Guardian Programmer's Guide

Table Of Contents
Creating and Managing Processes
Guardian Programmer’s Guide 421922-014
16 - 12
Relationship With Other Processes
operating system uses the DCT entry to find out where to send the process-deletion
message (system message -101). Note that because the DCT is a system-wide table,
the operating system can find this information even if process $B was deleted because
of a CPU failure.
Process $A is also the ancestor of process $C. Because $C is a process pair,
process $A gets the deletion message only if both members of the process pair are
deleted. So long as either member of the process pair is running, process $A does not
need to be informed.
Relationship With an Unnamed Process
Referring again to Figure 16-2, process $A also creates an unnamed process. For
unnamed processes, the linkage to the creator process is provided in the mom field of
th
e PCB. The mom field contains the process handle of the creator process. If the
unnamed process is stopped, then the operating system uses the address in the mom
field to send a process-deletion message to the creator process. In this case, the
creator process is known as the mom process.
If the unnamed process is deleted because of a CPU failure, then the linkage
information in the PCB goes away with the CPU. The mom process therefore does not
receive the process-deletion message. It is up to the mom process to check for the
CPU down message. The mom process must have issued the MONITORCPUS
procedure call for the appropriate CPU, if the process will receive the CPU down
message.
Figure 16-2. Mom and Ancestor Processes
VST081.VSD