Operating Systems

Purpose of the assessment (with ULO Mapping)

The purpose of this assignment is to report on some important characteristics of Operating Systems. Students must answer Multiple Answer questions and provide written answer about process, file and device management, deadlock, and UNIX commands. After successful completion of this assignment, students should be able to:

a. Report on the basics, and provide examples, of operating systems structure and functionality, including memory allocation, virtual memory, demand paging and process and devicemanagement.

b. Describe the integration of hardware, operating systems and application software.

c. Explain in detail the functioning of some devices such as peripherals (e.g. printers and network connections).

d. Discuss the most common file systems structure and technology.

e. Explain the concept of user interfaces and their role in the functionality of an OS.

f. Demonstrate competency in the use of a command line interface to operate with and manage an OS such as UNIX, and perform simple UNIX (Linux) administration.

g. Support and troubleshoot operating systems and applications at an introductory level.

Q1 - Device Handler Seek Strategies and Primary and Secondary storage

a) On a hard disk, the queue of track requests is as follows:

b) Calculate the total number of tracks and the average number of tracks travelled by the head to satisfy the requests in B-Q1-a (Details of the calculations is essential).

Q2 - Deadlock and File Management

a) What is a race condition? Explain race condition with an example (do not use the example from the lecture slide). Use your own example and explain in your own words.

Give references and cite the sources if you use any external source for this task.

b) Consider a system with four dedicated resources and four processes (process P1, P2, P3 and P4) that require a maximum of two devices to complete a task. Draw a directed graph of the scenario that demonstrates there is a deadlock in the system. Explain your graph with details.

c)

I. Files can be formatted with fixed-length or variable-length fields. Explain them in your own words with example (make sure your example is different from the one used in the lectures).

II. Explain relative and complete file name in your own words with example.
Give references and cite the sources that you used for this task.

Q3

a) Document the following UNIX commands (in clear and concise form):

- grep
- chmod
- wc
- ls

Each of the above commands must be documented to the extent so that the reader of your report could understand how each command works, including the following points:

- Brief introduction of the function of the command in your own words (in 2-3 sentences)
- The basic syntax of the command, including options. Where appropriate, give a brief description in your own words of at least two options of the command.
- At least two examples of the usage of the command that you have used in lab (provide screen capture).

Give references and cite the sources that you used for this task.