Course Outline

This course covers the fundamental concepts of operating systems. This includes OS structure, processes and thread management, communication with peripherals, synchronization, deadlocks, memory management, virtual memory, file systems, networking (sockets and protocols), and distributed systems.

Course Objectives

• understand concepts involving system resource management, organization, and abstraction
• understand how an OS manages and interfaces with hardware
• understand fundamental trade-offs integral to system design
• experience both development and experimentation in a real OS

Course Prerequisites

Assignments for this class will be done in C. Thus, a familiarity with C or a willingness to learn it quickly is required.

Course Material

Required Text: Operating Systems Concepts, 8th edition, by Silberschatz, Galvin, and Gagne

Recommended Text: Linux Kernel Development by Robert Love

Lab Section

Location: Thompkins 211

Time: Thurs 6:10-8:00

Students in either 154/156 must be enrolled in lab for CSCI 154. Lab section attendance is required and will cover the practical implementation of systems.

TA: James Marshall (jcmarsh at gwmail dot gwu dot edu).

• Office Hours: Monday, Tuesday 4-6pm

Written Assignments

Syllabus (subject to change)

1. Introduction and OS fundamentals (Chapter 1,2)

   Definitions, Computer Architecture, OS History, OS Structure

2. Processes, Inter-Process Communcation, Threads (Chapter 3, 4)

   Address spaces, I/O, Isolation, and Run-states

3. CPU Scheduling and Synchronization (Chapter 5, 19, 6)

   Scheduling Mechanisms, Algorithms, and Evaluation. Critical Sections and how they are provided

4. Synchronization Cont. and Deadlock (Chapter 6, 7)

   Semaphores/Monitors, Deadlock conditions and Solutions

5. Memory Management and Paging (Chapter 8)

   Allocation Algorithms, Segmentation, Address Translation

6. Virtual Memory (Chapter 9)

   Demand Paging, Algorithms for Page Replacement, Thrashing

7. Midterm Examination on October 20th, 2009

8. File-Systems and I/O (Chapters 10, 11, 12, 13)

   File-System API, Rotating Storage, File-System Layout, Block Device Scheduling

9. The Networking Stack: Internetworking and Transport Layers (Chapter 16)

   IP, UDP/TCP, Socket API

10. The Networking Stack: Physical and Link Layers

    Device Drivers, DMA

11. Distributed Systems (Chapter 17)

    Overview, Distributed FS, Stateful vs. Stateless

12. Distributed Coordination (Chapter 18)

    Event Ordering, Election Algorithms

13. Final Exam: Tuesday Dec 15th, 2009, 12:40-2:40pm in Tompkins 205

Lectures

• 9/1/09 - Class Introduction, OS definition and history [pdf]
• 9/3/09 - System Architecture and Structure [pdf]
• 9/8/09 - Processes [pdf]
• 9/10/09 - Concurrency and Parallelism: Inter-Process Communication and Threads [pdf]
• 9/15/09 - CPU Scheduling I [pdf]
• 9/17/09 - CPU Scheduling II & Synchronization [pdf]
• 9/22/09 - Synchronization II && III [pdf]
• 9/29/09 - Deadlocks [pdf]
• 10/01/09 - Memory Management I [pdf]
• 10/06/09 - Memory Management and Virtual/Physical Address Spaces [pdf]
• 10/08/09 - Virtual Memory [pdf]
• 10/13/09 - Page Replacement Algorithms [pdf]
• 10/17/09 - File System Interfaces [pdf]
• 10/29/09 - File System Structures [pdf]
• 11/03/09 - Disk Scheduling [pdf]
• 11/10/09 - Networking [pdf]
• 11/17/09 - Consistency [pdf]
• 11/19/09 - Distributed Coordination [pdf]
• 11/24/09 - Protection [pdf]

Grading

Homeworks and Quizes: 45%
Midterm: 20%
Final: 25%
Class and Lab Participation: 10%

Academic Honesty