Unix Memory Management question and answer for interview

1. What is a Map?
A Map is an Array, which contains the addresses of the free space in the swap device that are allocatable resources, and the number of the resource units available there.

Address Units
1 10,000

This allows First-Fit allocation of contiguous blocks of a resource. Initially the Map contains one entry - address (block offset from the starting of the swap area) and the total number of resources.
Kernel treats each unit of Map as a group of disk blocks. On the allocation and freeing of the resources Kernel updates the Map for accurate information.

2. What do you mean by u-area (user area) or u-block?
This contains the private data that is manipulated only by the Kernel. This is local to the Process, i.e. each process is allocated a u-area.

3. What is Fork swap?
"fork()" is a system call to create a child process. When the parent process calls "fork()" system call, the child process is created and if there is short of memory then the child process is sent to the read-to-run state in the swap device, and return to the user state without swapping the parent process. When the memory will be available the child process will be swapped into the main memory.

4. What is Expansion swap?
At the time when any process requires more memory than it is currently allocated, the Kernel performs Expansion swap. To do this Kernel reserves enough space in the swap device. Then the address translation mapping is adjusted for the new virtual address space but the physical memory is not allocated. At last Kernel swaps the process into the assigned space in the swap device. Later when the Kernel swaps the process into the main memory this assigns memory according to the new address translation mapping.

5. How the Swapper works?
The swapper is the only process that swaps the processes. The Swapper operates only in the Kernel mode and it does not uses System calls instead it uses internal Kernel functions for swapping. It is the archetype of all kernel process.

6. What are the processes that are not bothered by the swapper? Give Reason.

  1. Zombie process: They do not take any up physical memory.
  2. Processes locked in memories that are updating the region of the process.
  3. Kernel swaps only the sleeping processes rather than the 'ready-to-run' processes, as they have the higher probability of being scheduled than the Sleeping processes.

7. What are the requirements for a swapper to work?
The swapper works on the highest scheduling priority. Firstly it will look for any sleeping process, if not found then it will look for the ready-to-run process for swapping. But the major requirement for the swapper to work the ready-to-run process must be core-resident for at least 2 seconds before swapping out. And for swapping in the process must have been resided in the swap device for at least 2 seconds. If the requirement is not satisfied then the swapper will go into the wait state on that event and it is awaken once in a second by the Kernel.

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Unix Memory Management question and answer for interview