UNIVERSITY EXAMINATIONS: 2016/2017
EXAMINATION FOR THE DEGREE OF BACHELOR OF SCIENCE IN
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
BIT1106A OPERATING SYSTEMS
FULL TIME/PART TIME/DISTANCE LEARNING
DATE: AUGUST, 2017 TIME: 2 HOURS
INSTRUCTIONS: Answer Question One & ANY OTHER TWO questions.
QUESTION ONE
a) Distinguish between process and a thread (4 Marks)
b) Describe the two general roles of an operating system, and elaborate why these roles are
important. (4 Marks)
c) Explain
i) The FIVE state process model (5 Marks)
ii) A deadlock (2 Marks)
d) Identify SEVEN functions of the operating systems (7 Marks)
e) What are the FOUR necessary and sufficient conditions for deadlock to occur
(8 Marks)
QUESTION TWO
a) How can one implement mutual exclusion approach (2 Marks)
b) Distinguish between
i) monitors and semaphores (2 Marks)
ii) protection and security (4 Marks)
c) Write an algorithm to sort out the producer consumer problem (12 Marks)
QUESTION THREE
a) Explain a file system and give FOUR examples (6 Marks)
b) Why is buffering necessary in operating systems (2 Marks)
c) Describe the difference between internal and external fragmentation (4 Marks)
d) What is the I/O management (4 Marks)
e) Identify the resources managed by the operating systems (4 Marks)
QUESTION FOUR
a) Explain the
i) Race condition (2 Marks)
ii) Critical section (2 Marks)
iii) Mutual exclusion (2 Marks)
iv) Semaphore (2 Marks)
b) List the Three schedulers in operating systems (3 Marks)
c) Describe the Round robin algorithm (8 Marks)
QUESTION FIVE
a) Distinguish between multiprogramming and multitasking (4 Marks)
b) Describe
i) Context switching
ii) Segmentation
iii) Fragmentation
iv) Paging
v) Virtual memory (10 Marks)
c) List the THREE memory allocation algorithms (6 Marks)
