Operating System

What is an operating system?

The operating system is a software program that facilitates computer hardware to
communicate and operate with the computer software. It is the most important part of a
computer system without its computer is just like a box.
What is the main purpose of an operating system?
 It is designed to make sure that a computer system performs well by managing its
computational activities.
 It provides an environment for the development and execution of programs.
What are the different operating systems?
 Batched operating systems
 Distributed operating systems
 Timesharing operating systems
 Multi-programmed operating systems
 Real-time operating systems
What is a socket?
A socket is used to make connection between two applications. Endpoints of the connection
are called socket.
What is a real-time system?
Real-time system is used in the case when rigid-time requirements have been placed on the
operation of a processor. It contains a well-defined and fixed time constraints.
What is kernel?
Kernel is the core and most important part of a computer operating system which provides
basic services for all parts of the OS.
What is monolithic kernel?
A monolithic kernel is a kernel which includes all operating system code is in single
executable image.
What do you mean by a process?
An executing program is known as process. There are two types of processes:
 Operating System Processes
 User Processes
What are the different states of a process?
New State: It is the first State of a process. This is the state where the process is just created.
Ready State: After process creation, the process is supposed to be executed. But it is first put
into the ready queue, where it waits for its turn to get executed.
Ready Suspended State: Sometimes, when many processes come into a ready state, then due
to memory constraints, some processes are shifted from a ready State to a ready suspended
State.
Running State: One process from the ready state queue is put into the running state queue by
the CPU for execution. And that process will be now in a running state.
Waiting or Blocked state: If during execution, the process wants to do I/O operation like
writing on file, or some more priority process might come. Then the running process will go
in a blocked or waiting state.
What is the difference between micro kernel and macro kernel?
Micro kernel: micro kernel is the kernel which runs minimal performance affecting services
for operating system. In micro kernel operating system all other operations are performed by
processor.
Macro Kernel: Macro Kernel is a combination of micro and monolithic kernel.
What is the difference between process and program?
A program while running or executing is known as a process.
What is the use of paging in operating system?
Paging is used to solve the external fragmentation problem in operating system. This
technique ensures that the data you need is available as quickly as possible.
What is the concept of demand paging?
Demand paging specifies that if an area of memory is not currently being used, it is swapped
to disk to make room for an application's need.
What is the advantage of a multiprocessor system?
As many as processors are increased, you will get the considerable increment in throughput.
It is cost effective also because they can share resources. So, the overall reliability increases
What is virtual memory?
Virtual memory is a very useful memory management technique which enables processes to
execute outside of memory. This technique is especially used when an executing program
cannot fit in the physical memory.
What are the four necessary and sufficient conditions behind the deadlock?
Mutual Exclusion Condition: It specifies that the resources involved are non-sharable.
Hold and Wait Condition: It specifies that there must be a process that is holding a resource
already allocated to it while waiting for additional resource that are currently being held by
other processes.
No-Preemptive Condition: Resources cannot be taken away while they are being used by
processes.
Circular Wait Condition: It is an explanation of the second condition. It specifies that the
processes in the system form a circular list or a chain where each process in the chain is
waiting for a resource held by next process in the chain.
What is a thread?
A thread is a basic unit of CPU utilization. It consists of a thread ID, program counter,
register set and a stack.
What is FCFS?
FCFS stands for First Come, First Served. It is a type of scheduling algorithm. In this scheme,
if a process requests the CPU first, it is allocated to the CPU first. Its implementation is
managed by a FIFO queue.
What is SMP?
SMP stands for Symmetric Multiprocessing. It is the most common type of multiple
processor system. In SMP, each processor runs an identical copy of the operating system, and
these copies communicate with one another when required.
What is deadlock? Explain.
Deadlock is a specific situation or condition where two processes are waiting for each other
to complete so that they can start. But this situation causes hang for both of them.
What is Banker's algorithm?
Banker's algorithm is used to avoid deadlock. It is the one of deadlock-avoidance method. It
is named as Banker's algorithm on the banking system where bank never allocates available
cash in such a manner that it can no longer satisfy the requirements of all of its customers.
What is the difference between logical address space and physical address space?
Logical address space specifies the address that is generated by CPU. On the other hand
physical address space specifies the address that is seen by the memory unit.
What is fragmentation?
Fragmentation is a phenomenon of memory wastage. It reduces the capacity and performance
because space is used inefficiently.
How many types of fragmentation occur in Operating System?
Internal fragmentation: It is occurred when we deal with the systems that have fixed size
allocation units.
External fragmentation: It is occurred when we deal with systems that have variable-size
allocation units.
What is spooling?
Spooling is a process in which data is temporarily gathered to be used and executed by a
device, program or the system. It is associated with printing. When different applications
send output to the printer at the same time, spooling keeps these all jobs into a disk file and
queues them accordingly to the printer.
What is the difference between internal commands and external commands?
Internal commands are the built-in part of the operating system while external commands are
the separate file programs that are stored in a separate folder or directory.
What is semaphore?
Semaphore is a protected variable or abstract data type that is used to lock the resource being
used. The value of the semaphore indicates the status of a common resource.
 Binary semaphores
 Counting semaphores
What is a binary Semaphore?
Binary semaphore takes only 0 and 1 as value and used to implement mutual exclusion and
synchronize concurrent processes.
What is Belady's Anomaly?
Belady's Anomaly is also called FIFO anomaly. Usually, on increasing the number of frames
allocated to a process virtual memory, the process execution is faster, because fewer page
faults occur. Sometimes, the reverse happens, i.e., the execution time increases even when
more frames are allocated to the process. This is Belady's Anomaly. This is true for certain
page reference patterns.
What is starvation in Operating System?
Starvation is Resource management problem. In this problem, a waiting process does not get
the resources it needs for a long time because the resources are being allocated to other
processes.
What is aging in Operating System?
Aging is a technique used to avoid the starvation in resource scheduling system.
What are the advantages of multithreaded programming?
 Enhance the responsiveness to the users.
 Resource sharing within the process.
 Economical
 Completely utilize the multiprocessing architecture.
What are overlays?
Overlays makes a process to be larger than the amount of memory allocated to it. It ensures
that only important instructions and data at any given time are kept in memory.
When does trashing occur?
Thrashing specifies an instance of high paging activity. This happens when it is spending
more time paging instead of executing.
What are the different kinds of operations that are possible on semaphore?
 Wait()
 Signal()
What do you mean by process synchronization?
Process synchronization is basically a way to coordinate processes that use shared resources
or data. It is very much essential to ensure synchronized execution of cooperating processes
so that will maintain data consistency. Its main purpose is to share resources without any
interference using mutual exclusion. There are two types of process synchronization.
 Independent Process
 Cooperative Process
What is IPC? What are the different IPC mechanisms?
IPC (Interprocess Communication) is a mechanism that requires the use of resources like a
memory that is shared between processes or threads. With IPC, OS allows different processes
to communicate with each other. It is simply used for exchanging data between multiple
threads in one or more programs or processes. In this mechanism, different processes can
communicate with each other with the approval of the OS.
Different IPC Mechanisms:
 Pipes
 Message Queuing
 Semaphores
 Socket
 Shared Memory
 Signals
What is different between main memory and secondary memory.

What is Context Switching?

Context switching is basically a process of saving the context of one process and loading the
context of another process. It is one of the cost-effective and time-saving measures executed
by CPU the because it allows multiple processes to share a single CPU. Therefore, it is
considered an important part of a modern OS. This technique is used by OS to switch a
process from one state to another i.e., from running state to ready state. It also allows a single
CPU to handle and control various different processes or threads without even the need for
additional resources.
Throughput – number of processes that complete their execution per time unit.
Turnaround time – amount of time to execute a particular process.
Waiting time – amount of time a process has been waiting in the ready queue.
Response time – amount of time it takes from when a request was submitted until the first
response is produced, not output (for time-sharing environment).
What is difference between process and thread?

What is RAID? What are the different RAID levels?

A redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) is used to store the same data redundantly
to improve the overall performance.
Following are the different RAID levels:
RAID 0 – Striped Disk Array without fault tolerance.
In this data is stripped between different disks and you can access data at the It offers
the best performance, but it does not provide fault tolerance.
RAID 1 – Mirroring and duplexing
This provides fault tolerance as data is stored on different disks. If one fails then data
can be accessed from another drive.
RAID 3 – Bit-interleaved Parity
Raid 3 is not used much. Data is divided evenly and stored on two or more disks, plus
there is a dedicated drive for parity storage.
RAID 5 – Block-interleaved distributed Parity
Data is divided evenly and stored on two or more disks, plus parity is distributed in
different drives.
RAID 6 – P+Q Redundancy.
Data is divided evenly and stored on two or more disks, plus parity is distributed in
two different drives.
What is cache memory?
Cache memory is a small-sized memory that is volatile. That means its contents are stored
temporarily. Cache memory is small in size, so it is faster than main memory and secondary
memory, as its size is small. So accessing data from cache memory is fast. Whenever the
CPU wants to access any data, it first checks the cache memory. If the data is not there in
cache memory, the CPU goes to the main memory.
What is Thrashing?
Thrashing is a situation when the performance of a computer degrades or collapses.
Thrashing occurs when a system spends more time processing page faults than executing
transactions. While processing page faults is necessary to in order to appreciate the benefits
of virtual memory, thrashing has a negative affect on the system. As the page fault rate
increases, more transactions need processing from the paging device. The queue at the paging
device increases, resulting in increased service time for a page fault.
List the Coffman’s conditions that lead to a deadlock.
1. Mutual Exclusion: Only one process may use a critical resource at a time.
2. Hold & Wait: A process may be allocated some resources while waiting for others.
3. No Pre-emption: No resource can be forcible removed from a process holding it.
4. Circular Wait: A closed chain of processes exist such that each process holds at least one
resource needed by another process in the chain.
What is the difference between process and program?

What is CPU Scheduler?

Selects from among the processes in memory that are ready to execute, and allocates the CPU
to one of them. CPU scheduling decisions may take place when a process:
1. Switches from running to waiting state.
2. Switches from running to ready state.
3. Switches from waiting to ready.
4. Terminates.
What are the different types of scheduling algorithms?
1. First come First serve (FCFS): First came process is served first.
2. Round Robin (RR): Each process is given a quantum amount of time.
 3. Shortest job first (SJF): Process with lowest execution time is given first preference.
4. Priority scheduling (PS): Priority value called (nice value) is used for selecting
process. Its value is from 0 to 99. 0 being maxed and 99 being least.
What is the basic difference between pre-emptive and non-pre-emptive scheduling?

What are the deadlock avoidance algorithms?

A dead lock avoidance algorithm dynamically examines the resource-allocation state to
ensure that a circular wait condition can never exist. The resource allocation state is defined
by the number of available and allocated resources, and the maximum demand of the process.
There are two algorithms:
 Resource allocation graph algorithm
 Banker’s algorithm
o Safety algorithm
o Resource request algorithm
What are various scheduling queues?
Job Queue: - When a process enters the system it is placed in the job queue.
Ready Queue: - The processes that are residing in the main memory and are ready and
waiting to execute are kept on a list called the ready queue.
Device Queue: - A list of processes waiting for a particular I/O device is called device queue.