Final answer:
Cascading termination in process management implies that a parent process waits for the termination of all its child processes before it terminates, which can happen normally or abnormally. This is crucial for orderly shutdown and resource allocation.
Step-by-step explanation:
Cascading termination refers to the process where all child processes must finish executing and terminate before the parent process can terminate. This concept is applicable to process management in operating systems and can occur normally or abnormally. It ensures that resources utilized by child processes are properly deallocated and there’s no resource leakage when a parent process ends. In other words, cascading termination ensures the orderly shutdown of processes in a parent-child hierarchy.
For example, consider a parent process P, which has spawned two child processes C1 and C2. If P initiates a shutdown sequence, whether it's due to normal completion of its task or an abnormal event such as an error being encountered, it will first wait for C1 and C2 to terminate before it completes its termination process. This ensures that any tasks being carried out by C1 and C2 are not abruptly stopped and any data they are handling is saved or correctly disposed of.