Unit 4 Lab Assignment 4: Processor Management
In this assignment, you will learn to collect information about and send commands to your OS’s
processor manager. For each of the two questions, do the following:
1. Create a document (use Microsoft word or any equivalent tool such as
LibreOffice) and name it appropriately to reflect the assignment type, number,
and your name.
2. Answer the following questions (if any) in the document you created and
justify your answers. To do this, you may need to perform some tasks on your
computer, use a snipping or “print screen” tool to take screenshots, and paste
the illustrations/pictures into the document. Showing screenshots only does
not constitute answering a question. You need to provide both the answer
to the question and the screenshots.
3. Save and upload the document to the learning management system
(Blackboard). Upload the two documents at once.
Do not forget to show visual evidence (screenshots) of the main actions you took to answer
the questions.
Question 1: Windows Virtual Memory
1. How many cores does your machine have?
2. How many processors does your machine have?
3. What is the frequency of each processor?
4. How much physical memory does your system have?
5. How much of this memory is free?
6. How many context switches has the system performed since bootup?
Do not forget to show visual evidence of the main actions you took to answer the questions.
Question 2: Linux Virtual Memory
You may perform the tasks in this question on any Linux system. You may find help in [1].
1. Install and run the utility htop on your Linux OS using the CLI. Answer the following
questions:
a. How much swap memory do you have? how much of it is being used by your OS?
b. For how long has your system been up?
c. How do you kill a process in htop? Kill a random process and see if it will have an
effect on your OS.
2. Start the text editing program of your choice (e.g., gedit)
a. What is the PID of the editing process? [hint: Use the ps utility (module 4-1) and “|
grep”]
b. Kill the text editing process. What command did you use?
c. Issue the “pstree” command. What is the first process that your OS started? What
happens if you kill that process?
Do not forget to show visual evidence of the main actions you took to answer the questions.
Reference: [1]