I'm starting out in an Operating Systems module. I have a few understanding questions to think about, which will not be gone through in class.
A process state model is an abstraction (or model) which is used to explain what can happen to a process. Give a state of the process, it tells you what is the next allowed states and what causes the process to be in that state, and so on. A model is only at a certain level of abstraction. In this question, we will be focusing on the 5-state process model from the lecture.
(a) Is it possible for a process to never go to Terminated state. If so, give 3 possible scenarios when this can occur. If not, explain your reasoning.
(b) Suppose a process is in terminated state. Discuss whether you should be able to check at any time if a process is in terminated state at all times. Are there any implications?
5 state process model
I have attempted to answer all these questions, but because of their theoretical nature, I think there might be a lot more dimensions to these.
a) I think it is not possible for a process to never go to termination, given enough time, because there are multiple ways a kill() or exit() command can be called, depending on their policy and mechanism in the operating system?
b)
I think it is important because a process in termination state still holds some data and requires the OS to do some cleanup. A process might not be running for other reasons other than termination, it could be in a blocked state without any IO activity or just be inside the ready state.
Can someone check my understanding on these questions? Thanks.