UNIVERSITY EXAMINATION 2018/2019
YEAR I/II SEMESTER II EXAMINATION FOR THE DEGREE OF
BACHELOR OF SCIENCE IN: INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY, MATHEMATICS
& COMPUTER SCIENCE,
ICS 2202 SPI 2103- Operating Systems Year I Semester Ii 2019
Date: Thursday, 18th April 2019 Time: 11.00am – 1.00pm
INSTRUCTIONS
Answer Question One and any other two questions
Question One (30 marks)
a) Outline four functions of operating system (4 marks)
b) With aid of a diagram differentiate monolithic and layered structure of operating system
(6 marks)
c) Describe the following types of operating system (6 marks)
i. Traditional OS / batch systems (single user)
ii. Multiprocessor operating system (Multiprocessing OS)
iii. Distributed operating system
d) Explain three reasons for process termination. (3 marks)
e) With the aid of a diagram explain the five state process model (5 marks)
f) State two objectives of memory management in operating systems (2 marks)
g) Differentiate between human and machine readable I/O devices (4 marks)
Question Two (20 marks)
a) Distinguish the following terminologies as used in operating system (6 marks)
i. Race condition and Critical section
ii. Deadlock and Mutual exclusion
iii. Pre-emptible resource and non-Pre-emptible resource
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b) Scheduling is exercised at three distinct levels – High-level, Medium-level and Low-level.
Describe the three levels of scheduling. (6 marks)
c) Differentiate between round robin and First-Come-First-Served algorithms (4 marks)
d) Paul was advised to enable I/O buffering in his computer. Explain two conditions that could
have informed his friend’s advice. (4 marks)
Question Three (20 marks)
a) Describe three objectives of process scheduling (6 marks)
b) With aid of example explain three goals of I/O software (6 marks)
c) Describe the components of access time (4 marks)
d) Distinguish between fixed partition and dynamic partition memory allocation technique
(4 marks)
Question Four (20 marks)
a) Differentiate between segmentation and paging (6marks)
b) Explain four attributes of a file. (4 marks)
c) Describe direct memory access (DMA) stating where it is applied and why (4 marks)
d) Explain three objectives of I/O device management (6 marks)
Question Five (20 marks)
a) Assume that a disk has 50 cylinders with an initial request on cylinder 7. The disk receives new
requests for cylinder 1, 30,12,26, 4 and 6 respectively. Graphically represent the scenario using
each of the following disk scheduling algorithms;
i. Shortest seek first (SSF)
ii. First come first served (FCFS)
iii. SCAN assuming the head moves towards 0. (6marks)
b) Distinguish between disk drive and device driver as applied in computer systems (4 marks)
c) With the aid of a diagram, describe swapping as applied in memory management (6 marks)
d) Outline four advantages of virtual memory in a computer system. (4 marks)
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