Virtual & Physical Memory Management

Explain the virtual memory model, including virtual address spaces, page tables, and the MMU's role.

Describe the kernel's physical memory management using zones and the buddy allocator.

Explain the SLAB/SLUB/SLOB allocators and how they manage small, frequently used kernel objects.

Compare kmalloc, vmalloc, and direct page allocation, and select the appropriate allocator for a given scenario.

Describe how demand paging and page fault handling work in the Linux kernel.

Explain the process address space layout, including VMA structures and how the mmap system call is implemented.

Describe the page reclamation mechanism, including LRU lists, kswapd, direct reclaim, and the OOM killer.