CS439 Spring 2013

Welcome! This is the course website for CS439: Principles of Computer Systems for Spring 2013. This website is for the sections I am teaching, which meet on MW from 9a-11a and 12p-2p. CS439 is also being taught by Mike Walfish. His website for the class is here.

Class announcements will be posted on Piazza.

Course Links:
Syllabus
Schedule
Discussion Sections
Office Hours
Piazza (CS439N)
Project Page
Exam Information
Blackboard
iClicker Registration
Pair Programming Guidelines
Anonymous Feedback



More Resources

The student resource site for your book, Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective. This site contains links to C and Linux tutorials and other supplemental materials.

Operating Systems
Operating Systems Course Lectures at UC Berkeley
Linux Operating System


Background and General Tools

• An overview of Unix/Linux from CSE 380 by Karl W. Schulz and Dr. Chris Simmons
• A brief overview of gcc written by Eric Aschner.
• make
  
• Version control (keeping track of old versions of software before you added the last bug) is essential for large software projects. Git, CVS, and SVN are sophisticated tools for allowing concurrent editing in a multi-programmer project.

• Guide to Faster, Less Frustrating Debugging from Norman Matloff at UC Davis
• Debugging with GDB
• GDB reference card
• YouTube video tutorial on how to use GDB

  If you currently debug with printf's, spend a couple hours learning GDB. It's not hard, and I promise you will save time in the long (or not-so-long) run.

• DDD is a graphical front end to GDB: http://www.gnu.org/software/ddd. 

• An introduction to C for people that know other languages: "ANSI C for Programmers on UNIX Systems" by Tim Love. [local .pdf copy]
• Essential C: a Stanford CD Education document that attempts to summarize the C language.
• C for Java Programmers
• A Tutorial on Pointers and Arrays in C
• UNIX System Calls and Subroutines using C
• Chapter 3 "Reading C Programs" of Lions Commentary on the 6th Edition of the UNIX Operating System provides a quick (6 page) overview of C syntax, with a particular emphasis on some of the gnarley constructs OS writers sometimes like to use when they are feeling clever. Some of the dialect and style is a bit archiac, but making sure you understand these examples will save you much pain in the labs.
• Lecture Notes from the University of Albany on basic C Programming. Begin with lecture 2.
• Lecture Notes from the University of Albany on Systems Programming. Lecture 1 covers the Makefile.

• Introduction to Linux from the Linux Documentation Project User Guides
• GNU/Linux Command Line Tool Summary also from the Linux Documentation Project User Guides

• Lions' Commentary on UNIX's 6th Edition, John Lions
  • An on-line version of the Lions commentary, and the source code.
  • The v6 source code is also available on-line through the PDP Unix Preservation Society.
• The UNIX Time-Sharing System, Dennis M. Ritchie and Ken L.Thompson,. Bell System Technical Journal 57, number 6, part 2 (July-August 1978) pages 1905-1930. 
• The Evolution of the Unix Time-sharing System, Dennis M. Ritchie, 1979.