Operating Systems 10EC65

SJBIT/Dept of ECE Page 1

UNIVERSITY QUESTIONS
UNIT-1
1. Explain the goals of an operating system, its operations and resource allocation of OS.
(June 2011, Jan 2013, June 2013, Dec 2013)
2. List the common tasks performed by an OS. Explain briefly. (Jan 2013)
3. Explain the features and special techniques of distributed OS. (June 2011, Jan 2013)
4. Discuss the spooling technique with a block representation. (June 2011)
5. Explain briefly the key features of different classes of OS. (June 2012)
6. Explain the concepts of memory compaction and virtual memory with respect to memory
management. (June 2012)
7. Describe the batch processing system and functions of scheduling and memory management
for the same. (June 2013)
8. Why I/O bound programs should be given higher priorities in a multi-programming
environment? Illustrate with timing diagram. (June 2013)
9. Define an OS. What are the different facets of user convenience? (Dec 2013)
10. Explain partition and pool based resource allocation strategies. (Dec 2013)
11. Explain time sharing OS with respect to i) scheduling and ii) memory management.
(Dec 2013)
UNIT-2
1. What are the problems associated with monolithic structure OS? (June 2011, Jan 2013)
2. Explain i) layered structure of OS and ii) kernel based OS. (Jan 2013)
3. Describe the functions of an OS. (June 2011, Dec 2013)
4. Discuss OS with monolithic structure and multi-programming system. (June 2011)
5. Explain with block diagram the structures of micro kernel based, time sharing and real time
OS classes. (June 2012)
6. Explain VMOS. What are the advantages of virtual machines? (Dec 2013)
7. Explain system generation operations. (June 2013)
8. Compare kernel based and micro kernel based OS functions. (June 2013)
9. How is layered OS structure superior to monolithic structure? (June 2013)
10. In a batch processing system, the results of 1000 students are to be printed. Reading a card or
printing a result takes 100 ms whereas read/write operation in a disk needs only 20 ms.
Processing a record needs only 10 ms of CPU time. Compute the program elapsed time and
CPU idle time with and without spooling. (Dec 2013)



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UNIT-3
1. List the different types of process interaction and explain them in brief. (Jan 2013)
2. What is a process? Describe the components of the process environment. (Jan 2013)
3. List the events that occur during the operation of an OS. (Jan 2013)
4. Explain in detail the programmer view of processes. (June 2011)
5. What is a process state? Explain the various states of a process giving state transition diagram.
(June 2011)
6. Explain event handling pertaining to a process. (June 2012)
7. Explain arrangement and working of threads in SOLARIS with a neat block diagram.
(June 2012)
8. Explain with neat diagram i) user threads ii) kernel level threads.
9. With a neat diagram explain different states of a process and state transitions in the UNIX OS.
10. Mention the three kinds of entities used for concurrency within a process in threads in
SOLARIS along with a diagram. (June 2013)
11. With a state transition diagram and PCB structure, explain the function of the states, state
transitions and functions of a schedule. (June 2013)
12. Explain the race condition in airline reservation system with an algorithm. (June 2013)
UNIT-4
1. Describe the features of static and dynamic memory allocation. What are the four program
components for which memory is to be allocated? (Jan 2013)
2. Compare contiguous and non-contiguous memory allocation. Enumerate the practical issues
associated with them. (June 2011,Jan 2013,Dec 2013)
3. Explain the slab allocator of solaris 2.4 system. (Jan 2013)
4. With a neat diagram mention the components of a memory allocation to a program during its
execution. Also describe the memory allocation preliminaries. (June 2011)
5. Explain the working of a buddy system allocator for program controlled data. How does it
differ from process-of-two allocator? (June 2012, June 2013)
6. What is memory fragmentation? Discuss the method of memory compaction and reuse of
memory concepts to overcome the problem of memory fragmentation. Give examples.
(June 2012)
7. Explain the techniques used to perform memory allocation using a free list. (Dec 2013)
8. Explain internal and external fragmentation with examples. (Dec 2013)
9. Describe i) best fit technique for free space allocation ii) variable partitioned allocation with
their merits and demerits. (June 2013)



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UNIT-5
1. Explain the important concepts in the operation of demand paging.
(June 2011, June 2012, Jan 2013)
2. Write a note on page replacement policies and page sharing. (Jan 2013)
3. How can virtual memory be implemented? (June 2011)
4. Explain FIFO and LRU page replacement policy. (June 2012)
5. What are the functions performed by a virtual memory manager? Explain. (Dec 2013)
6. Explain page-out daemon for handling virtual memory in UNIX OS. (June 2013)
7. Describe the address translation using TU and TLB in demand paged allocation with a block
diagram. (June 2013)
8. For the following page reference string, calculate the number of page faults with FIFO and
LRU page replacement policies when i) number of page frames=3 ii) number of page
frames=4.
Page reference string: 5 4 3 2 1 4 3 5 4 3 2 1 5
Reference time string: t1,t2,,t13 (June 2013,Dec 2013)
UNIT-6
1. Describe the different operations performed on files. (Jan 2013)
2. Explain the UNIX file system. (Jan 2013)
3. Explain the file system and IOCS in detail. (June 2011)
4. Discuss the methods of allocation of disk space with block representation.
(June 2011, June 2012)
5. Explain briefly the file control block. (June 2012)
6. Explain the index sequential file organization with an example. (Dec 2013)
7. What is a link? With an example, illustrate the use of a link in an acyclic graph structure
directory. (Dec 2013)
8. Compare sequential and direct file organization. (June 2013)
9. Describe the interface between file system and IOCS. (June 2013, Dec 2013)
10. Explain the file system actions when a file is opened and a file is closed. (June 2013)

UNIT-7
1. With a neat block diagram, explain event handling and scheduling. (Jan 2013)
2. Explain scheduling in UNIX. (June 2011, Jan 2013)
3. Summarize the main approaches to real time scheduling. (June 2011, Jan 2013)
4. What is scheduling? What are the events related to scheduling? (June 2011)
5. Explain briefly the mechanism and policy modules of short term process scheduler with a neat
block diagram. (June 2012)
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6. Briefly explain the features of time sharing system. Also explain process state transitions in
time sharing system. (June 2012)
7. Compare i) pre-emptive and non-preemptive scheduling
ii) long term and short term schedulers (Dec 2013)
8. Describe SRN and HRN scheduling policies and determine the average turn around time and
weighted turn-around time for the following set of processes- (Dec 2013)
Processes P1 P2 P3 P4 P5
Arrival time 0 2 3 4 8
Service time 3 3 5 2 3

9. What are the functions of medium and short term schedulers? (June 2013)
10. Determine the mean turn-around time for SJN an RR scheduling, assuming a time slice of 1s
for the following table- (June 2013)

Process Arrival time in sec Execution time in sec Deadline in sec
P1 0 3 4
P2 2 3 14
P3 3 2 6
P4 5 5 11
P5 8 3 12

11. Describe the various blocks in long term scheduling with JCB Structure. (June 2013)

UNIT-8
1. Write short notes on i) Buffering of interprocess messages (June 2012, Jan 2013)
ii) Processes and threads
iii) Process control block
2. Explain interprocess communication in UNIX in detail.
(June 2011, June 2012, Jan 2013,June 2013, Dec 2013)
3. What is a mailbox? With an example, explain its features and advantages.
(June 2012, Jan 2013, Dec 2013)
4. Explain implementation of message passing in detail. (June 2011)
5. Explain i) direct and indirect naming ii) blocking and non-blocking sends. (Dec 2014)

6. Explain the primitives used for the transmission and reception of messages in an OS.
(June 2013)
7. Describe message delivery protocols and the exceptional conditions during message delivery
with an example. (June 2013)