operating system, process A table containing all of the
information that must be saved when the
CPU switches from
The information in the process table allows the suspended
process to be restarted at a later time as if it had never
been stopped. Every process has an entry in the table. These
following information:
process state - information needed so that the process can be
memory state - details of the memory allocation such as
pointers to the various memory areas used by the program
resource state - information regarding the status of files
being used by the process such as
user ID.
Accounting and scheduling information.
An example of a UNIX process table is shown below.
SLOT ST PID PGRP UID PRI CPU EVENT NAME FLAGS
0 s 0 0 0 95 0 runout sched load sys
1 s 1 0 0 66 1 u init load
2 s 2 0 0 95 0 10bbdc vhand load sys
SLOT is the entry number of the process.
ST shows whether the process is paused or sleeping (s), ready
to run (r), or running on a
CPU (o).
PRI is the priority of the process from 127 (highest) to 0
(lowest).
EVENT is the
event on which a process is paused or
sleeping.
NAME is the name of the process.
FLAGS are the process
flags.
A process that has died but still has an entry in the process
(1998-04-24)