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When I invoke the gnome-control-center from the search bar

searching for "gnome-control" in the Applications menu

The true command which the os runs can be found in ps:

me@alpha:~$ ps -ef | grep gnome-control-center 
me   13952  7293  0 12:20 tty2     00:00:00 gnome-control-center
me   15523  7835  0 12:27 pts/0    00:00:00 grep --color=auto gnome-control-center

It indicates that the operating system opens a terminal tty2, inputs command gnome-control-center, and presses Enter.

When it comes to the init or systemd process

me@alpha:~$ ps -ef | head -5
UID        PID  PPID  C STIME TTY          TIME CMD
root         1     0  0 10:34 ?        00:00:05 /sbin/init splash
root         2     0  0 10:34 ?        00:00:00 [kthreadd]
root         3     2  0 10:34 ?        00:00:00 [rcu_gp]
root         4     2  0 10:34 ?        00:00:00 [rcu_par_gp]

With reference to the PID 1, its command is /sbin/init splash.

From where is it input, /sbin/init splash, and press Enter?

The tty is ? which stands for a daemon process.

Is it right if I understand that daemon processes are invoked from a terminal whose name is ? and this terminal is the grandmother of all processes?

Note:

Thanks for Sergiy's tutorial about Kernel.

I got the idea intuitively from a picture from a book called "Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment".

The system call fork is to spawn a new process which could be called from shell or from applications.

diagram from book

wjandrea
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Alice
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1 Answers1

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The ? symbol indicates that there is no tty associated with the process. In other words, there is no real or virtual device where that process can write information. However, the /sbin/init process is in fact "grandmother" of all processes on the system, directly or indirectly. Where does it come from ? The Linux kernel starts it. The kernel can be called "grand-grandmother" of all processes. The steps are described in Linux kernel documentation:

Operation

When using initrd, the system typically boots as follows:

  1. the boot loader loads the kernel and the initial RAM disk
  2. the kernel converts initrd into a “normal” RAM disk and frees the memory used by initrd
  3. if the root device is not /dev/ram0, the old (deprecated) change_root procedure is followed. see the “Obsolete root change mechanism” section below.
  4. root device is mounted. if it is /dev/ram0, the initrd image is then mounted as root
  5. /sbin/init is executed (this can be any valid executable, including shell scripts; it is run with uid 0 and can do basically everything init can do).
  6. init mounts the “real” root file system
  7. init places the root file system at the root directory using the pivot_root system call
  8. init execs the /sbin/init on the new root filesystem, performing the usual boot sequence
  9. the initrd file system is removed

Note also that ? indicates it is a daemon. To quote daemon(7) man page:

A daemon is a service process that runs in the background and supervises the system or provides functionality to other processes.

Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy
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