Operating Systems I

Tutorial 7

1. Why is internal fragmentation a particular problem with 'buddy' memory allocation?
2. Why might the JavaOS support garbage collection, but UNIX not?
3. In what sense can a 'segmented' memory address space be said to be 'two dimensional'?
4. Name three operations which are typically allowed on a file.
5. What is one problem with 'flat' filesystems, that is addressed by 'two-level' filesystems?
6. File systems: what are the advantages of storing references to inodes in directory entries, instead of directly storing the file information? What are the disadvantages?
7. How is space physically divided up on a hard disk?
8. What are some problems with contiguous allocation of file space. Name an application nevertheless in which it might be used.