CPA Operating Systems & Process Management Flashcards
6 cards from real CPA practice questions. Tap to flip, then mark Knew It or Still Learning — missed cards come back until you master them.
Read the first 6 CPA Operating Systems & Process Management flashcards as text
What is the purpose of a semaphore in concurrent programming?
Answer: To control access to shared resources by multiple processes using a counter
A semaphore uses an integer counter and wait/signal operations to control how many processes can access a shared resource simultaneously.
In Unix-like systems, what is the init process (PID 1)?
Answer: The ancestor of all processes, responsible for system initialization and orphan adoption
The init process (PID 1) is the first user-space process started by the kernel; it initializes the system and becomes the parent of orphaned processes.
What is thrashing in operating systems?
Answer: A state where the system spends more time swapping pages than executing processes
Thrashing occurs when the OS constantly pages data in and out because the working sets of active processes exceed available physical memory.
Which of the following is a necessary condition for deadlock to occur?
Answer: Mutual exclusion
Mutual exclusion — where at least one resource must be held non-shareably — is one of the four necessary Coffman conditions for deadlock.
What does a context switch involve?
Answer: Saving the state of the current process and restoring the state of the next scheduled process
A context switch saves the running process's CPU registers and program counter, then loads the saved state of the next process to run.
What is the kernel in an operating system?
Answer: The core component that manages hardware resources and provides services to user processes
The kernel is the privileged core of the OS that directly controls hardware and provides system calls that user-space programs use to request services.