CPA CPA Operating Systems & Process Management

Question 1

What is the primary role of an operating system's process scheduler?

Accepted Answer

Manage CPU time allocation among processes

Answer

Store data to disk

Answer

Encrypt user files

Answer

Compile source code

Question 2

Which scheduling algorithm gives the shortest average waiting time when all job lengths are known in advance?

Accepted Answer

Shortest Job First

Answer

First-Come First-Served

Answer

Round Robin

Answer

Priority Scheduling

Question 3

In operating systems, what is a 'race condition'?

Accepted Answer

A situation where output depends on unpredictable timing of concurrent operations

Answer

A CPU benchmark test

Answer

A memory leak in multi-threaded programs

Answer

A scheduling algorithm for real-time systems

Question 4

What mechanism prevents two processes from simultaneously entering their critical sections?

Accepted Answer

Mutex lock

Answer

Paging

Answer

Virtual memory

Answer

Context switching

Question 5

Which state transition occurs when a process's time slice expires in a preemptive scheduler?

Accepted Answer

Running → Ready

Answer

Running → Terminated

Answer

Waiting → Ready

Answer

Ready → Waiting

Question 6

What is 'deadlock' in operating systems?

Accepted Answer

A condition where two or more processes wait indefinitely for resources held by each other

Answer

A program that loops forever without using CPU

Answer

Memory that cannot be freed by garbage collection

Answer

A file-system corruption state