Which of the following is NOT a valid deadlock prevention scheme?

(GATE CS 2000)
(a) Release all resources before requesting a new resource
(b) Number the resources uniquely and never request a lower numbered resource than the last one requested.
(c) Never request a resource after releasing any resource
(d) Request and all required resources be allocated before execution.
Answer: (c)
References:
http://www.cs.jhu.edu/~yairamir/cs418/os4/sld013.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadlock
2. Let m[0]…m[4] be mutexes (binary semaphores) and P[0] …. P[4] be processes.
Suppose each process P[i] executes the following:
wait (m[i]); wait(m[(i+1) mode 4]);

------

release (m[i]); release (m[(i+1)mod 4]);

This could cause (GATE CS 2000)
(a) Thrashing
(b) Deadlock
(c) Starvation, but not deadlock
(d) None of the above
Answer: (b)
Explanation:
You can easily see a deadlock in a situation where..
P[0] has acquired m[0] and waiting for m[1]
P[1] has acquired m[1] and waiting for m[2]
P[2] has acquired m[2] and waiting for m[3]
P[3] has acquired m[3] and waiting for m[0]

3. A graphics card has on board memory of 1 MB. Which of the following modes can the
card not support? (GATE CS 2000)
(a) 1600 x 400 resolution with 256 colours on a 17 inch monitor
(b) 1600 x 400 resolution with 16 million colours on a 14 inch monitor
(c) 800 x 400 resolution with 16 million colours on a 17 inch monitor
(d) 800 x 800 resolution with 256 colours on a 14 inch monitor

Answer: (b)
Explanation:
Monitor size doesn’t matter here. So, we can easily deduce that answer should be (b) as this has the highest
memory requirements. Let us verify it.
Number of bits required to store a 16M colors pixel = ceil(log2(16*1000000)) = 24
Number of bytes required for 1600 x 400 resolution with 16M colors = (1600 * 400 * 24)/8 which is 192000000
(greater than 1MB).

4 Consider a virtual memory system with FIFO page replacement policy. For an arbitrary page access
pattern, increasing the number of page frames in main memory will (GATE CS 2001)
a) Always decrease the number of page faults
b) Always increase the number of page faults
c) Some times increase the number of page faults
d) Never affect the number of page faults
Answer: (c)
Explanation:
Incrementing the number of page frames doesn’t always decrease the page faults (Belady’s Anomaly). For
details see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belady%27s_anomaly

5. Which of the following requires a device driver? (GATE CS 2001)

a) Register
b) Cache
c) Main memory
d) Disk
Answer: (d)

quiz questions for operating system

Consider the following four processes with the arrival time and length of CPU burst given in milliseconds :

The average waiting time for preemptive SJF scheduling algorithm is __________.
(A) 6.5
(B) 7.5
(C) 6.75
(D) 7.75

Answer: (A)

Explanation: First we will make gantt chart of given process then we will calculate turn around time and
waiting time of individual process.
Now we have to calculate average waiting time for schedule:
avg waiting time = wt(P1 + P2 + P3 + P4 )/number of process.
ie. (9 + 0 + 15 + 2) / 4
= 26 / 4
= 6.5
So, option (A) is correct.

1) A virtual memory system uses First In First Out (FIFO) page replacement policy and allocates a fixed
number of frames to a process. Consider the following statements:
P: Increasing the number of page frames allocated to a process sometimes increases the page fault
rate.
Q: Some programs do not exhibit locality of reference. Which one of the following is TRUE?
(A) Both P and Q are true, and Q is the reason for P
(B) Both P and Q are true, but Q is not the reason for P.
(C) P is false, but Q is true
(D) Both P and Q are false.
Answer (B)
P is true. Increasing the number of page frames allocated to process may increases the no. of page faults
(See Belady’s Anomaly).
Q is also true, but Q is not the reason for-P as Belady’s Anomaly occurs for some specific patterns of page
references.

Consider the following statements about user level threads and kernel level threads. Which one of the
following statement is FALSE?
(A) Context switch time is longer for kernel level threads than for user level threads.
(B) User level threads do not need any hardware support.
(C) Related kernel level threads can be scheduled on different processors in a multi-processor system.
(D) Blocking one kernel level thread blocks all related threads.
Answer (D)
Since kernel level threads are managed by kernel, blocking one thread doesn’t cause all related threads to
block. It’s a problem with user level threads. See this for more details.

The data blocks of a very large file in the Unix file system are allocated using
(A) contiguous allocation
(B) linked allocation
(C) indexed allocation
(D) an extension of indexed allocation
Answer (D)
The Unix file system uses an extension of indexed allocation. It uses direct blocks, single indirect blocks,
double indirect blocks and triple indirect blocks. Following diagram shows implementation of Unix file system.
A computer system supports 32-bit virtual addresses as well as 32-bit physical addresses. Since the
virtual address space is of the same size as the physical address space, the operating system
designers decide to get rid of the virtual memory entirely. Which one of the following is true?
(A) Efficient implementation of multi-user support is no longer possible
(B) The processor cache organization can be made more efficient now
(C) Hardware support for memory management is no longer needed
(D) CPU scheduling can be made more efficient now
Answer (C)
For supporting virtual memory, special hardware support is needed from Memory Management Unit. Since
operating system designers decide to get rid of the virtual memory entirely, hardware support for memory
management is no longer needed
3) A CPU generates 32-bit virtual addresses. The page size is 4 KB. The processor has a translation
look-aside buffer (TLB) which can hold a total of 128 page table entries and is 4-way set associative.
The minimum size of the TLB tag is:
(A) 11 bits
(B) 13 bits
(C) 15 bits
(D) 20 bits
Answer (C)
Size of a page = 4KB = 2^12
Total number of bits needed to address a page frame = 32 – 12 = 20
If there are ‘n’ cache lines in a set, the cache placement is called n-way set associative. Since TLB is 4 way set
associative and can hold total 128 (2^7) page table entries, number of sets in cache = 2^7/4 = 2^5. So 5 bits
are needed to address a set, and 15 (20 – 5) bits are needed for tag.
Consider three processes (process id 0, 1, 2 respectively) with compute time bursts 2, 4 and 8 time
units. All processes arrive at time zero. Consider the longest remaining time first (LRTF) scheduling
algorithm. In LRTF ties are broken by giving priority to the process with the lowest process id. The
average turn around time is:
(A) 13 units
(B) 14 units
(C) 15 units
(D) 16 units
Answer (A)
Let the processes be p0, p1 and p2. These processes will be executed in following order.

p2 p1 p2 p1 p2 p0 p1 p2 p0 p1 p2
0 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
Turn around time of a process is total time between submission of the process and its completion.
Turn around time of p0 = 12 (12-0)
Turn around time of p1 = 13 (13-0)
Turn around time of p2 = 14 (14-0)
Average turn around time is (12+13+14)/3 = 13.
Consider three processes, all arriving at time zero, with total execution time of 10, 20 and 30 units,
respectively. Each process spends the first 20% of execution time doing I/O, the next 70% of time doing
computation, and the last 10% of time doing I/O again. The operating system uses a shortest remaining
compute time first scheduling algorithm and schedules a new process either when the running process
gets blocked on I/O or when the running process finishes its compute burst. Assume that all I/O
operations can be overlapped as much as possible. For what percentage of time does the CPU remain
idle?(A) 0%
(B) 10.6%
(C) 30.0%
(D) 89.4%
Answer (B)
Let three processes be p0, p1 and p2. Their execution time is 10, 20 and 30 respectively. p0 spends first 2 time
units in I/O, 7 units of CPU time and finally 1 unit in I/O. p1 spends first 4 units in I/O, 14 units of CPU time and
finally 2 units in I/O. p2 spends first 6 units in I/O, 21 units of CPU time and finally 3 units in I/O.
idle p0 p1 p2 idle
0 2 9 23 44 47

Total time spent = 47

Idle time = 2 + 3 = 5
Percentage of idle time = (5/47)*100 = 10.6 %

Consider a disk pack with 16 surfaces, 128 tracks per surface and 256 sectors per track. 512 bytes of
data are stored in a bit serial manner in a sector. The capacity of the disk pack and the number of bits
required to specify a particular sector in the disk are respectively:
(A) 256 Mbyte, 19 bits
(B) 256 Mbyte, 28 bits
(C) 512 Mbyte, 20 bits
(D) 64 Gbyte, 28 bits
Answer (A)
Capacity of the disk = 16 surfaces X 128 tracks X 256 sectors X 512 bytes = 256 Mbytes.
To calculate number of bits required to access a sector, we need to know total number of sectors. Total number
of sectors = 16 surfaces X 128 tracks X 256 sectors = 2^19
So the number of bits required to access a sector is 19.

An operating system uses Shortest Remaining Time first (SRT) process scheduling algorithm.
Consider the arrival times and execution times for the following processes:
Process Execution time Arrival time
P1 20 0
P2 25 15
P3 10 30
P4 15 45
What is the total waiting time for process P2?
(A) 5
(B) 15
(C) 40
(D) 55
Answer (B)
At time 0, P1 is the only process, P1 runs for 15 time units.
At time 15, P2 arrives, but P1 has the shortest remaining time. So P1 continues for 5 more time units.
At time 20, P2 is the only process. So it runs for 10 time units
At time 30, P3 is the shortest remaining time process. So it runs for 10 time units
At time 40, P2 runs as it is the only process. P2 runs for 5 time units.
At time 45, P3 arrives, but P2 has the shortest remaining time. So P2 continues for 10 more time units.
P2 completes its ececution at time 55
Total waiting time for P2 = Complition time - (Arrival time + Execution time)
= 55 - (15 + 25)
= 15