Question

The operating system provides an interface between application programs and the computer hardware. Discuss the process of the execution of any application program on the hardware using all managers of the operating system.

Answer 1

The Operating system works as an interface (intermediate) to communicate between application programs and computer hardware. The resources (memory, Input/Output devices processor, RAM ec) are made available to multiple applications by the Operating system. The processor is switched among various application programs very rapidly so all seems to be progressing at the same time.

There are four main managers of Operation System:

1) Process Manager

2) Device Manager

3) Memory Manager

4) File Manager

1) Process Manager :- It does tasks like creation, scheduling and deletion of the processes. Processes can be in 5 states:

Hold, Run, Wait, Ready, Finish

It also includes the Clock speed (the speed at which the processor can execute the instructions).

2) Device Manager :- It handles the devices as the name suggests. If any Input/ Output device is not working properly, it will report about it. Eg. Keyboard, Mouse, Speakers, Disks, Pen Drives etc.

Real Life Example: Sometimes while working, you may see the pop up warning msg indicating "Keyboard not found. Please press Enter key to fix it." It seems to be funny to press enter if the keyboard is not working. But in actual, it tries to fix the driver issue by doing this.

3) Memory Manager :- When a program or application need to be run, it must be reside into the main memory. so first the application is loaded into the main memory, so now how this loading will happen in the memory, it is the work of Memory manager. It can be contiguous memory allocation (if we have enough contiguous memory) or Non-contiguous memory alloocation.

Real Life Example : When you load a large file (eg. Word/ Excel file of 50 MB), it takes time to load the file and the system gives us the error "Not Responding" as the memory manager is storing this file into the main memory.

4) File Manager :- It keeps track of the files. It allocates and deallocates the file if needed. It keeps record of the accessability of the files which are accessabel or not.

Real Life Example: When you search any file in the system search tab, if shows the files available and their path where those are located in your system. This is managed by the File Manager of Operating system.

All the four managers of OS work will the collaboration of each other.