ITPEC FE Subject A October 2024 Question 13
ITPEC FE Subject A October 2024 — Question 13 of 60
Page Fault Types — identify what the OS does on a major page fault.
A page fault occurs when a program accesses a page not mapped in physical memory.
- •Minor page fault — page is already in RAM but the page table isn't updated yet (e.g., after
fork). Fixed without disk I/O. - •Major page fault — page is NOT in RAM. The OS must load it from the hard disk (swap/virtual memory).
Why (c):
- On a major page fault, the OS looks for the page in virtual memory on the hard disk and loads it into RAM.
Why not others:
- (a) The OS handles page faults automatically — no user input needed
- (b) CPU cache lookup is a hardware-level operation, unrelated to page faults
- (d) If the page is missing from physical memory, searching physical memory is pointless
Key rule: Major page fault = page not in RAM → OS fetches it from disk (swap/page file).
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