COMP 3000 Test 2 Study Guide 2011

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Key Concepts

For this test, you should understand the following terms and how they interrelate:

  • execve semantics
  • how command line variables are processed by execve
  • how environment variables are processed by execve
  • signal handlers
  • concurrent operation with fork
  • scheduler and relationship to system calls
  • priority scheduling
  • round-robin scheduling
  • mutual exclusion
  • semaphores
  • basic pthreads
  • System V init scripts versus launchd
  • mounting filesystems
  • loopback mounting
  • sparse files
  • basic filesystem implementation
  • VFS abstraction

In addition to reading the notes, be sure to review the assigned readings! You will also need to know the material covered in Test 1.

Sample Questions

  1. Without errors, what does the execve system call return?
  2. Can a process modify its argument variables? Environment variables?
  3. Who calls a signal handler?
  4. If a parent and child process start printing "Parent\n" and "Child\n" to standard out, what will be the order of the output?