Introduction

Demand paging is a memory management technique that brings a page into memory only when it is required. This helps in reducing the amount of memory used and improving system performance. However, when a page is not in memory and is accessed, it leads to a page fault.

Steps to Handle a Page Fault

• Detect the Page Fault: The operating system detects the page fault through the hardware’s memory management unit (MMU).
• Identify the Faulting Process: The OS identifies the process that caused the page fault.
• Locate the Needed Page: The OS searches for the needed page on disk or in secondary storage.
• Load the Page into Memory: The OS loads the page into a free frame in memory.
• Update Page Table: The OS updates the page table to reflect the new location of the page.
• Restart the Faulting Process: The OS restarts the faulting process so that it can continue execution.

Conclusion

Handling page faults is an essential part of demand paging. By following these steps, the operating system can efficiently resolve page faults and ensure the smooth operation of the system.