Can a page fault be generated due to the absence of the page of inner page table?

Question

Consider, 2 level paging , with Process P, Inner page table PTi, and outer page table PTo.

Now we know that P and PTi are divided in various pages but PTo is in 1 page only.

So in order to run process P, we need few pages of P , few pages of PTi and complete PTo in main memory.

If PTi asks for a page of P which is not present in main memory , then thats a PAGE FAULT and that particular page of P will be loaded in.

Now the question is :

If PTo asks for a page of PTi which is not present in main memory , then ,is that also a PAGE FAULT ?

Please explain.

If YES, then can it be extended to all k page tables ( for k-level paging)

If No, then why ?

How do you define inner and outer page table? Does your system support paging of page tables at all? Some do. Some don't. If they do they need to have a mechanism to avoid the chicken and egg problem. — user3344003, May 18 '19 at 15:54

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered May 18 '19 at 23:42

2

In forward mapped page tables [ x86, arm ], yes faults will be generated if a page table walk encounters a missing page table. You typically need the top most (most significant bits ) table, but any of the intermediate ones can be missing.

answered May 18 '19 at 23:42

mevets

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Can a page fault be generated due to the absence of the page of inner page table?

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