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Virtual Address Space & Memory Isolation Questions

Virtual address space concepts, address translation, paging/segmentation, page tables, TLBs, page fault handling, and memory protection mechanisms that isolate processes from each other. Includes hardware support (MMU), virtual memory management policies, and implications for security and performance.

HardTechnical
0 practiced
A recent deploy increased minor and major page faults causing a 95th-percentile latency regression. Provide a step-by-step incident debugging plan using tools: vmstat, perf (page-fault events), slabtop, /proc/pid/pagemap, and eBPF tracing. For each tool, state what you'd look for and a sample command.
HardSystem Design
0 practiced
Design a comprehensive observability and alerting strategy for memory-related performance issues across a fleet: include which metrics to collect (e.g., RSS, VMSIZE, minor/major faults, swap, page cache, memcg events), example Prometheus queries/alerts, and runbook actions tied to each alert severity.
MediumTechnical
0 practiced
Implement a minimal single-level page-table simulator in Python. Requirements: 32-bit virtual address space, 4KB page size, fixed number of physical frames (e.g., 1024). Provide functions: map(va, frame, perms), unmap(va), translate(va)->pa or raise PageFault. Simulate allocation of frames and page faults. Explain complexity and limitations.
MediumTechnical
0 practiced
Given the 64-bit x86-64 page table entry (PTE) low-order bit layout, decode this example PTE value and explain the meaning of set bits: 0x0000ff81234567f3. List which permissions are set (present, rw, user, accessed, dirty, nx) and whether the page is present.
MediumTechnical
0 practiced
Write a Python script/function to parse /proc/self/maps (or a given maps string) and compute total mapped size, total private anonymous size, and total shared file-backed size. Include handling of address ranges and an example input/output. Focus on correctness rather than performance.

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