UNIVERSITY EXAMINATIONS: 2017/2018
EXAMINATION FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF SCIENCE IN DATA
COMMUNICATIONS
MDC 6104: OPERATING SYSTEMS THEORY AND DESIGN
DATE: DECEMBER 2017 TIME: 2 HOURS
INSTRUCTIONS: Answer Question One & ANY OTHER TWO questions.
QUESTION ONE
a) Discuss common services provided by operating systems. 10Marks
b) Discuss the various properties of an operating system as relating to batch processing,
multitasking, multiprogramming and interactivity 8Marks
c) Using an example explain the term process 2Marks
QUESTION TWO
a) Describe the various states of a process 6Marks
b) Describe the various scheduling algorithms 9Marks
QUESTION THREE
a) Distinguish between deadlock and starvation 2 Marks
b) Discuss various pieces of information that are contained in process control block. 9 Marks
c) Differentiate between process and a thread 4 Marks
QUESTION FOUR
a) Discuss memory allocation mechanisms in operating system 5Marks
a) Discuss several services provided by Kernel I/O Subsystems 4Marks
b) Discuss various ways of accessing files 3 Marks
c) Discuss three main ways used by Operating systems to allocate disk space to files 3 Marks
