Interview Questions

LDD - Concurrency, Race Conditions and Sync

Linux Device Driver - Interview Questions

LDD - Concurrency, Race Conditions and Synchronization

LDD - Concurrency, RC and Sync Interview Questions

  • What are the best synchronization techniques used in linux kernel?
  • How SpinkLocks work in SMP and UP architectures. what happens when a interrupt is received ? what is contained inside an interrupt handler What is the process of system call ,what happens exactly and how the mode toggles between user/kernel mode and vice versa?
  • What are spin locks, are they better then mutex ?
  • Difference between semaphore and mutex.
  • What is difference between wake_up ( ) and wake_up_interruptible ( ) APIs in linux kernel ?
  • When should should use which one, how it should be decided ?
  • Why do we need synchronization mechanisms in Linux kernel?
  • What are the different synchonization mechanisms present in Linux kernel?
  • What are the differences between spinlock and mutex?
  • What is lockdep?
  • Which synchronization mechanism is safe to use in interrupt context and why?
  • Explain about the implementation of spinlock in case of ARM architecture.
  • Explain about the implementation of mutex in case of ARM architecture.
  • Explain about the notifier chains.
  • Explain about RCU locks and when are they used?
  • Explain about RW spinlocks locks and when are they used?
  • Which are the synchronization technoques you use 'between processes', 'between processe and
  • interrupt' and 'between interrupts'; why and how ?
  • What are the differences between semaphores and spinlocks?
  • Diff between mutex and semaphore? Can semaphore be used for data synchronisation purpose?
  • What is deadlock? How to come out of deadlock?
  • About Synchronization mechanism where you used in real time(examples)
  • what happen if you use mutex in ISR, how you over come with that problem
  • what is critical section?
  • Semaphore internal code behavior in a way semaphore implementation ?
  • spinlock vs mutex vs semaphore
  • Working of spinlocks
  • Can Spinlocks works on mutliprocessor system.
  • In what scenarios mutex is used and semaphore is used.
  • What is the difference between Mutex and Binary semaphore
  • When a Mutex lock is aquired by a low priority task and High priority trys to acquires the lock will the low priority task will be pre emitted .
  • The same above scenario is with sema and spinlock
  • How do you establish a sync mechanism in above hard disk scenarios.
  • Write a simple with crtical section,mutex lock and mutex unlock.
  • Spin locks behavior?
  • If spin locks what flavor of spin locks will you use.
  • Explain Shared memory, Message Queue Synchronization techniques in Linux
  • How can you make part of driver code is allowed to be executed and not executed depending upon condition?
  • Different synchronization techniquies ?how do you chose the best sync mechanisam fits the scenario?
  • What are all the Kernel APIs used in you driver programming?
  • how to divided critical work and non critcal work based on top half and bottom Half
  • What is task_struct and how are task states maintained ?
  • What is rwlock and spinlock ? Briefly explain about both of them ?
  • When will you use rwlock instead of spinlock ?
  • Can spinlock/rwlock be used in Interrupt handler ?


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