1. Explain the main purpose of an operating system?

Operating systems exist for two main purposes. One is that it is designed to
make sure a computer system performs well by managing its computational
activities. Another is that it provides an environment for the development and
execution of programs.
2. What is demand paging?
Demand paging is a system wherein area of memory that are not currently being
used are swapped to disk to make room for an applications need.
3. What are the advantages of a multiprocessor system?
With an increased number of processors, there is considerable increase in
throughput. It can also save more money because they can share resources.
Finally, overall reliability is increased as well.
4. What is kernel?
Kernel is the core of every operating system. It connects applications to the
actual processing of data. It also manages all communications between software
and hardware components to ensure usability and reliability.
5. What are real-time systems?
Real-time systems are used when rigid time requirements have been placed on
the operation of a processor. It has well defined and fixed time constraints.
6. What is virtual memory?
Virtual memory is a memory management technique for letting processes
execute outside of memory. This is very useful especially is an executing
program cannot fit in the physical memory.
7. Describe the objective of multiprogramming.
The main objective of multiprogramming is to have process running at all times.
With this design, CPU utilization is said to be maximized.
8. What are time sharing systems?
In a Time sharing system, the CPU executes multiple jobs by switching among
them, also known as multitasking. This process happens so fast that users can
actually interact with each program while it is running.
9. What is SMP?
SMP is short for Symmetric MultiProcessing, and is the most common type of
multiple-processor systems. In this system, each processor runs an identical
copy of the operating system, and these copies communicate with one another
as needed.

10.

How are server systems classified?

Server systems can be classified as either computer-server systems or file server

systems. In the first case, an interface is made available for clients to send
requests to perform an action. In the second case, provisions are available for
clients to create, access and update files.
11.

What is asymmetric clustering?

In asymmetric clustering, a machine is in a state known as hot standby mode

where it does nothing but to monitor the active server. That machine takes the
active servers role should the server fails.
12.

Explain Belady's Anomaly?

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.
13.

What is a binary semaphore? What is its use?

A binary semaphore is one, which takes only 0 and 1 as values. They are used to
implement mutual exclusion and synchronize concurrent processes.
14.

What is thrashing?

It is a phenomenon in virtual memory schemes when the processor spends most

of its time swapping pages, rather than executing instructions. This is due to an
inordinate number of page faults.
15.

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.
16.

What are short, long and medium-term scheduling?

Long term scheduler determines which programs are admitted to the system
for processing. It controls the degree of multiprogramming. Once admitted, a job
becomes a process.

Medium term scheduling is part of the swapping function. This relates to

processes that are in a blocked or suspended state. They are swapped out of
real-memory until they are ready to execute. The swapping-in decision is based
on memory-management criteria.
Short term scheduler, also known as a dispatcher executes most frequently,
and makes the finest-grained decision of which process should execute next. This
scheduler is invoked whenever an event occurs. It may lead to interruption of
one process by preemption.
17.

What is a thread?

A thread is a basic unit of CPU utilization. In general, a thread is composed of a

thread ID, program counter, register set and the stack.
18.

Give some benefits of multithreaded programming.

there is an increased responsiveness to the user

resource sharing within the process
economy
utilization of multiprocessing architecture
19.

Briefly explain FCFS.

FCFS is short for First-come, first-served, and is one type of scheduling algorithm.
In this scheme, the process that requests the CPU first is allocated the CPU first.
Implementation is managed by a FIFO queue.
20.

What is RR scheduling algorithm?

RR (round-robin) scheduling algorithm is primarily aimed for time-sharing

systems. A circular queue is setup in such a way that the CPU scheduler goes
around that queue, allocating CPU to each process for a time interval of up to
around 10 to 100 milliseconds.
21.
What necessary conditions can lead to a deadlock situation
in a system?
Deadlock situations occur when four conditions occur simultaneously in a
system: Mutual exclusion; Hold and Wait; No preemption; and Circular wait.
22.
RAID
RAID
RAID
RAID
RAID
RAID
RAID

0
1
2
3
4
5
6

23.

Enumerate the different RAID levels.

Non-redundant striping
Mirrored Disks
Memory-style error-correcting codes
Bit-interleaved Parity
Block-interleaved Parity
Block-interleaved distributed Parity
P+Q Redundancy
Describe Bankers algorithm.

Bankers algorithm is one form of deadlock-avoidance in a system. It gets its

name from a banking system wherein the bank never allocates available cash in
such a way that it can no longer satisfy the needs of all of its customers.
24.

Differentiate logical from physical address space.

Logical address refers to the address that is generated by the CPU. On the other
hand, physical address refers to the address that is seen by the memory unit.
25.
How does dynamic loading aid in better memory space
utilization?
With dynamic loading, a routine is not loaded until it is called. This method is
especially useful when large amounts of code are needed in order to handle
infrequently occurring cases such as error routines.

1. If the disk head is located initially at 32, find the number of disk
moves required with FCFS if the disk queue of I/O blocks requests
are 98, 37, 14, 124, 65, 67.
a) 239
b) 310
c) 321
d) 325
2. Which of the following memory allocation scheme suffers from
external fragmentation ?
a) Segmentation
b) Pure demand paging
c) Swapping
d) Paging
3. Consider a system having m resources of the same type. These
resources are shared by 3 processes A, B and C which have peak
demands of 3, 4 and 6 respectively. For what value of m deadlock
will not occur?
a) 7
b) 9
c) 10
d) 13
4. Pre-emptive scheduling is the strategy of temporarily suspending
a running process.
a) before the CPU time slice expires
b) to allow starving processes to run
c) when it requests I/O
d) to avoid collision
5. Resources are allocated to the process on non-sharable basis is
a) mutual exclusion
b) hold and wait
c) no pre-emption
d) circular wait
6. In round robin CPU scheduling as time quantum is increased the
average turn around time
a) increases
b) decreases
c) remains constant
d) varies irregularly
7. Pool based allocation of memory achieves better usage. Memory
can be preempted from inactive programs and used to
accommodate active programs. This is called

a) Preemption
b) Swapping
c) Spooling
d) Scheduling
8. Which of these is an example of a virtual resource?
a) Print server
b) Virtual machine
c) Virtual memory
d) All of the above
9. Which concept explains the working of an Operating System?
a) It is event driven
b) It is object oriented
c) It is procedure based system software
d) It is a collection of procedures that interact with each other
10.
Which of these is/are the desirable features of an Operating
system
a) Extensible
b) Portable
c) Reliable
d) All of the above
11. Blocking and Caching are the terms associated with which
Operating system functions respectively
a) Memory management and Disk Scheduling
b) IOCS and Disk Scheduling
c) IOCS and Memory management
d) Process management and IOCS
12. Which of these is not a term describing the collection of Operating
Programs
a) Monitor
b) Kernel
c) Supervisor
d) Server

13. Transparency is a desirable feature of which type of Operating

systema) Batch Processing
b) Real time
c) Distributed
d) Time sharing

14. To avoid the race condition, the number of processes that may be
simultaneously inside their critical section is

a) 8
b) 1
c) 16
d) 0
15. A system program that combines the separately compiled modules
of a program into a form suitable for execution
a) assembler
b) linking loader
c) cross compiler
d) load and go
16. What are the functions of multiprogramming OS?
a) Scheduling
b) Memory Management
c) I/O management
d) All of above
17. Applications like Banking and reservations require which type of
OS?
a) Real Time
b) Hard Real Time
c) Soft Real Time
d) None of the above
18. A form of code that uses more than one process and processor,
possibly of different type, and that may on occasions have more than
one process or processor active at the same time, is known as
a) multiprogramming
b) multi threading
c) broadcasting
d) time sharing
19. The term 'polling' in a computer means a process by which a
computer system
a) detects/corrects errors
b) multiplexes the inputs and updates the memory accordingly
c) decides correct alternative by analysing several ones
d) inquires to see if a terminal has any transaction to send
20. In which addressing mode, the address of the location of the
operand is given explicitly as a part of the instruction.
a) absolute mode
b) immediate mode
c) index mode
d) modulus mode
21. A base register table

a) allows the programmer to write base registers and displacements explicitly in

the source program.
b) is used to remember which of the general-purpose registers are
currently available as base registers, and what base addresses they
contain.
c) allows multiple programs to reside in separate areas of core at the same time.
d) is a term that refers to the control programs of an operating system.

22. File record length

a) should always be fixed
b) Should always be variable
c) depends upon the size of the file
d) should be chosen to match the data characteristics

23. Pool based allocation of memory achieves better usage. Memory

can be preempted from inactive programs and used to accommodate
active programs. This is called
a) Preemption
b) Swapping
c) Spooling
d) Scheduling
24. A relationship between processes such that each has some part
(critical section) which must not be executed while the critical section
of another is being executed, is known as
a) semaphore
b) mutual exclusion
c) multiprogramming
d) multitasking
25. What is the name of the operating system which was originally
designed by scientists and engineers for use by scientists and
engineers?
a) XENIX

b) UNIX
c) OS/2
d) MS DOS
26. Block or buffer caches are used
a) to improve disk performance
b) to handle interrupts
c) to increase the capacity of main memory
d) to speed up main memory read operation

Q27 A multimedia file

a) is same as any other regular file
b) must be accessed at specific rate
c) stored on remote server can not be delivered to its client
d) none of the mentioned
Ans b
Q 28 In which type of streaming multimedia file is delivered to the client, but not
shared?
a) real-time streaming
b) progressive download
c) compression
d) none of the mentioned
Ans a
Q29 Which one of the following is the characteristic of a multimedia system?
a) high storage
b) high data rates
c) both (a) and (b)
d) none of the mentioned
Ans c

Q30 The delay that occur during the playback of a stream is called
a) stream delay
b) playback delay
c) jitter
d) event delay
Ans c