1. Which situation is suitable to use message passing instead of shared-memory model for communication between processes? What are the pros and cons of using these two models?
2. What is “system calls?” Please specify the functions and the purposes of a system call in a computer system.
A system call is how a program requests a service from an operating system's kernel.
Process Control
File management
Device Management
Information Maintenance
Communication
3. Please specify different ways for using the hardware configuration during the system generation (SYSGEN). What are the major differences between these different ways?
Used to modify a copy of the source code of the OS and have it re-complied.
Used to create tables and modes from a precompiled library. The needed modules are linked together to form the generated OS.
Which differences between these ways are the size and generality of the generated system and the ease of modification as the hardware configuration changes.