Process management

Question 1

A computer system organized into processes may achieve:

Answer 1

∙ modularity — it is easier to build and maintain;

∙ speedup — it is easier to run on multiple machines

Question 2

what is a process lifecycle described as?

Answer 2

A state transition diagram

Question 3

A process control block contains:

Answer 3

∙ the process number (its identity);
∙ the process state (its registers);
∙ the process address space (its memory);
∙ the process I/O (its open files and network connections);

Question 4

A context switch involves

Answer 4

s saving the machine state in one
process control block and loading the machine state from
another

Question 5

A process address space has:

Answer 5

∙ a stack section for temporary data;
∙ a heap section for dynamically-allocated data;
∙ a data section for global data;
∙ a text section for program code

Question 6

The Unix system calls used to spawn a process are:

Answer 6

fork: copies a process address space;
∙ exec: overwrites a process address space with a program;
∙ wait: waits for another process to exit;
∙ exit: terminates a process.

Question 7

What does a fork do?

Answer 7

copies a process address space

Question 8

What does a exec do?

Answer 8

overwrites a process address space with a program

Question 9

Interprocess communication may be by either:

Answer 9

∙ shared memory;

∙ message passing.

Question 10

Interprocess communication by shared memory involves:

Answer 10

processes writing data to/reading data from an agreed area of memory

Question 11

Interprocess communication by message passing involves

Answer 11

processes sending messages to/receiving messages from an

agreed mailbox.