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Introduction to Computer Science

Review Questions

Introduction to Computer ScienceReview Questions

Review Questions

1 .
What is a privileged instruction that can only be executed by the kernel in Windows 10 or macOS operating systems?
  1. opening a text file
  2. modifying system clock settings
  3. printing a document
  4. creating a new user directory
2 .
You are building your own computer and have finished installing all hardware components. What should you install first?
  1. Microsoft Office
  2. Microsoft Windows OS
  3. external I/O device drivers
  4. antivirus software
3 .
What process or component allows a system to run different types of applications used by multiple users at a time on the same computer?
  1. virtualization
  2. kernel
  3. operating system
  4. thread
4 .
How is efficiency defined with regard to operating systems?
5 .
What is virtualization as it relates to OSs?
6 .
Who sets policies in OSs?
7 .
What is the difference between user mode and kernel mode?
8 .
What component handles devices and provides buffering?
  1. device driver
  2. device register
  3. device manager
  4. I/O devices
9 .
How can a monolithic OS design be described?
  1. an OS architecture where the entire OS is working in kernel space
  2. OS architecture where the functionality and capabilities are added to a minimal core OS as plug-ins
  3. an example of layering in modern operating systems
  4. a computer memory design where memory access time varies depending on the memory’s location relative to a processor
10 .
What type of memory access is described as computer memory architecture where access time to any memory location is the same across all processors?
  1. cache-only memory architecture (COMA)
  2. non-uniform memory access (NUMA)
  3. uniform memory access (UMA)
  4. random access memory (RAM)
11 .
What are the main components of any operating system?
12 .
What are the differences between thread and process?
13 .
What does the hardware abstraction layer (HAL) refer to?
14 .
What scheduling algorithm prioritizes processes based on the shortest amount of remaining execution time?
  1. first come, first served (FCFS)
  2. round-robin (RR)
  3. shortest remaining processing time (SRPT)
  4. priority scheduling
15 .
What is synchronization?
  1. the way of coordinating multiple concurrent activities that are using a shared state
  2. computing model that improves the performance when multiple processors execute instructions simultaneously
  3. the memory that can be accessed by multiple processes and the processes that can communicate with each other without the middleman
  4. the data communication method between two processes, using a specific name and standard I/O operations, allowing for data transfer within a file system
16 .
What is an example of static data?
  1. a variable to keep track of the number of iterations in a loop in a program
  2. the date and time in the operating system
  3. the name of a file in a directory
  4. a hardcoded country code in a program that is created with the final keyword
17 .
How are processes managed by the OS conceptually?
18 .
How are I/O devices managed by the OS conceptually?
19 .
Why is scheduling counted as an important operation in OSs?
20 .
What is the term for a technique where a process's memory is divided into various segments or sections, each representing different types of data or code?
  1. time slicing
  2. paging
  3. isolation
  4. segmentation
21 .
Stack allocation uses what data processing technique?
  1. last in/last out
  2. first in/first out
  3. first in/last out
  4. last in/first out
22 .
How does a linker work?
23 .
What is the difference between static and dynamic linking?
24 .
How does caching relate to virtual memory?
25 .
What component is responsible for defining file names, storing files to a storage device, and retrieving files from a storage device?
  1. file system
  2. file versioning
  3. file
  4. file path
26 .
What is a directory?
  1. persistent memory that survives power failures most of the time, such as spinning disks, SSDs, and USB drives
  2. a collection of related information that is stored on secondary/virtual storage and is the smallest storage unit from the user’s perspective
  3. a system that allows a file to exist in several versions at the same time, which gives the user complete control over file creation
  4. a set of files that contains all the required information about the files, such as attributes, location, and ownership, which is managed by the OS
27 .
What is a distributed file system?
28 .
What is an inode?
29 .
Define the file system interface.
30 .
What is the term for the operating system that is virtualized?
  1. guest operating system
  2. host operating system
  3. default operating system
  4. dual boot operating system
31 .
What is the term for checking to see if a user's credentials match the credentials in a database of authorized users or in a data authentication server?
  1. authorization
  2. access enforcement
  3. authentication
  4. badge
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