Interview Questions - UNIX Memory Management

This contains the private data that is manipulated only by the Kernel. This is local to the Process, i.e. each process is allocated a u-area.

All memory space occupied by the process, process's u-area, and Kernel stack are swapped out, theoretically.

Practically, if the process's u-area contains the Address Translation Tables for the process then Kernel implementations do not swap the u-area.

"fork()" is a system call to create a child process. When the parent process calls "fork()" system call, the child process is created and if there is short of memory then the child process is sent to the read-to-run state in the swap device, and return to the user state without swapping the parent process. When the memory will be available the child process will be swapped into the main memory.

At the time when any process requires more memory than it is currently allocated, the Kernel performs Expansion swap. To do this Kernel reserves enough space in the swap device. Then the address translation mapping is adjusted for the new virtual address space but the physical memory is not allocated. At last Kernel swaps the process into the assigned space in the swap device. Later when the Kernel swaps the process into the main memory this assigns memory according to the new address translation mapping.