far are inherited by the
child after a <code>fork(2)</code>. Specifically, the child gets the
same array of file descriptors and signal dispositions as its parent,
runs on behalf of the same user, has the same working directory,
the same resource limits and nice level, and also the same set
of environment variables with identical values. The PID and PPID,
however, are different of course. </p>

<p> After a process has called an exec function to replace itself with
a new program, its signal handlers no longer exist because they were
part of the program code which has been replaced. Therefore the exec
system calls reset the disposition of all signals that were caught to
the default disposition. Signals that were being ignored keep being
ignored, however. </p>

SUBSECTION(«The Process Filesystem»)

<p> Although not covered by POSIX, at least Linux, NetBSD and FreeBSD
provide information about processes via the <em>process filesystem</em>
(procfs), which is usually mounted on <code>/proc</code>. The process
filesystem is a <em>pseudo-filesystem</em>, i.e., it has no underlying
storage device. Files and directories are faked by the kernel as they
are accessed. Each process is represented by a numerical subdirectory
of <code>/proc</code> which is named by the PID. For example,
<code>/proc/1</code> represents the init process. The aforementioned
process utilities (<code>ps(1)</code>, <code>top(1)</code>, etc.) read
the contents of the process filesystem in order to do their job. <p>

<p> Each <code>/proc/[pid]</code> directory contains the same set
of files although this set is different between Unixes. These files
expose much of the environment of the process to user space. The Linux
procfs implementation provides text files named <code>environ</code>
and <code>limits</code> which contain the current environment and
the resource limits of the process, respectively. Moreover, the
file descriptor array of each process is exposed in the files of
the <code>/proc/[pid]/fd</code> directory. Linux and NetBSD (but not
FreeBSD) also provide a <code>cwd</code> soft link which points to
the current working directory of the process. </p>

SUBSECTION(«Pipes and Redirections»)

<p> The <code>pipe(2)</code> system call takes no arguments and
creates two file descriptors for the calling process which are tied
together as a unidirectional first in, first out data channel. One
file descriptor is the <em>read end</em> of the pipe, the other is
the <em>write end</em>. Data written to the write end is buffered by
the kernel and can be obtained by reading from the read end. </p>

<p> One application of pipes is communication between
related processes. A process first creates a pipe, then calls
<code>fork(2)</code> to create a child process. The child inherits
a copy of both pipe file descriptors. Hence the parent process can
communicate with the child by writing a message to the write end of
the pipe for the child to read. </p>

<p> This approach depends on file descriptor inheritance across
<code>fork(2)</code>, so it does not work in the situation
where neither process is an ancestor of the other. Files of
type <em>fifo</em> (named pipes) overcome this restriction. To
establish a connection between two <em>unrelated</em> processes,
both processes call <code>open(2)</code> to obtain a file
descriptor which is associated with the fifo. One process passes
the <code>O_WRONLY</code> flag to open the file for writing while
the other passes <code>O_RDONLY</code> to open it for reading. The
two processes may then communicate in the same way as with the
<code>pipe(2)/fork(2)</code> approach. </p>

<p> The POSIX <code>dup(2)</code> and <code>dup2(2)</code> system
calls allow a process to manipulate the entries of its file descriptor
array. In particular the standard file descriptors 0, 1, and 2 can be
replaced. By doing so before performing an exec system call, it can
be arranged that the replacement program starts with, say, its stdout
file descriptor be redirected to the write end of a pipe. Note that
the replacement program does not need any modifications for this to
work, and might not even be aware of the fact that it is not writing
its output to the terminal as usual. </p>

<p> Shells employ this technique to implement the <code>|</code>
operator which "pipes" the output of one command "into" another
command. For example, the pipeline <code>ls | wc</code> works
as follows: First the shell creates a pipe, then it calls
<code>fork(2)</code> twice to create two processes which both
get a copy of the two pipe file descriptors. The first process
replaces its stdout file descriptor with the write end of the
pipe and performs an exec system call to replace itself with the
<code>ls(1)</code> program. The second process replaces its stdin
file descriptor with the read end of the pipe and replaces itself
with <code>wc(1)</code>. Since <code>ls(1)</code> writes to stdout
and <code>wc(1)</code> reads from stdin, <code>wc(1)</code> processes
the output of <code>ls(1)</code>. </p>

SUBSECTION(«Stdio»)

<p> The POSIX standard requires a compliant Unix system to provide
a collection of functions that let applications perform input and
output by means of operations on <em>streams</em>. This programming
interface, known as <em>stdio</em> for <em>standard input/output</em>,
is part of every Unix system since 1979. Every program which contains
a <code>printf(3)</code> statement relies on stdio. </p>

<p> The stdio functions are implemented as part of libc on top of the
<code>open(2)</code>, <code>read(2)</code> and <code>write(2)</code>
system calls which are implemented in the kernel. Roughly speaking,
stdio replaces the file descriptor API by a more abstract API
which centers around streams. A stream is an opaque data structure
which comprises a file descriptor and an associated data buffer for
I/O. Each program has three predefined streams which correspond to
the three standard file descriptors (stdin, stdout and stderr). The
stdio API contains well over 50 functions to create and maintain
streams and to perform I/O on streams. These functions take care of
the characteristics of the underlying file description. For example,
they automatically try to select the optimal I/O buffer size. </p>

<p> Many applications rely on stdio because of convenience. For
one, the buffers for <code>read(2)</code> and <code>write(2)</code>
must be allocated and freed explicitly by the application, and care
must be taken to not overflow these buffers. With stdio, this task
is done by the stdio library. Second, <em>formatted</em> I/O is
much easier to do with the stdio functions because the programmer
only has to provide a suitable <em>format string</em> to convert
between the machine representation and the textual representation of
numbers. For example, by passing the format string <code>"%f"</code>
to <code>scanf(3)</code>, the programmer tells the stdio library to
read a floating point number stored in textual representation from the
specified stream, convert it to machine representation and store it
in the given variable. The <code>fprintf(3)</code> function works the
other way round: the value is converted from machine representation
to text, and this text is written to the stream. Both functions can
deal with various formats, like scientific notation for floating
point numbers (e.g., 0.42E-23). With stdio it is easy to customize
the formatted output, for example add leading zeros or select the
number of decimal digits in the textual representation of a floating
point number. </p>

<p> Another reason why many programs rely on stdio is that it performs
<em>buffered</em> I/O. With buffered I/O not each read/write operation
results in a system call. Instead, data read from or written to the
stream is first stored in the user space buffer that is associated
with the stream. This is a performance improvement for applications
which perform many small I/O operations because every system call
incurs some overhead. Buffers may be <em>flushed</em> explicitly by
calling <code>fflush(3)</code>, or implicitly by the stdio library. The
criteria which cause an implicit flush depend on the <em>buffering
type</em> of the stream. Three buffering types exist. </p>

<dl>
        <dt> unbuffered </dt>

        <dd> The stdio library does not buffer any reads or writes. Instead,
        each I/O operation results in a <code>read(2)</code> or
        <code>write(2)</code> system call. By default the stderr stream is
        unbuffered to display error messages as quickly as possible. </dd>

        <dt> line buffered </dt>

        <dd> System calls are performed when a newline character is
        encountered. This buffering type applies by default to interactive
        sessions where the file descriptor of the stream refers to a terminal
        device (as determined by <code>isatty(3)</code>). </dd>

        <dt> fully buffered </dt>

        <dd> I/O takes place only if the buffer of the stream is empty/full. By
        default, if the file descriptor refers to a regular file, the
        stream is fully buffered. POSIX requires that stderr is never fully
        buffered. </dd>
</dl>

<p> The exercises on stdio focus on the three different buffering
types because this is a common source of confusion. </p>

SUBSECTION(«The Virtual Address Space of a Process»)

<p> Isolation refers to the concept that each process gets its own
<em>virtual address space</em>. A rough understanding of the memory
management system and the layout of the virtual address space of
a process helps to locate the source of common problems like the
infamous <code>segmentation fault</code> error, and to realize that
putatively simple questions such as "how much memory is my process
currently using?" are in fact not simple at all, and need to be made
more precise before they can be answered. </p>

<div>

define(«vas_width», «200»)
define(«vas_height», «300»)
define(«vas_vmem_left_margin», «5»)
define(«vas_vmem_top_margin», «5»)
define(«vas_mem_width», «20»)
define(«vas_gap_width», «30»)
define(«vas_vmem_height», «140»)
define(«vas_vmem_color», «#34b»)
define(«vas_pmem_height», «100»)
define(«vas_pmem_color», «#7e5»)
define(«vas_vmem_unmapped_color», «#a22»)
define(«vas_vmem_swapped_color», «yellow»)
define(«vas_pmem_unavail_color», «orange»)
define(«vas_disk_gap», «15»)
define(«vas_disk_height», «20»)
define(«vas_disk_color», «grey»)
define(«vas_x1», «vas_vmem_left_margin()»)
define(«vas_x2», «eval(vas_x1() + vas_mem_width())»)
define(«vas_x3», «eval(vas_x2() + vas_gap_width())»)
define(«vas_x4», «eval(vas_x3() + vas_mem_width())»)

define(«vas_membox», «
        <rect
                fill="$1" stroke="black" stroke-width="1"
                x="eval(vas_vmem_left_margin() + $3)"
                y="vas_vmem_top_margin()"
                width="vas_mem_width()" height="$2"
        />
»)
define(«vas_vmem_unmapped_box», «
        <rect
                fill="vas_vmem_unmapped_color()" stroke="black" stroke-width="1"
                x="eval(vas_vmem_left_margin())"
                y="eval(vas_vmem_top_margin() + $1)"
                width="vas_mem_width()"
                height="eval($2)"
        />

»)
define(«vas_vmem_swapped_box», «
        <rect
                fill="vas_vmem_swapped_color()" stroke="black" stroke-width="1"
                x="eval(vas_vmem_left_margin())"
                y="eval(vas_vmem_top_margin() + $1)"
                width="vas_mem_width()"
                height="eval($2)"
        />

»)
define(«vas_pmem_unavail_box», «
        <rect
                fill="vas_pmem_unavail_color()" stroke="black" stroke-width="1"
                x="eval(vas_vmem_left_margin() + vas_mem_width() + vas_gap_width())"
                y="eval(vas_vmem_top_margin() + $1)"
                width="vas_mem_width()"
                height="$2"
        />

»)
define(«vas_vmem_hline», «
        <line
                x1="vas_vmem_left_margin()"
                y1="eval(vas_vmem_top_margin() + $1)"
                x2="eval(vas_vmem_left_margin() + vas_mem_width())"
                y2="eval(vas_vmem_top_margin() + $1)"
                stroke-width="1"
                stroke="black"
        />

»)

define(«vas_pmem_hline», «
        «<!-- pmem hline -->»
        <line
                x1="eval(vas_vmem_left_margin() + vas_mem_width() + vas_gap_width())"
                y1="eval(vas_vmem_top_margin() + $1)"
                x2="eval(vas_vmem_left_margin() + 2 * vas_mem_width() + vas_gap_width())"
                y2="eval(vas_vmem_top_margin() + $1)"
                stroke-width="1"
                stroke="black"
        />

»)
define(«vas_arrow», «
        <line
                x1="eval(vas_vmem_left_margin() + vas_mem_width())"
                y1="eval(vas_vmem_top_margin() + $1)"
                x2="eval(vas_vmem_left_margin() + vas_mem_width() + vas_gap_width() - 2)"
                y2="eval(vas_vmem_top_margin() + $2)"
                stroke-width="1"
                stroke="black"
                marker-end="url(#arrow)"
        />
»)
define(«vas_disk», «
        <rect
                fill="vas_disk_color()" stroke="black" stroke-width="1"
                x="vas_x3()"
                y="eval(vas_vmem_top_margin() + vas_pmem_height()
                        + vas_disk_gap())"
                width="eval(vas_x4() - vas_x3())"
                height="eval(vas_disk_height())"
        />
        <ellipse
                cx="eval(vas_x3() + vas_mem_width() / 2)"
                cy="eval(vas_vmem_top_margin() + vas_pmem_height() + vas_disk_gap())"
                rx="eval(vas_mem_width() / 2)"
                ry="eval(vas_mem_width() / 4)"
                fill="vas_disk_color()" stroke="black"
        />
        <ellipse
                cx="eval(vas_x3() + vas_mem_width() / 2)"
                cy="eval(vas_vmem_top_margin() + vas_pmem_height()
                        + vas_disk_gap() + vas_disk_height())"
                rx="eval(vas_mem_width() / 2)"
                ry="eval(vas_mem_width() / 4)"
                fill="vas_disk_color()" stroke="black"
        />
»)

<svg
        width="vas_width()" height="vas_height()"
        viewBox="0 0 100 eval(100 * vas_height() / vas_width())"
        xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"
        xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
>
        <marker
                id="arrow"
                viewBox="0 0 10 10" refX="5" refY="5"
                markerWidth="4" markerHeight="4"
                orient="auto-start-reverse">
                <path d="M 0 0 L 10 5 L 0 10 z" />
        </marker>
        vas_membox(«vas_vmem_color()», «vas_vmem_height()», «0»)
        vas_membox(«vas_pmem_color()», «vas_pmem_height()»,
                «eval(vas_gap_width() + vas_mem_width())»)
        vas_vmem_hline(«10»)
        vas_vmem_hline(«40»)
        vas_vmem_unmapped_box(«40», «20»)
        vas_vmem_swapped_box(«60», «60»)

        vas_pmem_unavail_box(«0», «10»)
        vas_pmem_hline(«20»)
        vas_pmem_unavail_box(«20», «30»)
        vas_pmem_hline(«80»)

        vas_arrow(«5», «15»)
        vas_arrow(«25», «65»)
        vas_arrow(«130», «90»)
        vas_disk()
        vas_arrow(«90», «eval(vas_pmem_height() + vas_disk_gap()
                + vas_disk_height() / 2)»)
</svg>
</div>

<p> Virtual memory is an abstraction of the available memory resources.
When a process reads from or writes to a memory location, it refers
to <em>virtual addresses</em> (illustrated as the left box of the
diagram). Virtual addresses are mapped by the MMU to <em>physical
addresses</em> which refer to physical memory locations (right
box). The <em>mapped</em> virtual address space of a process is a
collection of ranges of virtual addresses which correspond to physical
memory addresses (blue areas). By storing less frequently-accessed
chunks of virtual memory (yellow) on the swap area (grey), applications
can use more memory than is physically available. In this case the
size of the valid virtual addresses (blue and yellow areas together)
exceeds the amount of physical memory (orange and green areas). Any
attempt to access an unmapped memory location (red and yellow areas)
results in a <em>page fault</em>, a hardware trap which forces the CPU
back into kernel mode. The kernel then checks whether the address is
valid (yellow) or invalid (red). If it is invalid, the kernel sends
<code>SIGSEGV</code>, which usually terminates the process with
the <code>segmentation fault</code> error. Otherwise it allocates
a chunk of unused physical memory, copies the chunk from the swap
area to the newly allocated memory and adjusts the mapping (i.e.,
a yellow part becomes blue). The virtual memory concept increases
stability and security because no process can access physical memory
which belongs to the kernel or to other processes (orange areas). </p>

<p> We've already seen that the <code> fork(2) </code> system call
creates a new process as a duplicate of the calling process. Since
the virtual address space of the calling process (a) might be large
and (b) is likely to be replaced in the child by a subsequent call
to an exec function, it would be both wasteful and pointless to
copy the full address space of the parent process to the child. To
implement <code> fork(2) </code> efficiently, operating systems
employ an optimization strategy known as <em> Copy on Write </em>
(CoW). The idea of CoW is that if multiple callers ask for resources
which are initially indistinguishable, you can give them pointers to
the same resource. This function can be maintained until a caller
tries to modify its copy of the resource, at which point a true
private copy is created to prevent the changes becoming visible to
everyone else. The primary advantage is that if a caller never makes
any modifications, no private copy needs ever be created. The <code>
fork(2) </code> system call marks the pages of the virtual address
space of both the parent and the child process as CoW by setting a
special bit in the <em> page table entry </em> which describes the
mapping between virtual and physical addresses of the MMU. As for
invalid memory accesses, the attempt to write to a CoW page results
in a page fault that puts the CPU back into kernel mode. The kernel
then allocates a new memory page on behalf of the process, copies
the contents of the page which caused the fault, changes the page
table mappings for the process accordingly and returns to user space.
This all happens transparently to the process. </p>

<div>
define(«asl_width», «300»)
define(«asl_height», «400»)
define(«asl_top_margin», «10»)
define(«asl_text_width», «35»)
define(«asl_mem_width», «25»)
define(«asl_mem_color_env», «#fc8»)
define(«asl_mem_color_stack», «#8fc»)
define(«asl_mem_color_empty», «#ccc»)
define(«asl_mem_color_heap», «#c8f»)
define(«asl_mem_color_bss», «#8cf»)
define(«asl_mem_color_data», «#cf8»)
define(«asl_mem_color_text», «#f8c»)
define(«asl_font_size», «5»)

define(«asl_arrow», «
        <line
                x1="0"
                y1="$1"
                x2="eval(asl_text_width() - 2)"
                y2="$1"
                stroke-width="1"
                stroke="black"
                marker-end="url(#arrow)"
        />
»)
define(«asl_arrow_text», «
        <text
                x="0"
                y="$1"
                font-size="asl_font_size()"
        >
                $2
        </text>
»)

dnl $1: y0, $2; height, $3: color, $4: high arrow text
dnl $5: low arrow text, $6: desc

define(«asl_box», «
        <rect
                stroke="black"
                stroke-width="1"
                x="asl_text_width()"
                y="eval($1 + asl_top_margin())"
                height="$2"
                fill="$3"
                width="asl_mem_width()"
        />
        ifelse(«$4», «», «», «
                asl_arrow(«eval($1 + asl_top_margin())»)
                asl_arrow_text(«eval($1 + asl_top_margin() - 2)», «$4»)
        »)
        ifelse(«$5», «», «», «
                asl_arrow(«eval($1 + $2 + asl_top_margin())»)
                asl_arrow_text(«eval(asl_top_margin()
                        + $1 + $2 - 2)», «$5»)
        »)
        <text
                x="eval(asl_text_width() + asl_mem_width() + 2)"
                y="eval($1 + $2 / 2 + asl_top_margin())"
                dy="0.3em"
                font-size="asl_font_size()"
        >
                $6
        </text>
»)

<svg
        width="asl_width()" height="asl_height()"
        viewBox="0 0 100 eval(100 * asl_height() / asl_width())"
        xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"
        xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"
>
        asl_box(«0», «10», «asl_mem_color_env», «2^64 - 1», «»,
                 «Environment»)
        asl_box(«10», «15», «asl_mem_color_stack», «», «base pointer»,
                 «Stack»)
        asl_box(«25», «30», «asl_mem_color_empty», «», «break point»,
                 «Empty»)
        asl_box(«55», «35», «asl_mem_color_heap», «», «», «Heap»)
        asl_box(«90», «10», «asl_mem_color_bss», «», «», «BSS»)
        asl_box(«100», «10», «asl_mem_color_data», «», «», «Data»)
        asl_box(«110», «10», «asl_mem_color_text», «», «0», «Text»)
</svg>
</div>

<p> The diagram on the left illustrates the layout of the virtual
address space of a process. At the top of the address space are the
argument vector and the environment variables. The <em>stack</em>
stores the local variables of the functions which are currently
being called, plus house-keeping data like the return addresses
of these functions. As more functions are called, the stack grows
downwards towards the lower addresses. Its current lower end is
called the <em> base pointer</em>. The other variable area of the
address space is the <em>heap</em>, which contains the memory that
has been allocated on behalf of the process, for example with <code>
malloc(3)</code>. As the process allocates more memory, the heap grows
upwards, towards the stack. The current end of the heap is called the
<em> break point</em>. The lower part of the address space contains
three segments of fixed size. The <em>text</em> segment contains the
compiled machine instructions of the executable, the <em>data</em>
segment contains the initialized variables which are already known
at compile time. Finally, the <em>BSS</em> segment is allocated and
zeroed at execution time. This segment contains variables which should
initialized to zero at startup. Unlike the data segment it is not
stored in the executable. BSS stands for "Block Started by Symbol",
which is a historic name coined in the 1950s. It has no relation to
the real meaning of the segment. </p>

The exercises of this section invite the reader to look at the virtual
address space of running processes to learn what happens when a
dynamically-linked executable is being executed and how the resulting
memory maps affect the virtual address space of the newly created
process.

EXERCISES()

<ul>
        <li> Examine your own processes with <code>htop</code>, <code>ps
        ux</code> and <code>pstree -panuch $LOGNAME</code>. </li>

        <li> Run <code>ls -l /proc/$$</code> and examine the environment of
        your shell process. </li>

        <li> Run <code>kill -l</code> and discuss the meaning of signals
        1-15. Use <code>signal(7)</code> as a reference. </li>

        <li> Create a zombie process: run <code>sleep 100&</code>. From
        another terminal, send <code>SIGSTOP</code> to the parent process
        of the sleep process (the shell), then send <code>SIGKILL</code>
        to the sleep process. Run <code>cat /proc/$PID/status</code> where
        <code>$PID</code> is the process ID of the sleep process. </li>

        <li> Run <code>echo $$</code> to obtain the PID of an interactive
        shell that is running in a terminal. Send the <code>SIGSTOP</code>
        and <code>SIGCONT</code> signals to this PID from another terminal
        and see what happens when you type in the terminal that contains the
        stopped shell process. </li>

        <li> The <code>ping(8)</code> utility catches <code>SIGQUIT</code>.
        In one terminal execute <code>ping localhost</code>. While this
        command runs in an endless loop, send <code>SIGQUIT</code> to the
        ping process from another terminal and see what happens. </li>

        <li> Read <code>kill(2)</code> to learn what <code>kill -9 -1</code>
        does. Run this command if you are brave. </li>

        <li> Why doesn't the <a href="«#»cd_script">cd script</a> work as
        expected? </li>

        <li> Explain the difference between the two commands <code>X=foo
        bar</code> and <code>X=foo; bar</code>. </li>

        <li> Run <code>set</code> and examine the environment variables of
        an interactive shell session. </li>

        <li> Check this <a
        href="https://public-inbox.org/git/Pine.LNX.4.64.0609141023130.4388@g5.osdl.org/">email</a>
        from Linus Torvalds about why stdio is not that simple at all. </li>

        <li> Run the command <code>ls / /does-not-exist</code>, redirect
        stdout and stderr to different files. </li>

        <li> Consider the following shell code which uses stdio to first write
        to stdout, then to stderr. <code>echo foo; echo bar 1>&2</code>. Which
        circumstances guarantee that the "foo" line appears before the "bar"
        line in the output? </li>

        <li> In the pipeline <code> foo | bar</code>, what is the
        buffering type of the file descriptor which corresponds to
        the <code> stdin </code> stream of the <code> bar </code>
        process? </li>

        <li> Assume <code>foo</code> is a log file which increases due to
        some process appending data to it. Explain why the command <code>
        tail -f foo | while read; do echo new data; done </code> does not
        work as expected. Fix the flaw by changing the buffering type with
        <code>stdbuf(1)</code>. </li>

        <li> Run <code>sleep 100 > /dev/null &</code>, examine open
        files of the sleep process by looking at suitable files in
        <code>/proc</code>. Do the same with <code>sleep 100 | head
        &</code>. </li>

        <li> Run <code>ldd /bin/sh</code> and explain what happens when a
        shell is executed. </li>

        <li> On a Linux system, run <code>cat /proc/$$/maps</code> or
        <code>pmap -x $$</code> to see the address space layout of your
        shell. Check <code>Documentation/filesystems/proc.txt</code>
        in the linux kernel source tree for the format of
        <code>/proc/$$/maps</code>. </li>

        <li> Run <code>cat /proc/$$/smaps</code> and examine the values of
        the heap section. </li>

        <li> Assume some program allocates a lot of memory so that the size of
        the valid virtual addresses is 1T large. Assume further that a software
        bug causes the content of a pointer variable to be overwritten with
        random garbage. Determine the probability that this pointer variable
        contains a valid address (assuming a 64 bit system). </li>
</ul>

HOMEWORK(«

Explain how <code>PR_SET_CHILD_SUBREAPER</code> works and possible
use-cases for this (Linux) feature.

»)

HOMEWORK(«

Explain in one paragraph of text the purpose of the <em>file
creation mask</em> (also known as <em>umask</em>) of a process.

»)

HOMEWORK(«

When we said that each process runs on behalf of a user and that the
ID of this user is part of the process metadata, we were simplifying
matters. There are actually three different UIDs and three different
GIDs: the <em>real UID</em>, the <em>effective UID</em>, and the
<em>saved set-user ID</em>, and analogous for the group IDs. Explain
the purpose of the three UIDs.

»)


HOMEWORK(«

On a multi-CPU system the performance of a program can be
enhanced by allowing for multiple flows of control. This is the
idea behind <em>threads</em>, which are also called <em>lightweight
processes</em>. Give an overview of threads, summarize the POSIX thread
API (see <code>pthreads(7)</code>) and explain how the Linux-specific
<code>clone(2)</code> system call can used to implement threads.

»)

HOMEWORK(«

Explain what the command <code>find /etc > /dev/null</code> does,
and why you get some error messages. Assume you'd like to extract
only those error messages which contain the string "lvm". Explain
why <code>find /etc > /dev/null | grep lvm</code> does not work as
expected. Come up with a similiar command that works.

», «

The command traverses the <code>/etc</code> directory recursively and
prints all files and directories it encounters during the traversal to
stdout. Since stdout is redirected to the NULL device by the <code>>
/dev/null</code> construct, only the stderr stream containing the error
messages makes it to the terminal.  This includes all subdirectories
of <code>/etc</code> which cannot be traversed due to insufficient
permissions (no "r" bit set). The proposed <code>find | grep</code>
command does not work since the <code>|</code> operator is evaluated
<em>before</em> any redirections specified by the find command
take place. More precisely, stdout of the find process is redirected
<em>twice</em>: First to one end of the pipe due to the <code>|</code>,
then to the NULL device due to the <code>> /dev/null</code>. The
last redirection "wins", so the <code>grep</code> process does not
see any input. The command <code>find /etc 2>&1 > /dev/null | grep
lvm</code> works. The following four redirections take place: First
stdout of the <code>find</code> process and stdin of <code>grep</code>
process are redirected to the two ends of the pipe. Next, due to
the <code>2>&1</code> the stderr stream of the <code>find</code>
process is redirected to the current destination of stdout, i.e.,
to the pipe. Finally the <code>> /dev/null</code> redirects stdout
of the find process to the NULL device. Hence error messages go to
the pipe and are processed by <code>grep</code> as desired.

»)

HOMEWORK(«
Run <code>ulimit -n</code> to see the maximal number of file descriptors you
are allowed to create. Explain what this limit means with respect
to multiple processes, multiple logins, and the <code>fork(2</code>) system
call. Write a program in your language of choice which creates file
descriptors in a loop until it fails due to the file descriptor
limit. Then print the number of file descriptors the program was able
to create.
», «
On our systems the limit is set to 1024. This means a single process
can only have this many files open at any given time. Independent
processes (like those coming from different login sessions) have no
common file descriptors, even though they may open the same files. In
this sense the file descriptor limit is a per-process limit. However,
when a process calls <code>«fork(</code>») to create a new process, the new
process inherits all open file descriptors from the parent. This can
lead to the situation where a newly created process is unable to open
<em>any</em> files. This property was actually used to break computer
security. The <code>«O_CLOEXEC»</code> flag was introduced not too long
ago to deal with this problem. See <code>open(2</code>) for details.

C program that opens the maximal possible number of file descriptors:

<pre>
        int main(void)
        {
                int i;

                for (i == 0; open("/dev/null", O_RDONLY) >= 0; i++)
                        ;
                printf("opened %d file descriptors\n", i);
                exit(0);
        }
</pre>
»)

HOMEWORK(«

Search the web for the document called
<code>vm/overcommit-accounting</code>. Discuss the pros and cons of
the three possible overcommit handling modes.

»)

HOMEWORK(«

Read this
<a
href="https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/unix/MemoryOvercommit">blog
posting</a> on the virtual memory overcommit issue. Explain the
catch-22 situation described there in no more than two sentences.

»)

HOMEWORK(«

Describe, in a single paragraph of text, what a virtual dynamic
shared object (VDSO) is and which type of applications benefit most
from it.

»)

HOMEWORK(«

Describe the concept of <em> huge pages </em> and the Linux-specific
implementation of <em> transparent </em> huge pages. Discuss the pros
and cons of huge tables and explain the workloads which would benefit
from a setup with huge pages enabled.

»)

HOMEWORK(«
<ul>
        <li> Explain the concept of <em>address space layout randomization</em>
        (ASLR). </li>

        <li> Run <code>bash -c</code> '<code>cat /proc/$$/maps</code>'
        repeatedly to see address space layout randomization in action. Discuss
        the pros and cons of ASLR. </li>
</ul>
»)

SUPPLEMENTS()

SUBSECTION(«cd_script»)

<pre>
        #!/bin/sh
        echo "changing CWD to $1"
        cd "$1"
</pre>

SUBSECTION(«hello_world»)

<pre>
        #!/bin/sh
        echo "hello world"
</pre>

SUBSECTION(«symlink_madness»)

<pre>
        #!/bin/sh
        mkdir foo
        touch foo/a
        ln -s ../foo foo/testdir
        ls -l foo/a foo/testdir/a foo/testdir/testdir/a
</pre>

SECTION(«Further Reading»)
<ul>
        <li> <a
        href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/ch02s01.html">Origins
        and History of Unix, 1969-1995</a> by Eric Steven Raymond. </li>

        <li> <a
        href="https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-gnu-manifesto-turns-thirty">
        The GNU Manifesto Turns Thirty</a>, by Maria Bustillos. </li>

        <li> <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/924577/">The SCO lawsuit,
        20 years later</a> </li>

        <li> <a
        href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/unix-koans/end-user.html">
        The Koan of Master Foo and the End User</a>. </li>

        <li> <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/411845/">Ghosts of Unix Past:
        a historical search for design patterns</a>, by Neil Brown. </li>

        <li> W. Richard Stevens: Advanced Programming in the Unix
        Environment. Addison Wesley. </li>

</ul>