ch2 review silberschatz operating systems concepts essentials 2nd ed

Review Questions
Section 2.1
2.1 List at least three operating system services that are useful to users. User Interface; Program Execution; IO Operations; File-System Manipulation; Communications; Error Detection
2.2 List at least three operating system functions that maintain efficient operation of the system. Resource Allocation; Accounting; Protection and Security
Section 2.2
2.3 What are the two different approaches for providing a user interface? Command Interpreter and Graphical User Interface.
Section 2.3
2.4 What is a system call? System calls provide an interface to the services made available by an operating system.
2.5 What is an API? An application programming interface specifies a set of functions that are available to an application programmer, including the parameters that are passed to each function and the return values the programmer can expect.
2.6 What kernel data structure can be used for one technique of passing parameters to system calls? Registers
Section 2.4
2.7 List at least three of the major categories of system calls. System calls can be grouped into six categories: Process control, file manipulation, device manipulation, information maintenance, communication and protection.
2.8 A program that has been loaded and executing is called a . thats a process but that isnt covered in this section!
2.9 What part of the operating system makes the decision with regards to which job will run? I beleive the answer to this is Cpu although the section 2.4 begins on page 66 and ends on page 73 but covers system calls only referencing the system calls that are responsible for creating and removing processes.
Section 2.5
2.10 List at least three of the categories of system programs. file management, status information. file modification, programming language support, program loading and execution, communications, and background services are the categories of system programs.
2.11 True or False? The view most users see of the operating system is defined by application and system programs rather than system calls. True
Section 2.6
2.12 What are the two basic goal groups that must be considered when designing an operating system? User goals and system goals
2.13 What is the difference between policy and mechanism? A policy determines what will be done and a mechanism determines how things will be done.
Section 2.7
2.14 List at least three different ways for structuring an operating system. simple structure, layered approach, microkernels, loadable kernel modules, and hybrid systems are all different ways to structure an operating system.
2.15 List at least two different hybrid operating systems. Mac os x, ios , and android
2.16 What are the two devices that run the iOS operating system? ipad and iphone
2.17 What technique do micro kernels use to communicate between services? message passing
2.18 Provide an example of an operating system that uses the simple structure. MS-DOS
Section 2.8
2.19 True or False? Performance tuning is a type of debugging. True
2.20 True or False? DTrace is available for Windows systems. True
2.21 Name two activities the operating system is responsible for in connection with disk management. disk initialization, booting from disk, and bad-block recovery are all activites the operating system performs in connection with disk management
2.22 Name at least two activities the operating system is responsible for in connection with disk management. disk initialization, booting from disk, and bad-block recovery are all activites the operating system performs in connection with disk management
2.23 Of the following 5 forms of storage, rank them from fastest to slowest in terms of access time: (1) main memory, (2) magnetic disk, (3) registers, (4) solid state disk, (5) cache.
registers (0.25-.5)
cache (0.5-25)
main memory (80-250)
solid state disk (25,000-50,000)
hard disk (5,000,000)

Section 2.9
2.24 What does the term SYSGEN refer to? system generation is a process of designing coding and implementing an operating system for a specific machine at one site or even for a class of machines at a variety of sites still with a variety of peripheral configurations.
Section 2.10
2.25 What is the name of the small piece of code that locates the kernel and loads it into main memory? the bootstrap program or bootstrap loader