Operating Systems: Scheduling & Storage 4.
The memory manager normally treats memory as
though it were partitioned into equal-sized blocks, or
Revision Questions – 4 of 4 pages. With this in mind, what is the relationship
Martin Bush, 10-Dec-2010 between the block/page size and the amount of
internal fragmentation?
These revision questions cover the following: 5. Most modern operating systems use paging. Explain
the principles of paging; your explanation should
! Lecture08 – from p.8 onwards include a brief description of logical pages, page
! Lecture09 frames and page tables.
! Lecture10
! Tutorial09 6. Given a virtual memory addess of the form…
! Tutorial10 <page-number, offset>
…you should be able to calculate the page size and the
The revision questions below are intended to help you maximum number of pages in the virtual memory
revise for the fourth and final multiple-choice test and for space given values for page-number and offset.
the end-of-unit examination. As with the previous revision
questions, some of these can be answered in just a few 7. The use of virtual memory allows processes to be
words, while others require much longer answers. Make partly resident before execution. This greatly eases the
sure you also look at the solutions to the Tutorial09 and pressure on memory space. Given the nature of typical
Tutorial10 exercises which are now posted on the OSS processes, this makes a lot of sense; explain why.
website.
8. Process that have their own private virtual memory
space sometimes share physical pages (i.e. page
1. Explain the difference between internal fragmentation frames). Give three examples.
and external fragmentation in the context of primary
memory. 9. Explain what a page fault is, and what the general
relationship is between page fault frequency and the
2. External fragmentation is inevitable if a memory number of page frames allocated to a process.
manager always allocates a contiguous area of
memory to every process. How big a problem is this? 10. What is meant by the term swap space?
(In other words, what proportion of the memory space
can become effectively unusable because of it?) 11. Explain the difference between FIFO and LRU (Least
Recently Used) page replacement.
3. Some memory management schemes are based on
segmentation. Explain how this works. 12. Explain how an optimal page replacement policy would
work, and why it isn’t achievable in practice.
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13. You should be able to show the sequence of page 25. Explain the difference between disk fragmentation and
faults for FIFO, LRU and optimal page replacement internal fragmentation as it applies to hard disks.
given a particular page reference string.
26. Many operating systems include a disk de-
14. What is Belady’s anomaly? fragmentation utility program. What is this for and
what exactly does it do?
15. Explain how second-chance page replacement works.
27. One way for a file manager to keep track of where
16. Explain how enhanced second-chance page each file is located on disk is to use a linked blocks
replacement works, and why it is preferable to second- scheme. Explain how this works.
chance page replacement.
28. Another way for a file manager to keep track of where
17. Explain what is meant by the term thrashing in the each file is located on disk is to use a File Access Table
context of multi-user computer systems. (FAT). Explain how this works.
18. Explain how having a working set of pages addresses 29. Describe two ways in which a file manager can keep
the problem of thrashing. track of where the empty blocks/clusters are on a disk.
19. What is a File Control Block? 30. Most hard disk units come with an associated block of
semiconductor cache memory. Explain how this can
20. What is meant by the terms file system, storage speed up the average disk access time.
device, partition, volume, mount and directory (which
is the same thing as a volume table of contents), and 31. Explain how RAID technology can be used to speed up
how are they related? file access times.
21. Explain why it might be necessary to lock a file, and 32. ZFS has several advantages over other existing file
what the difference is between an exclusive lock and a systems; explain copy-on-write transactions, end-to-
shared lock. end checksumming, snapshots and clones.
22. What is a remote file system? 33. Explain the differences between each of the following
data structures: Set, SortedSet, List, Queue, Map
23. What is the difference between a random access and SortedMap.
storage device and a serial access storage device?
34. What is the difference between a hard link and a
24. What is the difference between a direct access file and symbolic link in Unix?
a squential access file?
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