Understanding the Linux Kernel

19.1. Executable Files

Chapter 1, defined a process as an "execution context." By this we mean the collection of information needed to carry on a specific computation; it includes the pages accessed, the open files, the hardware register contents, and so on. An executable file is a regular file that describes how to initialize a new execution context, i.e., how to start a new computation.

Suppose a user wants to list the files in the current directory: he knows that this result can be simply achieved by typing the filename of the /bin/ls^[1] external command at the shell prompt. The command shell forks a new process, which in turn invokes an execve( ) system call (see Section 19.4 later in this chapter), passing as one of its parameters a string including the full pathname for the ls executable file, /bin/ls in this case. The sys_execve( ) service routine finds the corresponding file, checks the executable format, and modifies the execution context of the current process according to the information stored in it. As a result, when the system call terminates, the process starts executing the code stored in the executable file, which performs the directory listing.

^[1] The pathnames of executable files are not fixed in Linux; they depend on the distribution used. Several standard naming schemes such as FHS and FSSTND have been proposed for all Unix systems.

When a process starts running a new program, its execution context changes drastically since most of the resources obtained during ...