This course examines the important problems in operating system design and implementation. The operating system provides an established, convenient, and efficient interface between user programs and the bare hardware of the computer on which they run. The operating system is responsible for sharing resources (e.g., disks, networks, and processors), providing common services needed by many different programs (e.g., file service, the ability to start or stop processes, and access to the printer), and protecting individual programs from interfering with one another. The course will start with a brief historical perspective of the evolution of operating systems over the last fifty years and then cover the major components of most operating systems. This discussion will cover the tradeoffs that can be made between performance and functionality during the design and implementation of an operating system. Particular emphasis will be given to three major OS subsystems: process management (processes, threads, CPU scheduling, synchronization, and deadlock), memory management (segmentation, paging, swapping), and file systems; and on operating system support for distributed systems.

Results

You will have an opportunity to learn a lot of practical information about how programming languages, operating systems, and architectures interact and how to use each effectively. This course is the first time you will learn about how concurrency and distributed systems communicate and work correctly. This knowledge will help you to more effectively use and manipulate computers and computer programs. I have designed the written and programming assignments to build on and enhance the lectures. You will hear the concepts in lecture, read them in the book, analyze them in the written homework, and put them in practice in the programming assignments.

Communication

• The class newsgroup is utexas.class.cs372.

  Use the newsgroup for all but personal issues. You must read the newsgroup, and you should post course related technical questions and responses to this newsgroup. I expect my students to make heavy use of the course newsgroup and of TA support when they have technical or administrative questions or problems.

  You should use the news.cs.utexas.edu news host.

• Email to the Instructor & TA. The subject of any email to me or the TA should begin with "372:" I receive an enormous amount of email, and if you follow this rule we will be better able to address your questions in a timely manner.

• Checking your grades - use UTdirect's eGradebook

Materials

• Course Web page: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/mckinley/372/

• Electronic participation: You will need to purchase a CPS device, classroom performance system which we will use regularly in class to facilitate class participation.

• Lecture notes: You are required to buy a course packet which contains all lecture notes. A current detailed syllabus (which is subject to change), all lecture notes, homeworks, and labs will be up to date on the web.

• Text: Silberschatz, Galvin, Gagne, Operating System Concepts with Java, sixth edition. ISBN: 0-471-48905-0.

• Other Useful Books
  • Peterson and Silberschatz, Modern Operating Systems
  • Tanenbaum, Operating Systems: Design and Implementation

• Java References
  • CS105 Java Short Course Try out assignments on this page if you have not programmed in Java before.
  • Introduction to Java. A good getting-started-with-Java reference. (We will not turn programs into Java applets in this class, so feel free to skip that section.)
  • A Java tutorial.
  • Another Java tutorial.
  • Java Lectures from CS371P
  • Thinking in Java, 3rd Edition, Prentice Hall, Bruce Eckel, ISBN: 0-13-027363-5 (http://www.bruceeckel.com/) (electronic edition)

Requirements and Grading

You must attend class regularly, read the assigned reading before class, and participate in class discussions. The course will be graded on a curve.

• 5 - 10% - 4 Written Homeworks, graded per problem 1 pt (full credit), .5 (half credit), and 0 (no credit)
• 2 to 5% - class participation and attendance
• 40 - 45% - 4 to 5 Programming Projects
• 40 - 50% - 3 Exams, where exam 1 and 2 will be the same weight and exam 3 will be weighed more.
  • Exam 1: WED 2/23/2005 5:30-7:30, first 1/3 of course
  • Exam 2: FRI 4/1/2005 5:30-7:30 second 1/3 of course
  • Exam 3: WED 5/4/2005 5:30-7:30, 50% on final 1/3 and 50% over the other 2/3 of course

Due Dates, Times, and Policies

• All written homework assignments are due at 10am in class on the due date.

  You must turn in written homework on time without exception, because we will provide solutions at the next class period (to give you quick feedback).

  We will grade written homework 1 point per problem on a 1/.5/0 scale. This course covers a lot of material and late assignments will seriously impact your ability to learn the next section of the course. For documented illness or death in the family that results in late homework, I will exclude the assignment from your grade average.

• All programming assignments (labs) are due at 10pm on Thursday nights, as recorded by the "turnin" program timestamp.

  You will have 5 slip days for all but the first programming assignment. You may divide your slip days across the remaining projects in any way you wish to extend deadlines for the projects. To help the TA track your slip-day status, the top of your project README file should include the line:

  Slip days used (this project): _______     Slip days used (total): ______

  Plan on turning your assignments on time and only using your slip days for unexpected illness. We will only grant extensions on labs only for documented illness and death in the family that consumes more than 5 days.

Cooperation and Cheating

Feel free to discuss homework and labs with other members of the class, myself, or the TA. However, do not look at or copy another students solution to a homework or lab. I am not concerned with how you come to understand the problem and how to solve it, but once you have the background necessary to solve it, you must provide your own solution. Exchanging homework or lab solutions is cheating and will be reported to the University. At minimum, you will fail the course.
• Pair Programming. You may do the assignments independently or in a pair, following the following pair time guidelines: the pair must sit, design, and program together at least 80% of the time, and split keyboard time evenly. Each student can work independently for at most 10% of the effort/time. We recommend pair programming because it is a more effective and time efficient way to learn the material. Once you begin an assignment with a partner, you cannot re-pair for that assignment. If you have to stop working together, you must work independently for the rest of the assignment and document your initial partner in your readme. You may change partners between assignments.

  The Student Code of Conduct documents your rights and responsibilities as a student.

I used course materials from Emmett Witchel, Tom Anderson, John Carter, Mike Dahlin, Jim Kurose, Hank Levy, Harrick Vin, and Thomas Narten to prepare some of the course materials. Thanks!

Copyright Notice: These lecture notes, homeworks, and lab assignments are part of a first course on operating systems. You must ask me permission to use these materials. I do not grant to you the right to publish these materials for profit in any form.

Kathryn S. McKinley, The University of Texas at Austin