Operating Systems & Systems Programming Flashcards
6 cards from real B.S.W.E. Bachelor of Software Engineering practice questions. Tap to flip, then mark Knew It or Still Learning — missed cards come back until you master them.
Read the first 6 Operating Systems & Systems Programming flashcards as text
What is Inter-Process Communication (IPC)?
Answer: Mechanisms that allow processes to exchange data and synchronize actions
IPC refers to OS mechanisms—such as pipes, message queues, shared memory, and sockets—that allow separate processes to communicate and coordinate.
In file systems, what is an inode?
Answer: A data structure storing metadata about a file (permissions, size, timestamps) but not the file name
An inode is a data structure in Unix-like file systems that contains metadata about a file, such as ownership, permissions, size, and pointers to data blocks, but not the filename itself.
What is a context switch in operating systems?
Answer: The process of saving the state of a running process and loading the state of another process
A context switch is when the OS saves the current process state (registers, program counter) and restores a previously saved state to run a different process.
What does the fork() system call do in Unix/Linux?
Answer: Creates a child process that is an exact copy of the parent process
fork() creates a new child process that is a duplicate of the calling parent process, with its own copy of the parent's address space.
What is thrashing in virtual memory management?
Answer: A condition where the system spends more time swapping pages than executing processes
Thrashing occurs when the CPU spends most of its time servicing page faults rather than executing instructions, severely degrading system performance.
Which synchronization construct ensures that only one thread executes a critical section at a time?
Answer: Mutex
A mutex (mutual exclusion lock) ensures that only one thread at a time can enter a critical section, preventing race conditions on shared data.