1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to a system for copying a program state while the program continues to run and, more particularly, to a system that duplicates a page in memory that is about to be modified so that it can be saved in a condition before it is modified.
2. Description of the Related Art
For some computer programs if they fail before producing a solution to the problem that they are working on it can cost the user a great deal. This typically is the case when the program needs to run for several hours or days before a solution is reached. This cost comes from things such as lost time because the job needs to be completely run again and the price of electricity and for buying computing time on a machine can be expensive. One solution to this problem is a technique called Check Point Restart (CPR). Periodically the user pauses the execution of the program and a copy of all its state is made before resuming execution. If the program or computer crashes after the copy is made, execution can be restarted at the point when the copy was made instead of having to start again from the beginning.
For some programs the process of making a copy of their state can be prohibitive. These programs typically use a large amount of memory. Copies of all the memory must be made to nonvolatile storage before the program can resume. Because the memory is large but disks speeds are usually slow, it can take a long time to make the copy and the program must be stopped for an appreciable amount of time.
Another practice for CPR is for the computing program to be paused while all of its data is copied onto the storage device. This technique allows it and the utility program to execute simultaneously without risk that the computing program will modify its data before the utility program has a chance to copy it.
Another practice is for computing program to call an operating system routine such as UNIX's fork( ) or the equivalent function. This routine makes an exact duplicate of the program, including the process state, file descriptors, program memory space and program data space. The state of the duplicate is then copied to the storage device while the original continues execution. As part of the fork function, the operating system avoids making a full copy of the memory data by using a practice known as Copy On Write (COW). The duplicate process's program data space is shared with the original process space until either process modifies a memory page. At such time the page is duplicated with the Copy On Write. The fork process is slow, as the operating system must make a full copy of the virtual to physical memory mapping data known as page tables, regardless of Copy On Write pages.
What is needed is a system that improves upon these situations.
It is an aspect of the present invention to provide a system that will allow a state program to be copied while it continues to run.
It is another aspect of the present invention to intercept writes through a translation lookaside buffer so that a page that is to be modified can be duplicated for saving the program state.
The above aspects can be attained by a system that copies pages of a process at a checkpoint while the process continues to run. When a write to a page by the process is to occur the write is intercepted. The page that is being modified is duplicated and then the process is allowed to modify the page. The duplicate page is then stored as part of the checkpoint copy.
These together with other aspects and advantages which will be subsequently apparent, reside in the details of construction and operation as more fully hereinafter described and claimed, reference being had to the accompanying drawings forming a part hereof, wherein like numerals refer to like parts throughout.
The embodiments of present invention addresses the above-discussed problems by pausing a job process when a check point or process state copy process for the job process is to be performed and then starting the copy process. The term “pause” is used for convenience to describe this state of the computing program as the computing program is temporarily prevented from running, however, in this paused situation, the system is actually typically performing exception handling and process control at the scheduler level in not typically being performed. Once the copy process is started and has copied the system state, the job process is released to continue running. The copy process then starts copying pages of the job process in page memory of the system one at a time and storing them in non-volatile storage in “parallel” with the running of the job process. If the job process attempts to modify (write to) any of the un-copied pages through the use of the system translation lookaside buffer (TLB), this attempt to modify a page is detected. The write attempt results in a processor exception fault, which transfers control of execution to a kernel exception handling function. A duplicate of the page that is to be modified is made, and placed in a temporary storage, and then the original page to be modified is allowed to accommodate write operations in via TLB. The processor returns from the exception handling back to the user program execution.
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The many features and advantages of the invention are apparent from the detailed specification and, thus, it is intended by the appended claims to cover all such features and advantages of the invention that fall within the true spirit and scope of the invention. Further, since numerous modifications and changes will readily occur to those skilled in the art, it is not desired to limit the invention to the exact construction and operation illustrated and described, and accordingly all suitable modifications and equivalents may be resorted to, falling within the scope of the invention.