How Are Devices Represented in UNIX?
How Are Devices Represented in UNIX?
2. What is 'inode'?
All UNIX files have its description stored in a structure called 'inode'. The inode
contains info about the file-size, its location, time of last access, time of last modification,
permission and so on. Directories are also represented as files and have an associated
inode. In addition to descriptions about the file, the inode contains pointers to the data
blocks of the file. If the file is large, inode has indirect pointer to a block of pointers to
additional data blocks (this further aggregates for larger files). A block is typically 8k.
Inode consists of the following fields:
File owner identifier
File type
File access permissions
File access times
Number of links
File size
Location of the file data
7. What is a FIFO?
FIFO are otherwise called as 'named pipes'. FIFO (first-in-first-out) is a special
file which is said to be data transient. Once data is read from named pipe, it cannot be
read again. Also, data can be read only in the order written. It is used in interprocess
communication where a process writes to one end of the pipe (producer) and the other
reads from the other end (consumer).
8. How do you create special files like named pipes and device files?
The system call mknod creates special files in the following sequence.
1. kernel assigns new inode,
2. sets the file type to indicate that the file is a pipe, directory or special file,
3. If it is a device file, it makes the other entries like major, minor device numbers.
For example:
If the device is a disk, major device number refers to the disk controller and minor
device number is the disk.
SECTION - II
PROCESS MODEL and IPC
1. Brief about the initial process sequence while the system boots up.
While booting, special process called the 'swapper' or 'scheduler' is created with
Process-ID 0. The swapper manages memory allocation for processes and influences
CPU allocation. The swapper inturn creates 3 children:
the process dispatcher,
vhand and
dbflush
with IDs 1,2 and 3 respectively.
This is done by executing the file /etc/init. Process dispatcher gives birth to the
shell. Unix keeps track of all the processes in an internal data structure called the Process
Table (listing command is ps -el).
9. What is a zombie?
When a program forks and the child finishes before the parent, the kernel still
keeps some of its information about the child in case the parent might need it - for
example, the parent may need to check the child's exit status. To be able to get this
information, the parent calls `wait()'; In the interval between the child terminating and the
parent calling `wait()', the child is said to be a `zombie' (If you do `ps', the child will have
a `Z' in its status field to indicate this.)
Message Queues :
Message queues can be used between related and unrelated processes
running on a machine.
Shared Memory:
This is the fastest of all IPC schemes. The memory to be shared is mapped
into the address space of the processes (that are sharing). The speed achieved is
attributed to the fact that there is no kernel involvement. But this scheme needs
synchronization.
SECTION - III
MEMORY MANAGEMENT
2. What is major difference between the Historic Unix and the new BSD release of Unix
System V in terms of Memory Management?
Historic Unix uses Swapping – entire process is transferred to the main memory
from the swap device, whereas the Unix System V uses Demand Paging – only the part of
the process is moved to the main memory. Historic Unix uses one Swap Device and Unix
System V allow multiple Swap Devices.
4. What is a Map?
A Map is an Array, which contains the addresses of the free space in the swap
device that are allocatable resources, and the number of the resource units available there.
Address Units
1 10,000
5. What scheme does the Kernel in Unix System V follow while choosing a swap device
among the multiple swap devices?
Kernel follows Round Robin scheme choosing a swap device among the multiple
swap devices in Unix System V.
6. What is a Region?
A Region is a continuous area of a process’s address space (such as text, data and
stack). The kernel in a ‘Region Table’ that is local to the process maintains region.
Regions are sharable among the process.
7. What are the events done by the Kernel after a process is being swapped out from the
main memory?
When Kernel swaps the process out of the primary memory, it performs the
following:
Kernel decrements the Reference Count of each region of the process. If the
reference count becomes zero, swaps the region out of the main memory,
Kernel allocates the space for the swapping process in the swap device,
Kernel locks the other swapping process while the current swapping operation
is going on,
The Kernel saves the swap address of the region in the region table.
8. Is the Process before and after the swap are the same? Give reason.
Process before swapping is residing in the primary memory in its original form.
The regions (text, data and stack) may not be occupied fully by the process, there may be
few empty slots in any of the regions and while swapping Kernel do not bother about the
empty slots while swapping the process out.
After swapping the process resides in the swap (secondary memory) device. The
regions swapped out will be present but only the occupied region slots but not the empty
slots that were present before assigning.
While swapping the process once again into the main memory, the Kernel
referring to the Process Memory Map, it assigns the main memory accordingly taking
care of the empty slots in the regions.
10. What are the entities that are swapped out of the main memory while swapping the
process out of the main memory?
All memory space occupied by the process, process’s u-area, and Kernel stack are
swapped out, theoretically.
Practically, if the process’s u-area contains the Address Translation Tables for the
process then Kernel implementations do not swap the u-area.
14. What are the processes that are not bothered by the swapper? Give Reason.
Zombie process: They do not take any up physical memory.
Processes locked in memories that are updating the region of the process.
Kernel swaps only the sleeping processes rather than the ‘ready-to-run’
processes, as they have the higher probability of being scheduled than the
Sleeping processes.
16. What are the criteria for choosing a process for swapping into memory from the swap
device?
The resident time of the processes in the swap device, the priority of the processes
and the amount of time the processes had been swapped out.
17. What are the criteria for choosing a process for swapping out of the memory to the
swap device?
The process’s memory resident time,
Priority of the process and
The nice value.
19. What are conditions on which deadlock can occur while swapping the processes?
All processes in the main memory are asleep.
All ‘ready-to-run’ processes are swapped out.
There is no space in the swap device for the new incoming process that are
swapped out of the main memory.
There is no space in the main memory for the new incoming process.
20. What are conditions for a machine to support Demand Paging?
Memory architecture must based on Pages,
The machine must support the ‘restartable’ instructions.
25. What are data structures that are used for Demand Paging?
Kernel contains 4 data structures for Demand paging. They are,
Page table entries,
Disk block descriptors,
Page frame data table (pfdata),
Swap-use table.
27.How the Kernel handles the fork() system call in traditional Unix and in the System V
Unix, while swapping?
Kernel in traditional Unix, makes the duplicate copy of the parent’s address space
and attaches it to the child’s process, while swapping. Kernel in System V Unix,
manipulates the region tables, page table, and pfdata table entries, by incrementing the
reference count of the region table of shared regions.
34.In what way the Fault Handlers and the Interrupt handlers are different?
Fault handlers are also an interrupt handler with an exception that the interrupt
handlers cannot sleep. Fault handlers sleep in the context of the process that caused the
memory fault. The fault refers to the running process and no arbitrary processes are put to
sleep.
35.What is validity fault?
If a process referring a page in the main memory whose valid bit is not set, it
results in validity fault.
The valid bit is not set for those pages:
that are outside the virtual address space of a process,
that are the part of the virtual address space of the process but no physical address is
assigned to it.
36.What does the swapping system do if it identifies the illegal page for swapping?
If the disk block descriptor does not contain any record of the faulted page, then
this causes the attempted memory reference is invalid and the kernel sends a
“Segmentation violation” signal to the offending process. This happens when the
swapping system identifies any invalid memory reference.
37.What are states that the page can be in, after causing a page fault?
On a swap device and not in memory,
On the free page list in the main memory,
In an executable file,
Marked “demand zero”,
Marked “demand fill”.
41.How the Kernel handles the copy on write bit of a page, when the bit is set?
In situations like, where the copy on write bit of a page is set and that page is
shared by more than one process, the Kernel allocates new page and copies the content to
the new page and the other processes retain their references to the old page. After copying
the Kernel updates the page table entry with the new page number. Then Kernel
decrements the reference count of the old pfdata table entry.
In cases like, where the copy on write bit is set and no processes are sharing the
page, the Kernel allows the physical page to be reused by the processes. By doing so, it
clears the copy on write bit and disassociates the page from its disk copy (if one exists),
because other process may share the disk copy. Then it removes the pfdata table entry
from the page-queue as the new copy of the virtual page is not on the swap device. It
decrements the swap-use count for the page and if count drops to 0, frees the swap space.
42.For which kind of fault the page is checked first?
The page is first checked for the validity fault, as soon as it is found that the page
is invalid (valid bit is clear), the validity fault handler returns immediately, and the
process incur the validity page fault. Kernel handles the validity fault and the process will
incur the protection fault if any one is present.
44.How the Kernel handles both the page stealer and the fault handler?
The page stealer and the fault handler thrash because of the shortage of the
memory. If the sum of the working sets of all processes is greater that the physical
memory then the fault handler will usually sleep because it cannot allocate pages for a
process. This results in the reduction of the system throughput because Kernel spends too
much time in overhead, rearranging the memory in the frantic pace.
1. To display the contents of a executable file the following
command can be used
(a) cat (b) od (c) vi (d) ed ans : b
2. Assume the current directory contains 10 files and does'nt
contain 'temp'. What will be the output of the follwing
commands?
$ls > temp
$wc -l temp
(a) 9 (b) 10 (c) 11 (d) undefined. ans : b
3. If one wants the output of one command( command1) to be
printed inthe printer as well as to be added to another file
(outfile) which one of the following is a currect command
he can give?
(a) $command1 >>outfile|tee lpr
(b) $tee -a command1 | lpr
(c) $ command1 | tee outfile | lpr
(d) $ command | tee -a outfile |lpr ans : d
(4) In the shell program set -x will cause
A. Execution of the commands in the background
B. Execution of the commands in verbose mode
C. Exit from the shell program.
D. Exit from the shell program after executing the next command
(5) ACL in UNIX refers to
A. Acces Control List
B. Action Control List
C. Application Command Language
D. Advanced C lanuage
(6) The command echo*
A. will print * on the screen
B. will print contents of all the files in the current
directory
C. will list the files in the current directory
D. will print the contents of all shell variables
(7) ls || date will
A. print the name of the files in the current directory
B. print today's date and time
C. (A) followed by (B)
D. none of the above
(8) The built-in shell variable $$ refers to
A. printing numbers in dollar format
B. proces id_ of last command
C. proces id_ of last background command issued
D. proces-id of current shell
(9) dd is mainly used for
A. dealing with raw, unformated data, whatever the source
B. dealing with data dictionary
C. deleting a directory
D. none of the above
(10) vis in UNIX is
A. a command that takes only one input
B. a command for deleting strange or unwanted charectors that
may have crept into files.
C. points non-printable characters in understandable format
D. all of the above
(11) Which of the following is true regarding the UNIX
(i) Multiuser Operating System
(ii)Multitasking Operating System
(iii) Real timing Operating System
A. i only B. i and ii only C. i and ii and iii only
D. i and ii
(12) ln command is used to
A. link object codes into a executable code
B. give two names to the same file
C. set line numbers for the file
D. none of the above
(13) nohup command is used for
A. protecting the execution of programmes from aborting when
hangup signal is received
B. changing the execution priority of the programes
C. not hanging up of the modem
D. disconnecting a node from the system
(14) SCCS is a
A. Tool for maintaining large programmes in a production
environment
B. Communication Protocol
C. Shell Programming Language
D. String processing utility
(15) Which one of the following is true as long as UNIX is
concerned
A. One can do programming in C only
B. It can support terminals capable of printing only uppercase
characters
C. The text files are sorted as it is in MS-DOS
D. None of the above
(16) Inside vi editor to replace the string /10/$/94 with
10/$$/92 globally the following command can be used
A. :1,$ s/\/10\/\$\/94/10\/\$\$\/92/g
B. :1,$ s/\/10\/\$\/94/10\/\$\/$92/
C. :s/10/$/94/10/$$/92/g
D. :1,$ s/\/10\/$\/94/10\/$$\/92/g
(17) The ed command without any argument
A. will print the current working directory
B. will make the home directory as current directory
C. will ask for the directory to be used as the current
directory
D. will go to the previous directory
(18) nice command is used
A. to increase/decrease execution priority of a command
B. to compress a file
C. to run a programme at latter time
D. to set the key board responce slower
(19) What will be the output of the following command sequence
$ x='I am x'
$sh
$echo $x
A. I am x B. Blank line C. x D. None of the above
(20) The command tr a-z 0-9 < x
A. converts all the digits to lowercase alphabets
B. converts all the lowercase alphabets to digits
C. will give syntax error
D. none of the above