Question Bank Operating Systems

/Introduction to OS Operating Systems

1.1 What is an operating system? What are the functions of the operating system? 1.2 Describe the users view of the operating system. 1.3 Name two devices that are used as input devices only. Name two devices that are used as output devices only. Name at least one device that can be used as an input as well as output device. 1.4 Explain the difference between multi-programming and time sharing. 1.5 When do we say a system is "multi-programming"? When do we say it is an "online" system? 1.6 Give an example of an operational environment when the system would have to be both multi-programming and on-line system. 1.7 Explain the difference between platform and environment. 1.8 What are some of the options available in UNIX command ps? Give description of at least two options. 1.9 Give examples of at least two applications which in your opinion are real-time applications. Support your example with appropriate rationale. 1.10 Enumerate all the HCI support you find in our operational environment on your PC. Identify at least two HCI facilities which your PC does not support but you would have liked it to be there. 1.11 Enumerate the HCI support needed for handicapped persons with following impairments: a. Visually impaired b. Hearing impaired
Operating Systems/Process and Process Management Question Bank

Question Bank 3.1 What is the difference between a program and a process? 3.2 What is CPU utilization? 3.3 What is the motivation for a. Multi-programming and b. Time sharing. 3.4 What is response time? 3.5 With the help of a state transition diagram, explain various states of a process. 3.6 What is a zombie process and how it may manifest itself? 3.7 Explain the architecture of the simple operating system employing queue data structures? 3.8 Describe a queue based state transition model. Assume that OUR_OS, a new OS is designed to support processes with two levels of priority high and low. a. How would you redraw the queue based state transition model? b. If we have additionally, three devices that provide the services in FCFS c. Mode then how will we modify the state transition diagram. 3.9 Explain the difference between busy waiting and blocking. 3.10 Explain the role of a Process control block (PCB). 3.11 Show the changes in the process control Block(PCB) when a. A new process is created and

b. A running process is suspended. 3.12 What is the use of a process control block? Discuss the changes in the PCB chains when a. A process makes an I/O request b. A process completes an I/O Operation. 3.13 With the help of block diagrams, explain the flow of control between two processes during process switching. 3.14 What happens when process context is switched? Is it an over-head? 3.15 Explain the function of the system calls along with the process state diagrams. 3.16 Compare preemptive and non preemptive scheduling methods and explain in details the priority based scheduling technique. 3.17 Explain why real-time systems require a pre-emptive scheduling policy. 3.18 In a dynamic situation how is the next burst of processing time estimated? 3.19 Explain the concepts of multitasking. 3.20 What are the motivations for short term, medium term and long term scheduling levels? Explain with block schematics. 3.21 Compare and contrast the round-robin, pre-emptive policy with shortest job first pre-emptive policy. 3.22 Define throughput and turn around time. 3.23 Explain starvation. When and how starvation may occur? 3.24 Typically what is the process information Unix OS maintains? 3.25 Explain the procedure to kill a process.
Operating Systems/ File Systems and Management Question Bank

2.1 For the file extensions given below indicate the corresponding file type and the usually associated purpose. a. BAT , exe, zip, au b. bin, lib, tex, gif, ar 2.2 Describe the file system organization. Describe how file hierarchy is managed? 2.3 Describe at least three file operations. 2.4 Interpret the following instructions: a. ls -a , b. rm a* c. cp ?aa* ?ab* 2.5 What is the short cut to move up one level from current directory? 2.6 What happens when you give a command: touch a_file? 2.7 Describe the interpretation of the following under the command chmod: a. 444 b. 111 001 101 2.8 Describe an encryption method provided in Unix to secure files. How does one retrieve an encrypted file using an encryption command? Explain the basic principle. 2.9 Describe briefly a. The methods of file accessing. b. Two level directory structure. 2.10 What is the role of an inode? 2.11 Describe the structure of Inode in UNIX. What entries undergo changes when a

file is opened to read / write / copied / renamed. 2.12 What is an I-node and what role does it play. 2.13 What corresponds to i-node in the MS environment? 2.14 What is a root file system? 2.15 List the various disk space allocation strategies. Explain clearly the contiguous allocation technique. 2.16 Compare and contrast chained allocation with indexed allocation technique of file allocation 2.17 Define external and internal fragmentation 2.18 What are the different types of files? What are the tasks of the file management system? List some (at least two) file system related commands in UNIX? How does OS ensure security in file system?
Operating Systems/UNIX Primer Question Bank

10.1 Follow the sequence given below: a. Use editor vi to create a 10 line text file called tfile. b. To this append the following line: The quick brown fox jumped on lazy dog. c. Move the cursor to the top and yank the first two line to the bottom of the page. d. Give an edit command to search for the string lazy and replace it by a string not so lazy a. e. Undo the last step. f. Delete the 4th and 5th lines. 10.2 Follow the steps in sequence given below a. Create a directory called Level1 in your directory b. Create a directory called Level2 under Level1 and change directory to Level2 c. Create a text file called tfile under the directory Level2 d. Copy the file tfile in the directory Level1 e. While you are still in directory Level2, list the contents of directory Level1. 10.3 Repeat question no. 10.2 with the modification of step d modified to read as follows: a. Create a link to tfile in directory Level1. 10.4 Like me you too have a problem of "roll-over" and often type "hte" for the word "the". In a file edit session using vi editor what edit command will ensure that you are able to do a global replacement with confirmation before each replacement. 10.5 Suppose I have a file called my_file. How can it be renamed as your_file? 10.6 What does the character tilde (~) represent? 10.7 How does one determine the number of links a file may have? 10.8 What is the short cut to move up one level from current directory. 10.9 List all the .h files under the root directory and display these page by page. 10.10 How would do you list the files in your parent directory in descending order of disk blocks used by the files. 10.11 Follow the steps in the sequence given below: a. Log in your system using your login name and pass word.

b. Display the contents of your home directory. c. Change the directory to root, list the contents and identify the purpose for each directory in it. 10.12 Display the current time on screen. 10.13 Go to the parent directory of your home directory. What is listed out there? 10.14 Find out what directories are there under /usr/bin/lib 10.15 Why was UNIX designed with lots of tools? 10.16 Why is it that "Unix" is often described to be an open system? 10.17 ALSO SELECT QUESTIONS FROM THE BOOK 10.18 Perform the following operations on a given file a. Print every line after erasing the 2nd field b. Find maximum and minimum values present in column 1 10.19 Display the contents of a file given below in a sorted order of the time Eg file entries are 1234 HD 13324 22:40:54 .... 1235 HD122235 22:43:12 .
Operating Systems/Interprocess Communication Question Bank

Question Bank 7.1 What is the motivation for establishing inter-process communication? 7.2 What are system calls? Explain the system call flow with the help of a block diagram. 7.3 How is a new process spawned? How does one populate code in a newly spawned process? 7.4 Describe at least three environmental variables that are carried by the child process from the description of parent process. 7.5 Differentiate between different exec system calls. 7.6 What are the limitations of a pipe as an IPC mechanism? 7.7 How is a shared file mechanism implemented to achieve IPC? 7.8 How is the shared memory model implemented to achieve IPC? 7.9 How is message based IPC achieved? 7.10 When a process receives a signal, it may respond in a variety of ways. Give an explanation of at least three different ways in which a process may respond. 7.11 What is a mail box and how it may be utilized for IPC. 7.12 What is a port and how it is utilized for establishing inter process communication? 7.13 What are the different methods of Inter Process Communication?