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PCC-CS502MAKAUT · Sem 5

Operating Systems

MAKAUT B.Tech CSE AICTE model curriculum (2020-21 final scheme; 2023-24 OBE structure keeps OS in 5th semester) · Theory 100: 70 end-sem (3 hrs; usual MAKAUT layout Group A very short/MCQ 10 x 1 = 10, Group B any 3 of 5 x 5 = 15, Group C any 3 of 5 x 15 = 45, long questions often split into parts) + 30 internal (mid-sem 15, assignment/quiz 10, attendance 5). OS Lab PCC-CS592 (2 credits) is marked out of 100: 40 continuous + 60 external.

Official syllabus

Revised 0 of 100 high-repeat questions

One-Night Pass Pack

States: New, Ready, Running, Waiting, Terminated with labelled transitions (admit, dispatch, timeout, I/O wait, I/O complete, exit). PCB holds PID, state, program counter, registers, priority, memory-management info, open files, accounting data. Context switch: save the running process's CPU state in its PCB, load the next process's state from its PCB, resume it. Context-switch time is pure overhead.
Full-marks tip: Draw the diagram first, then the PCB as a box. Keep it to one page since it is a 5-mark Group B answer.

Exam kal hai? Send this Pass Pack to your batch group.

Unit-wise syllabus

U1Introduction

Weightage: Not officially published (Group B and C questions are not fixed per module)

Concept, generations and types of operating systemsOS services and system callsOS structure: layered, monolithic, microkernelVirtual machinesCase study: UNIX and Windows

U2Processes, Threads and CPU Scheduling

Weightage: Not officially published (Group B and C questions are not fixed per module)

Process states and transitions, PCB, context switchingThreads: types, benefits, multithreadingTypes of schedulers and scheduling criteria (CPU utilisation, throughput, TAT, WT, response time)Preemptive and non-preemptive algorithms: FCFS, SJF, RRMultiprocessor schedulingReal-time scheduling: Rate Monotonic and EDF

U3Inter-process Communication

Weightage: Not officially published (Group B and C questions are not fixed per module)

Critical section, race condition, mutual exclusionHardware solution, strict alternation, Peterson's solutionProducer-consumer problem, semaphores, event counters, monitors, message passingClassical IPC problems: readers-writers, dining philosophers

U4Deadlocks

Weightage: Not officially published (Group B and C questions are not fixed per module)

Definition and necessary conditionsDeadlock preventionDeadlock avoidance: Banker's algorithmDeadlock detection and recovery

U5Memory Management and Virtual Memory

Weightage: Not officially published (Group B and C questions are not fixed per module)

Logical vs physical address, contiguous allocation with fixed and variable partitionsInternal and external fragmentation, compactionPaging: hardware support (TLB), protection and sharingVirtual memory, locality of reference, page fault, working set, dirty bit, demand pagingPage replacement: Optimal, FIFO, Second Chance, NRU, LRU

U6I/O Hardware, Disk and File Management

Weightage: Not officially published (Group B and C questions are not fixed per module)

I/O devices, device controllers, DMA, interrupt handlers, device driversDisk structure and scheduling: FCFS, SSTF, SCAN, C-SCANFile concept, access methods, directory structureAllocation methods: contiguous, linked, indexedFree-space management: bit vector, linked list, groupingDisk reliability, formatting, boot block, bad blocks

Curated video lectures

Free lectures from well-known educators, matched to units. Videos load only when you tap “Watch here”, to save data.

Operating System complete course

Gate Smashers · Playlist · ~92 videos · Hinglish

Operating System complete course

Neso Academy · Playlist · ~77 videos · English

Operating System complete playlist (numericals focus)

KnowledgeGATE by Sanchit Sir · Playlist · ~82 videos · Hinglish

Operating Systems lectures (IIT Bombay)

Mythili Vutukuru (IIT Bombay) · Playlist · ~33 videos · English

Deadlock avoidance: Banker's algorithm with example

Gate Smashers · Single video · Hinglish · Unit 4

Page replacement introduction and FIFO

Gate Smashers · Single video · Hinglish · Unit 5

Exam Guide Radar

Standard textbook

Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne, Operating System Concepts Essentials, 9th ed. (Wiley Asia), with William Stallings, Operating Systems: Internals and Design Principles (PHI)

Exam guide students buy

Unverified: MAKAUT solved-paper guides such as the 'Matrix' series or Ray & Martin are reported in use, but a current PCC-CS502 edition could not be confirmed

Names students give for MAKAUT exam prep. We could not confirm a current edition for every paper, so match the paper code (e.g. PCC-CS601) on the cover before buying.

Local market tip

Check College Street (Kolkata) shops or your college bookstall for a solved-paper guide that names PCC-CS502 and includes the latest year's paper, and avoid old WBUT CS-503/CS-602 era editions; ask seniors which series they actually used.

Lab Viva Survival

Shell scripting and Linux administration (bash, file systems, users and permissions)

Q. What is a shell and what does #!/bin/bash do?: → The shell is the command interpreter; the shebang line tells the system to run the script with bash.
Q. What does chmod 755 file mean?: → Owner gets read, write, execute; group and others get read and execute.
Q. What is an inode?: → A data structure storing a file's metadata (owner, size, permissions, block pointers) but not its name.

Process creation with fork(), exec(), wait() and zombie processes

Q. What does fork() return?: → 0 in the child, the child's PID in the parent, and -1 on failure.
Q. What is a zombie process?: → A child that has finished but whose exit status has not yet been collected by the parent with wait().
Q. How is exec() different from fork()?: → fork() creates a new copy of the process; exec() replaces the current process image with a new program.

Semaphores, POSIX threads and IPC (pipes, FIFOs, shared memory)

Q. What do semget, semop and semctl do?: → semget creates or gets a semaphore set, semop performs P/V operations, semctl sets values or removes the set.
Q. Difference between pthread_join and pthread_exit?: → pthread_join waits for a thread to finish and collects its result; pthread_exit ends the calling thread.
Q. Pipe vs named pipe (FIFO)?: → A pipe works only between related processes and has no name; a FIFO has a file-system name and works between unrelated processes.
Q. Why is shared memory the fastest IPC?: → After setup, processes read and write the same memory directly without kernel copying.