Which of the following process state transitions is INVALID in a standard operating system process state transition diagram?
A blocked/waiting process cannot directly transition to the Running state. It must first transition to the Ready state when I/O completes, where the CPU scheduler eventually dispatches it to Running.
What information is NOT typically stored in a Process Control Block (PCB)?
The PCB contains process-specific metadata like PID, PC, register contents, memory limits, and open file lists. Global OS kernel algorithms like Page Replacement are part of the OS code segment, not individual PCBs.
In Unix-like operating systems, what is the value returned by the fork() system call to the parent process upon successful process creation?
The fork() system call returns 0 to the child process, the non-zero PID of the child process to the parent process, and -1 if the process creation fails.
Consider the execution of the following C code in a Unix environment:
int main() {
fork();
fork();
fork();
return 0;
}How many child processes are created in total?
With n consecutive fork() calls, the total number of processes generated is 2^$n = 2^3 = 8 processes (1 parent + 7 children)$. Thus, 7 child processes are created.
What is a Zombie Process in an Operating System?
A Zombie process is a process that has completed execution via exit() but still has an entry in the process table because its parent has not yet read its exit status via wait().