Bahria University, Lahore Campus
Department of Computer Sciences
Lab Manual 05
(Spring 2022)
Course: Operating System Lab Date:
Course Code: CSL - 320 Max Marks: 20
Faculty’s Name: Lab Engineer: Sarah Chaudhry
Name:____________________________________ Enroll No: _______________________
Objective(s):
To write a program to create a process in LINUX.
To understand exec process.
To create child with sleep and wait command.
To understand getpid( ) and getppid( ).
Tool(s) used:
Ubuntu, VIM Editor
FORK( ) SYSTEM CALL:
The purpose of fork() is to create a new process, which becomes the child process of the caller.
After a new child process is created, both processes will execute the next instruction following the
fork() system call. Therefore, we have to distinguish the parent from the child.
The new child process spawned by fork is an identical process to the parent except that has a
new system process ID. The process is copied in memory from the parent and a new process
structure is assigned by the kernel. The return value of the function is which discriminates the
two threads of execution. A zero is returned by the fork function in the child's process.
The fork operation creates a separate address space for the child. The child process has an
exact copy of all the memory segments (contents) of the parent process, except new process
ID.
