Diving into some core Operating Systems (OS) concepts.
Here's an extended breakdown of the
topics you mentioned, with more examples and related concepts to strengthen your
understanding:
🧠 1. Process Management
a. Process Control Block (PCB):
Contains info about a process: PID, state (running, waiting), program counter, CPU
registers, memory limits, etc.
Acts as the identity card of a process.
b. CPU Scheduling Algorithms:
Algorithm Description Example
FCFS (First Come Executes processes in order P1 (0s, 4s), P2 (2s, 3s), P3 (4s, 1s) → Gantt:
First Serve) of arrival P1 → P2 → P3
SJF (Shortest Job Process with the shortest Same as above, but order: P3 → P2 → P1
First) burst time first (after calculating ready times)
Time-sharing, fixed time
RR (Round Robin) P1(5s), P2(4s), P3(3s) → rotate each 2s
quantum (e.g., 2s)
✅ Also Learn:
Preemptive vs Non-preemptive scheduling
Priority Scheduling
🧠 2. Memory Management
a. Paging:
Logical memory divided into pages; physical memory into frames.
Uses page table to map pages to frames.
Example: Page 0 → Frame 4, Page 1 → Frame 2
b. Segmentation:
Memory divided into variable-length segments (e.g., code, stack, data).
Each has a segment number and offset.
Example: Code segment, Stack segment, Data segment
✅ Also Learn:
Internal vs External fragmentation
🧠 3. Deadlock
a. Necessary Conditions (Coffman):
1. Mutual Exclusion
2. Hold and Wait
3. No Preemption
4. Circular Wait
b. Deadlock Prevention:
Eliminate one of the conditions (e.g., no hold and wait)
c. Deadlock Detection:
Resource Allocation Graph (RAG)
Banker’s Algorithm (for safe state)
✅ Also Learn:
Deadlock Avoidance (e.g., Banker’s)
Recovery techniques
🧠 4. File Systems
Directory structure: single-level, two-level, tree, acyclic graph
Allocation Methods: contiguous, linked, indexed
File Access Methods: sequential, direct
✅ Also Learn:
Inode (index node in Unix/Linux)
File permissions (rwx)
Mounting and file system types (FAT, NTFS, ext4)
🧠 5. Synchronization
a. Semaphore:
Integer variable, 2 types:
o Binary (0 or 1)
o Counting (≥ 0)
Operations: wait(P), signal(V)
b. Mutex (Mutual Exclusion):
Used for locking; ensures only one thread accesses a critical section.
✅ Also Learn:
Producer-Consumer Problem
Reader-Writer Problem
Dining Philosophers Problem
🧠 6. Virtual Memory & Thrashing
a. Virtual Memory:
Allows programs to use more memory than physically available.
Uses demand paging.
b. Thrashing:
Excessive page faults → OS spends more time swapping pages than executing processes.
✅ Also Learn:
Page Replacement Algorithms:
o FIFO
o LRU (Least Recently Used)
o Optimal
🔍 More Examples and Concepts to Explore
Topic Sub-Topics
Multithreading Threads vs processes, Thread lifecycle
System Calls fork(), exec(), wait(), exit()
Interprocess Communication (IPC) Shared memory, Pipes, Message queues
I/O Management Disk scheduling (FCFS, SSTF, SCAN)
Booting Process BIOS → Bootloader → OS Kernel
Topic Sub-Topics
Kernel Types Monolithic, Microkernel
Scheduling Metrics Turnaround time, Waiting time, Response time