SNS COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

Coimbatore.
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Question Bank- Even Semester 2015-2016
CS6401 OPERATING SYSTEMS
Unit-I
OPERATING SYSTEMS OVERVIEW
Part-A
1. Differentiate between tightly coupled systems and loosely coupled systems.
2. Define OS
3. What are the differences between Batch OS and Multiprogramming?
4. What are the differences between Multitasking and Multiprogramming?
5. List the difference between mainframe & desktop OS.
6. What is Clustered System?
7. What is Real Time System? List out their types.
8. Is Os a resource Manager? If so justify your answer
9. What is the kernel?
10. What are the three main purposes of an operating system?
11. Define cache memory
12. What is interrupts.
13. What is direct memory access?
14. What are batch systems?
15. What are privileged instructions?
16. What do you mean by system calls?
17. State the advantage of multiprocessor system.
18. What is function of system programs? Write the categories in which
system program can be divided.

CS6401-Operating Systems Dept. of CSE. Dr. B. Chellaprabha, HOD/ CSE

 19. What are the three major activities of an operating system in regard to
Secondary- storage management?
20. What is the use of fork and exec system calls?
Part-B
1. Explain the various types of computer systems.
2. Explain interrupts in detail.
3. Explain Direct Memory Access.
4. Discuss Memory Hierarchy.
5. What are the system components of an operating system and explain them?
6. List five services provided by an operating system. Explain how each provides
convenience to the users. Explain also in which cases it would be impossible for
user level programs to provide these services.
7. What are the 5 categories of system calls?
8. Discuss OS Generation and System Boot.
9. Explain the concept of Virtual Machine with neat sketch
10. Discuss Computer System Organization

Unit-II
PROCESS MANAGEMENT
Part-A
1. What is a process?
2. What is process control block?
3. What are schedulers?
4. What is co-operative process?
5. What is the use of inter process communication.
6. What is independent process?
7. What are the benefits of co-operating processes?
8. What is a thread?
9. What are the benefits of multithreaded programming?
10. Compare user threads and kernel threads.

CS6401-Operating Systems Dept. of CSE. Dr. B. Chellaprabha, HOD/ CSE

 11. Define CPU scheduling.
12. What are the advantages and disadvantages of threads?
13. What is Synchronization?
14. What is critical section problem?
15. What is a semaphore?
16. Define deadlock.
17. Define CPU scheduling.
18. What are the various scheduling criteria for CPU scheduling?
19. What are the requirements that a solution to the critical section problem must
satisfy?
20. What are conditions under which a deadlock situation may arise?
Part-B
1. What are the various process scheduling concepts?
2. Explain about inter process communication.
3. Explain the various threading issues?
4. Write about the various CPU scheduling algorithms.
5. What is critical section problem and explain two process solutions and
multiple process solutions?
6. Explain what semaphores are, their usage, implementation given to avoid
busy waiting and binary semaphores.
7. Explain the various classic problems of synchronization .
8. Give a detailed description about deadlocks and its characterization
9. Explain the Banker’s algorithm for deadlock avoidance.
10. Consider the following set of processes, with the length of the CPU-burst
time given in milliseconds:
Process Burst Time Priority
1. P1 10 0 3
2. P2 29 1 1
3. P3 3 2 4
4. P4 7 3 5
5. P5 12 4 2

CS6401-Operating Systems Dept. of CSE. Dr. B. Chellaprabha, HOD/ CSE

 The processes are assumed to have arrived in the order P1, P2, P3, P4, P5, all at
time 0.
a. Draw four Gantt charts illustrating the execution of these processes
using FCFS,SJF,A non preemptive priority (a smaller priority number
implies a higher priority), and RR (quantum = 1) scheduling.
b. What is the turnaround time of each process for each of the
scheduling algorithms in part a?
c. What is the waiting time of each process for each of the scheduling
algorithms in Part a?
d. Which of the schedules in part a results in the minimal average waiting time
(over all processes)?
Unit-III
STORAGE MANAGEMENT
Part-A
1. Define Paging.
2. Define Thrashing. Give an example. How do you limit the effects of
thrashing?
3. Give the pictorial representation of storage hierarchy.
4. What are the advantages of virtual memory management systems?
5. What are overlays? What is the use of it?
6. What is demand paging?
7. Differentiate demand paging and swapping.
8. What is spatial locality of reference?
9. Write about partition memory management.
10. What is the advantage of demand paging?
11. Differentiate a page from a segment.
12. Define TLB.
13. Differentiate between internal and external fragmentation. How the problem of
external fragmentation can be solved?
14. What is address binding?
15. What do you mean by page fault?
16. What is page frame?

CS6401-Operating Systems Dept. of CSE. Dr. B. Chellaprabha, HOD/ CSE

 17. If a system supports 16 bit address line and 1K page size, what is the maximum
number of pages?
18. Define logical address and physical address.
19. What is the main function of the memory-management unit?
20. What is segmentation?
Part-B
1. Illustrate contiguous memory allocation schemes, give examples. List the
advantages and disadvantages.
2. Explain the basic concepts of segmentation.
3. Explain memory allocation in variable partitions for multiprogramming.
4. Give the basic concepts about paging and explain the types of Page Table
Structure.
5. Explain 32 bit architecture and 64 bit architecture in detail.
6. Explain the various page replacement strategies.
7. Consider the following page reference string:
1, 2, 3, 4, 2, 1, 5, 6, 2, 1, 2, 3, 7, 6, 3, 2, 1, 2, 3, 6.
How many page faults would occur for the following replacement
algorithms, assuming one, two, three, four, five, six, or seven
frames? Remember all frames are initially empty, so your first
unique pages will all cost one fault each.
LRU
replacement
FIFO
replacement
Optimal
replacement
8. A page-replacement algorithm should minimize the number of page faults. We
can do this minimization by distributing heavily used pages evenly over all of
memory, rather than having them compete for a small number of page frames.
We can associate with each page frame a counter of the number of pages that
are associated with that frame. Then, to replace a page, we search for the page
frame with the smallest counter.
a. Define a page-replacement algorithm using this basic idea. Specifically
CS6401-Operating Systems Dept. of CSE. Dr. B. Chellaprabha, HOD/ CSE
 address the problems of (1) what the initial value of the counters is,
(2) when counters are increased, (3) when counters are decreased, and (4)
how the page to be replaced is selected.
b. How many page faults occur for your algorithm for the following
reference string, for four page frames? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 3, 4, 1, 6, 7, 8, 7, 8, 9, 7,
8, 9, 5, 4, 5, 4, 2.
c. What is the minimum number of page faults for an optimal page -
replacement strategy for the reference string in part b with four page frames?
(4)
9. (i) What is demand paging? Describe the process of demand paging in OS. (8)
(ii) How can demand paging be implemented with virtual memory? (8)
10. (i) Explain in detail about thrashing (8)
Explain in detail about Allocation of kernel memory (8)
Unit-IV
I/O SYSTEMS
Part-A
1. Mention the pros and cons of a fixed head disk and a moving head disk.
2. Brief about the concept of a file. List some operations on it.
3. Define rotational latency.
4. Define UFD and MFD.
5. State the disadvantages of Contiguous allocation.
6. Name the methods available to access a file.
7. Name any four common file types. Write the various file attributes.
8. What are the ways for directory implementation?
9. What are the two types of system directories?
10. What is seek time?
11. What characteristics determine the disk access speed?
12. What is garbage collection?
13. Mention the objectives of file management system.
14. What is the need for disk scheduling? Give the various disk
scheduling methods.
15. What does swap space management mean? 16.
What is the content of typical file control block?
17. Define log structured file. What are the disadvantages of log-structured
file systems?

CS6401-Operating Systems Dept. of CSE. Dr. B. Chellaprabha, HOD/ CSE

 18. What is meant by RAID?
19. Which disk scheduling algorithm would be best to optimize
the performance of a RAM disk?
20. What is NFS?
Part-B
1. Write briefly about file attributes, operations, types and structure.
2. a. Discuss in detail about file allocation methods. (8)
b. What are the possible structures for directory? Discuss them in detail. (8)
3. Explain about disk scheduling and any of its two algorithms with suitable
example.
4. Explain the following:
a. RAID (8)
b. I/O in Linux (8)
5. Write a detailed note on various file access methods with neat sketch.
6. Explain in detail the free space management with neat diagram.
7. a. Describe the two level and tree type directory structures in detail. (8)
b. Describe the life cycle of an I/O request in detail. (8)
8. a. Describe Windows XP file system in detail. (10)
b. Explain the directory structure of Linux operating system. (6)
9. a. Describe how the disk space from deleted files can be reused. (8)
b. Explain in detail the process management and file system in
LINUX system. (8)
10. Suppose that the disk drive has 5000 cylinders number 0 to 4999. The drive
is currently serving a request at cylinder 143 and the previous request was at
125, the queue of the pending request in FIFO order is:
86,1470,913,1174,948,1509.1022,1750,130 starting from the current head
position, what is the total distance (cylinders) that the disk arm moves to
satisfy all the pending requests for each of the disk scheduling algorithms.
i. SSTF
ii. SCAN
iii. LOOK
iv. C-LOOK

CS6401-Operating Systems Dept. of CSE. Dr. B. Chellaprabha, HOD/ CSE

 Unit-V
CASE STUDY-LINUX SYSTEM
Part-A
1. What are the design principles of LINUX system?
2. What are the components of a Linux System?
3. List the components of kernel modules.
4. Define LINUX virtualization.
5. What are the types of virtualization?
6. Define hypervisor.
7. What are the two components of hypervisor?
8. What are the types of hypervisor?
9. Define XEN.
10.What are the components of XEN?
11. What are the two types of guest supported by XEN hypervisor?
12.What is domain name system (DNS)?
13.List few responsibilities of LINUX system administrator.
14.List few requirements needed for LINUX system administrator.
15.What are the key features of VMware server virtualization?
16. What do you mean by guest operating system?
17. What is the relationship between a guest operating system and a host
operating system in a system like VMware what factors need to be considered
in choosing the host operating system?
18. What is demand-zero memory?
19. List the types of LINUX device classes.
20. List the three layers of networking in LINUX kernel.
Part-B
1. Explain in detail the design principles, kernel modules, process management,
scheduling in LINUX system.
2. Explain in detail the memory management in LINUX system.
3. Explain in detail the file system in LINUX system.
4. Explain in detail about I/O in LINUX system.
5. Describe about the network structure of LINUX system.
6. List and explain the system administration of LINUX system and the
requirements for LINUX system administrator in detail.
7. Explain in detail about setting up a LINUX multifunction server.
8. What is virtualization? Explain its basic concepts in detail.
9. Write the procedure for setting XEN on LINUX host and adding guest OS.
10. Write the procedure for setting VMware on LINUX host and adding guest OS.
CS6401-Operating Systems Dept. of CSE. Dr. B. Chellaprabha, HOD/ CSE