Operating Systems Process State Quiz

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Questions and Answers

What happens when a parent process terminates?

The child processes' entries are removed from the table immediately.

Its child processes become orphans.

Its entry is removed from the process table. (correct)

A wait() function is invoked automatically.

When does a child process entry get removed from the process table?

Immediately upon child process termination.

When the child process is orphaned.

After the parent process invokes wait(). (correct)

When the child process becomes a zombie.

What is the status of a process that becomes an orphan?

It remains in the system until it terminates. (correct)

It gets automatically adopted by the operating system.

It gets immediately removed from the process table.

It becomes a zombie process.

What triggers a child process to become a zombie?

Parent process not invoking wait(). Signup and view all the answers

What are the reasons for cooperating processes according to the text?

Information sharing, computation speedup, modularity, and convenience. Signup and view all the answers

Which model of interprocess communication (IPC) involves shared memory?

Memory-mapped model. Signup and view all the answers

What is a process in an operating system?

A program in execution Signup and view all the answers

Which of the following is NOT stored in the Process Control Block (PCB)?

Global variables Signup and view all the answers

In the context of child process termination reasons, what does cascading termination refer to?

The termination of all child processes when a parent process terminates Signup and view all the answers

What information does the Process Control Block (PCB) store about each process?

Process state, CPU registers, and memory-management information Signup and view all the answers

Regarding process scheduling, what does 'priorities' refer to?

The importance level assigned to each process for execution Signup and view all the answers

What term describes the status of a process after it has completed execution?

Terminated Signup and view all the answers

What is the state of a process when it is waiting for some event to occur?

Waiting Signup and view all the answers

Which type of process spends more time doing I/O than computations?

I/O-bound process Signup and view all the answers

What happens to the process state when it has finished execution?

Terminated Signup and view all the answers

Which data structure represents the context of a process in modern systems?

PCB Signup and view all the answers

In process scheduling, when CPU switches to another process, what must the system do?

Save the context of the old process and load the saved context for the new process Signup and view all the answers

What term describes a situation where a parent process terminates, causing all its child processes to also terminate?

Cascading termination Signup and view all the answers

Study Notes

Process

A program in execution is called a process, whereas a program is a passive entity stored on disk as an executable file.
A program becomes a process when the executable file is loaded into memory.

Process in Memory

Temporary data storage is used when invoking functions, including function parameters and local variables.
Dynamically allocated memory is also used.
Global variables are stored in memory.
The executable code is stored in memory.

Process Control Block (PCB)

PCB stores all information associated with each process, also known as the task control block.
Process state (running, waiting, etc.) is stored in the PCB.
Process number (Process ID) is stored in the PCB.
CPU registers and program counter contents are stored in the PCB.
CPU scheduling information, such as priorities and scheduling queue pointers, is stored in the PCB.
Memory-management information, such as memory allocated to the process, is stored in the PCB.

Process Representation in Linux

In Linux, processes are referred to as tasks.
Each process is represented by a C structure called task_struct.
The task_struct contains information such as process ID, state, time slice, parent, children, files, and memory management.

Process State

A process can be in one of five states: new, ready, running, waiting, or terminated.
New: the process is being created.
Ready: the process is waiting to be assigned to a processor.
Running: instructions are being executed.
Waiting: the process is waiting for some event to occur.
Terminated: the process has finished execution.

Types of Processes

Processes can be categorized as either I/O-bound or CPU-bound.
I/O-bound process: spends more time doing I/O than computations, with many short CPU bursts.
CPU-bound process: spends more time doing computations, with few very long CPU bursts.

Threads

Modern systems allow a process to have multiple threads associated with it.
These threads can execute concurrently.
More on threads will be discussed in the next chapter.

Context Switch

Context of a process is represented in the PCB.
When the CPU switches to another process, the system must save the context of the old process and load the context of the new process.
If a parent process terminates, its entry is removed from the table.
If a child process terminates, its entry is removed from the table only after the parent process invokes a wait().
If no parent is waiting, the process is a zombie.
If the parent terminated without invoking wait(), the process is an orphan.

Process Scheduling

Process scheduling will be discussed in detail in Chapter 5.

Interprocess Communication (IPC)

Processes within a system may be independent or cooperating.
Cooperating processes need interprocess communication (IPC) for reasons such as information sharing, computation speedup, modularity, and convenience.
There are two models of IPC: shared memory and message passing.

IPC – Shared Memory

Shared memory is an area of memory shared among the processes that wish to communicate.
The communication is under the control of the user processes, not the operating system.
Shared memory is more complicated to set up and does not work well across multiple computers.
It is used for sharing large amounts of data.
Major issues with shared memory include synchronizing process actions when accessing shared memory.

IPC – Message Passing

Message passing is a capability provided by the operating system.
The operating system provides message passing capability.

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Description

Test your knowledge of process states in operating systems with this quiz. Learn about how processes change state as they execute, from 'new' to 'waiting' to 'terminated'. Explore structures like task_struct and files_struct in the context of process management.