Hi,


My questions are about Process ID, Process Control Block (PCB), and Process Table (PT), and thread table


My old notes state that:


1- Each Process is allocated an identifier: Process ID (PID)
2- The PID indexes a process Table (PT)
3- Each process table entry contains a pointer to a relevant process ' PCB


However, the process table definition at foldoc.org [i am not allowed to paste the url since this my 1st post]

states instead that every process has an entry in the table. These entries are known as process control blocks.


So I am just wondering, are the process table entries pointers to the processes' PCB or rather the PCBs contents?


I think these entries include (among others) pointers to the PCBs considering the latter expected size.


A second question do we use any hashing to index the process table since the PIDs values seem not be allocated sequentially


Actually how PID values are allocated and how are they used to index the process table (and afterwards the PCBs)


at the end, i presume that each process pcb contains a pointer to the process thread table and that the thread table has more and less the same structure than the process table, exempt that PCB contents is different from Thread control block

Many thanks for your assistance

This is Linux! There are no secrets here! Have a peek at the Linux source-code in /usr/src/linux/kernel/pid.c and see for yourself!

It's probably more complicated than you expected ...

Logically speaking, a PID (process ID) is simply that: an identifier. Maybe in the earliest days it was some kind of physical index into a table, but I doubt it.

What the Linux system needs, and what pid.c provides, is:

• PIDs are positive integers greater than 1; PID #1 is reserved. Other than that, the actual value is completely meaningless and arbitrary. Very large gaps in the numbering sequence are to be expected.
• PID-values will not be re-used for a very long time. A value will never be reassigned if there are any "dangling" references to it, even if the process in question no longer exists.
• No two simultaneously-existing processes will ever exist with the same PID.
• New unique PIDs can be assigned almost-instantaneously, even on multiprocessor machines.