Operating System Fundamentals Questions

Comprehensive knowledge of operating system concepts and practical administration across Linux, Unix, and Windows platforms. Core theoretical topics include processes and threads, process creation and termination, scheduling and context switching, synchronization and deadlock conditions, system calls, kernel versus user space, interrupt handling, memory management including virtual memory, paging and swapping, and input and output semantics including file descriptors. Practical administration and tooling expectations include file systems and permission models, user and group account management, common system utilities and commands such as grep, find, ps, and top, package management, service and process management, startup and boot processes, environment variables, shell and scripting basics, system monitoring, and performance tuning. Platform specific knowledge should cover Unix and Linux topics such as signals and signal handling, kernel modules, initialization and service management systems, and command line administration, as well as Windows topics such as the registry, service management, event logs, user account control, and graphical and command line administration tools. Security and infrastructure topics include basic system hardening, common misconfigurations, and an understanding of containerization and virtualization at the operating system level. Interview questions may probe conceptual explanations, platform comparisons, troubleshooting scenarios, or hands on problem solving.

MediumTechnical

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Write a Python script that parses /proc/<pid>/statm (or /proc/<pid>/status) for all numeric PIDs and prints the top 5 processes by RSS (resident set size) along with their command names. Include handling for processes that disappear during the scan and explain your approach to avoid race conditions.

HardTechnical

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Implement a simplified virtual memory simulator in Python that supports:- allocating virtual pages for processes,- reading/writing virtual addresses (causing page faults),- a pluggable page replacement policy (LRU and CLOCK),- reporting page faults and frames contents.Describe the data structures and provide code for the core page access routine.

MediumTechnical

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Explain page table structures and the role of the Translation Lookaside Buffer (TLB). Describe how multi-level page tables reduce memory overhead, what a TLB miss entails, and the effects of page size (4KB vs 2MB huge pages) on TLB pressure and performance.

MediumTechnical

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Simulate an LRU page replacement policy. Write a function in Python that accepts a list of page references (integers) and a frame capacity, and returns the number of page faults and a final list of pages in frames. Keep your implementation efficient (O(1) per access average). Provide example input and output.

EasyTechnical

0 practiced

Explain the differences between SIGINT, SIGTERM, and SIGKILL in Unix. For a long-running server, provide a recommended signal handling strategy for graceful shutdown, including how to handle in-flight requests, cleanup, and forced termination fallback.

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