University of Puget Sound - Spring 2007
CSci475 Operating Systems

Class Periods and Exam Schedule

Catalog description

The student studies the fundamental principles of modern operating systems. Topics include input/output, concurrent processing, memory management, file systems, security, threads, and distributed systems. Students study abstract models as well as actual examples of operating systems such as Windows NT and Linux.

What we're really going to study:

An operating system's core purpose is that of a resource manager, where the resources consist of time, memory, storage, and peripherals. Its secondary purpose is often to present an ideal architecture to the user, e.g., vast memory, robust (and faster) file storage, convenient access to remote resources, etc. (Others may invert this characterization, but I hold that this secondary purpose can, in most cases, be provided outside of the operating system.)
We'll discuss the theory and when possible, run code which demonstrates the application of the theory.

Textbook

The author has provided some on-line materials students can reference.

Other worthwhile reading:

• Single UNIX Standard Version 3 (POSIX)
• Plan9 (the operating system, not the movie) with local copies of some information and alternate information
• Minix 3
• Time: Julian date

Other Resources

• help in a Unix environment
• Unix command line tutorial
• Learn about vim (VI iMproved) by reading online documentation and download vim for Windows
• Revision Control System

Lecture Schedule and Notes

• 01/16
• 01/17
• 01/19
• 01/22: review Unix material in lab
• 01/23
• 01/24
• 02/02
• 02/05
• 02/14

Assignments

Grades will soon be recorded at moodle. (I'm in the process of creating entries for this term's courses.) Late assignments are assessed a penalty of 1%/hour (about 25%/day) up to the time the assignment solution is discussed in class, at which time they may receive a zero score.

When submitted by email to rbentson@ups.edu, the subject line should start with CSci475, followed by the due date

• Due 2007/01/17 1300 PDT: Ch 1, Exercises 5, 13
• Due 2007/01/19 1300 PDT: Ch 1, Exercises 15
• Due 2007/01/26 1700 PDT: Lab Exercise 2.1 (pp 76-82), starting from this code fragment. Learn about library/system calls using the commands
  • man -s 2 fork
  • man -s 2 wait
  • man -s 2 execve
• Due 2007/02/19 1100 PDT: Ch 3, Exercise 3; Ch 4, Exercise 8; Ch 5, Exercises 7, 14
• Due 2007/02/26 1100 PDT: Lab Exercise 5.1 (pp 190-196)
• Due 2007/04/18 2359 PST: intermediate project
• Due 2007/05/01 2359 PST: Term project

Grading

Programming is not just about writing syntatically correct programs which compute the correct results. It is also about writing commentary and other documentation which will help others understand what you're doing. (This matches one of the University goals which emphasizes "the ability to communicate clearly and effectively".) Therefore you will also be expected to write clearly. Spelling, grammar, and style count.

Final grades will be based on the following components:

Criteria

Although details and weighting may change due to context, here is a brief enumeration of some criteria used in grading assignments.

---

CSci475/index.html was last edited by Randolph Bentson, on 2007/05/02T13:39:52-07:00
This course syllabus is a work in progress, so be sure to visit again in the near future.