Editing Virtual memory (section)

===Paging supervisor===
This part of the operating system creates and manages page tables and lists of free page frames. In order to ensure that there will be enough free page frames to quickly resolve page faults, the system may periodically steal allocated page frames, using a [[page replacement algorithm]], e.g., a [[least recently used]] (LRU) algorithm. Stolen page frames that have been modified are written back to auxiliary storage before they are added to the free queue. On some systems the paging supervisor is also responsible for managing translation registers that are not automatically loaded from page tables.

Typically, a page fault that cannot be resolved results in an abnormal termination of the application. However, some systems allow the application to have exception handlers for such errors. The paging supervisor may handle a page fault exception in several different ways, depending on the details:
*If the virtual address is invalid, the paging supervisor treats it as an error.
*If the page is valid and the page information is not loaded into the MMU, the page information will be stored into one of the page registers.
*If the page is uninitialized, a new page frame may be assigned and cleared.
*If there is a stolen page frame containing the desired page, that page frame will be reused.
*For a fault due to a write attempt into a read-protected page, if it is a copy-on-write page then a free page frame will be assigned and the contents of the old page copied; otherwise it is treated as an error.
*If the virtual address is a valid page in a memory-mapped file or a paging file, a free page frame will be assigned and the page read in.
In most cases, there will be an update to the page table, possibly followed by purging the Translation Lookaside Buffer (TLB), and the system restarts the instruction that causes the exception.

If the free page frame queue is empty then the paging supervisor must free a page frame using the same [[page replacement algorithm]] for page stealing.