Operating systems — process manager responsibilities: What must the Process Manager keep track of for each executing program?

Introduction / Context:The process manager (part of an operating system kernel) handles process creation, scheduling, and termination. It must maintain essential metadata to make correct dispatching and resource-allocation decisions.

Given Data / Assumptions:

• Conventional OS with a scheduler and per-process control blocks.
• Each program runs as a process or thread with attributes.
• We focus on core tracking responsibilities, not developer tooling.

Concept / Approach:Key items maintained include process state (new, ready, running, waiting, terminated), CPU registers, program counter, memory maps, and scheduling parameters such as priority. These are stored in data structures like the process control block (PCB) or task control block (TCB).

Step-by-Step Solution:Identify necessary scheduling data: priority is required to choose which process runs next.Identify necessary state data: status allows the scheduler to know whether a process can run.Conclude that both status and priority are core responsibilities.

Verification / Alternative check:Standard OS texts list PCB contents; status and priority are universally present, while documentation support is not part of the process manager.

Why Other Options Are Wrong:(c) Information management support is tooling, not kernel-level process tracking. (e) Device address catalogs belong to I/O subsystems and hardware abstraction layers, not strictly to per-process tracking.

Common Pitfalls:Confusing OS developer utilities with kernel responsibilities; assuming memory maps alone suffice without state/priority.

Final Answer:both (a) and (b).