P436/536 Home Page (Fall 1996)

P436/536
Operating Systems

Fall 1996

Instructor

Scott Stoller

T.A.

Shamugasundar Balasubramaniam

Hours

Lectures: Monday and Wednesday, 4:00PM - 5:15PM, in BH304.
Discussion: Thursday, 5:45PM - 6:35PM, in BH003.
Instructor's Office Hours: Monday and Wednesday, 5:15PM - 6:15PM, or by appointment. Lindley Hall 201D.
T.A.'s Office Hours: Tuesday and Thursday, 4:15PM - 5:15PM. Lindley Hall 330A.

Official Description

P436, P536

Tentative Syllabus

LecturesTopic
1Introduction
2-10Processes: Address Spaces, Threads, Synchronization, Deadlock, Scheduling
11-15Memory: Segmentation, Paging, Virtual Memory
16-18I/O, Filesystems
19-20Protection and Security
21Distributed Systems: Introduction
22-25Communication: Messages, RPC, Group Communication
26-28Distributed Filesystems

If we can get through the earlier topics more quickly, I will happily spend more time discussing distributed systems.

The lectures are based in part on Tom Anderson's lecture notes for CS162 at UC Berkeley.

Textbook

Andrew Tanenbaum, Modern Operating Systems (Prentice Hall, 1992).

Project

The project is to design and implement parts of a small operating system, called Nachos, which runs in a simulator that runs on Sun workstations. You will be given a "skeleton" of the operating system and will be asked to implement some of the missing parts, e.g., synchronization primitives for threads, virtual memory management, and a file system. You will work on the project in small teams. The programming is (almost) in C. A few simple features of C++ are used; they will be explained as needed. Here is a brief overview of Nachos, from its developers at UC Berkeley.

Nachos is installed locally in ~c536/nachos-3.4 on both the Burrow and the Sharks.

Project Mechanics

Click above for information on accounts, software tools, etc.

Grading

The breakdown is:
Project + occasional problem sets 40%
Midterm examination 23%
Final examination 37%
Grading on the project will emphasize good design as well as working code. Graduate students will be asked to implement additional features found in real operating systems; undergraduates can implement these features for extra credit. The midterm will be a 75-minute, in-class exam. The final will be a 2-hour exam held at the time specified in the Registrar's Schedule of Final Examinations. The weights of the two exams are in proportion to their length. The same exams will be used for 436 and 536, though separate curves will be used to convert numerical scores to letter grades.

Course Newsgroup

ac.c.436 will be used for both 436 and 536. If you have questions about the lectures or the project, this is a good place to ask them, so that other students can benefit from your questions. If you see a question and (think you) know the answer, post it! This will help your classmates and show us that you know what's going on; we'll re-read the postings in the newsgroup when assigning grades. The instructor or the T.A. will periodically read the newsgroup and post answers or corrections to answers, if needed.


Weekly Announcements


Week of December 16

Course Evaluation: If you haven't already completed the on-line course evaluation form, I would appreciate it if you took a few minutes to do so. Thank you.

Course grades have been distributed by email (if I didn't make any mistakes). If you haven't received your grade, please inquire.

Final Exam Statistics:
436: Mean=67/90 (74%), Stddev=18.
536: Mean=75/115 (65%), Stddev=19.
Problems 1-11 are worth 10 points each, except Problem 10, which is worth 15 points, because it's the only problem with 3 parts. The Extra Credit problem is worth 5 points.

Sample Solutions to Final Exam (in PostScript)

Solutions to Practice Problems for the Final

Final: The final will not cover: (1) cryptography-based protocols that achieve secrecy and integrity, and (2) the definition and implementation of atomic broadcast and virtual synchrony. The final may cover (among other topics) message orderings (none, FIFO, total, global), leader election, totally-ordered broadcast, and mutual exclusion.

Office Hours: On Monday, the instructor will have office hours at the usual time.
On Tuesday, the A.I. will have office hours at the usual time.

Final Exam (reminder): The final exam will be 5:00PM-7:00PM on Wednesday, December 18, in BH 304.

Week of December 9

Solutions to Problem Set 2

Statistics for 436:
ItemMeanStddev
Projects 1+2 (out of 40)32.65.4
Problem Set 2 (out of 20)11.55.3

Statistics for 536:
ItemMeanStddev
Projects 1+2 (out of 40)37.25.0
Problem Set 2 (out of 20)15.12.8

Textbook Readings: Finish Tanenbaum, Chapter 13.

Final Exam: The final, like the midterm, will deal with Nachos only to the extent that Nachos was discussed in lecture. The final will cover the entire course, with a moderate emphasis on material not covered by the midterm.

Practice Problems: Here are some Practice Problems for the Final, to help you check your understanding of topics not covered by previous problems sets, practice problems, or exams. Printouts will be distributed in lecture and discussion section on Wednesday and Thursday, respectively.

Week of December 2

Problem Set: Here is an Emendation to Problem Set 2. Problem Set 2 is due by midnight on Sat, Dec. 7, instead of Thu, Dec. 5.

Project: Information on the blocking filesystem can be found in the directory ~c536/public/blocking_filesys.

Final Exam: To minimize memorization anxiety, the final exam will be open notes. "Notes" here includes only handwritten originals: no textbooks, no printouts, no photocopies. You are encouraged to work out problems from Tanenbaum and other sources as preparation for the final, but that material does not count as "notes", i.e., don't bring pages of worked-out problems to the exam. In addition to your notes, you may bring handouts distributed by the instructors (e.g., problem sets, solutions to problem sets).

Textbook Readings: Tanenbaum, Sections 12.1 and 12.2, and Chapter 13.

Course Evaluation: Please complete the on-line course evaluation form when you receive it via email. Alternatively, you can fill out the course evaluation form here on the Web.

Reminder: Scott will be out of town Thu-Sat, so questions during that time should be addressed to Sundar or c536@cs.

Week of November 25

Advertisement: There will be an organizational meeting of the IU Student Chapter of the ACM at 6:30 PM on Wed, Dec. 4, in the Lindley 2nd floor lounge (a.k.a. The Pit).

Project: Important comments about Synchronization in Project 4 were posted to the course newsgroup on Nov. 24.

Textbook Readings: Tanenbaum, Chapters 10 and 11 (cont'd from last week). You can skip Sections 11.1 (Clock Synchronization) and 11.4 (Atomic Transactions).

[Thanksgiving] Happy Thanksgiving!

Week of November 18

Problem Sets: Problem Set 2 was distributed on Thu, Nov. 21, and is due on Thu, Dec. 5.

Textbook Readings: Tanenbaum, Chapters 10 and 11 (for this week and next).

Project: For Project 4, you can get 15% extra credit by implementing swap-space management that is efficient for sparsely-used address spaces. One way to do this is the first scheme described in a recent posting about swap space.

Week of November 11

Project: Here is the Projects 3 and 4 FAQ.

Week of November 4

Textbook Readings: Tanenbaum, Chapter 9.

Project:

(1) Projects 3 and 4 were distributed in last Thursday's discussion section.

(2) Here is some Advice for teams that had difficulty with Project 2.

Week of October 28

Textbook Readings: Finish Tanenbaum, Chapters 4 and 5.

Final Exam: The final exam will be 5:00PM-7:00PM on Wednesday, December 18, in BH 304. If you have a problem with this, let me know immediately.

Project: Remember that Proj 2 is due on Fri, Nov. 1.

Week of October 21

Textbook Readings: Tanenbaum, Chapters 4 and 5 (for this week and next).

Project:

(1) You don't need to freeze the files from Project 1; you can continue to modify them until you submit Project 2. Revised instructions for submitting and freezing files are in the Project Mechanics Handout; the changes are summarized in a news posting.

(2) Revised project schedule:
Proj 2 due: Fri, Nov. 1.
Proj 3 design review: Fri, Nov. 8, and Sat, Nov. 9
Proj 3 due: Fri, Nov. 15
Proj 4 design review: Fri, Nov. 22, and Sat, Nov. 23
Proj 4 due: Fri, Dec. 6

Midterm:

(1) As mentioned in a news posting, the answers to questions 3 and 5 have been revised since printed solutions were distributed on Oct. 16. So, you might want to look at the revised Brief Solutions to the Midterm.

(2) Click for full-size plots showing the Midterm scores for 436 and Midterm scores for 536. Some statistics appear below. Here are smaller plots:

[436 plot] [536 plot]

Grades: You can get an idea of your standing in the course from the following statistics (and the above plots for the midterm).

Statistics for 436:
ItemMeanStddev
Project 0 (out of 10)9.21.3
Problem Set 1 (out of 15)7.24.7
Midterm (out of 90)58 (64%)11
Statistics for 536:
ItemMeanStddev
Project 0 (out of 10)9.51.3
Problem Set 1 (out of 20)14.74.4
Midterm (out of 90)70 (78%)15

Week of October 14

Midterm: The same exams will be used for 436 and 536, though separate curves will be used to convert numerical scores to letter grades. Here are Brief Solutions to the Midterm.

Project:

(1) Design reviews for Project 2 will be held on Fri (Oct. 18, 1PM-6PM), Sat (Oct. 19, 9AM-2PM), and Mon (Oct. 21., 5:30PM-8PM). A sign-up sheet will be available at the midterm and during the discussion section.

(2) Project 5 has been cancelled. Project 4 will be the last project, unless overwhelming popular demand prompts resurrection of Project 5.

Week of October 7

Textbook Readings: Tanenbaum, Chapter 3 (continued).

Project: Some comments on Projects 1 and 2 have been collected in the Projects 1 and 2 FAQ (last updated Oct. 11).

Midterm:

(1) The midterm will cover material up to and including the lecture of Oct. 7. This corresponds to all of the assigned reading so far, except sections 3.4-3.6 of Tanenbaum. The midterm focuses on the material covered in lecture and in the textbook, not on Nachos.

(2) The midterm will be closed book, closed notes, etc.

(3) You might want to look at these Practice Problems for Midterm. These are intended to give you a feeling for the planned level of difficulty of the exam questions. Here are Brief Solutions to Practice Problems for Midterm.

Week of September 30

Textbook Readings: Tanenbaum, Chapter 3.

Project: A sign-up sheet to schedule design reviews for Project 1 will be available in this week's discussion section. As per the handout, the design reviews should occur on Fri and Sat of this week.

Week of September 23

Textbook Readings: finish Tanenbaum, Chapter 6. Tanenbaum, Sections 2.4-2.5.

Homework: Problem Set 1 was distributed on Sep. 23. It is a problem set, not a programming assignment. It must be done individually, not in teams. It is technically due in lecture on Mon., Sep. 30, though I suggest you try to finish it by Fri., Sep 27, so you can get started on Project 1. Some comments on Problem Set 1 have been collected in the Problem Set 1 FAQ.

Exam Schedule: The midterm will be in-class on Wed., Oct. 16.

Project:

(1) Project 1 was distributed on Sep. 25. It is due by the end of the day on Fri, Oct. 11. Design reviews for Project 1 will be held on Fri and Sat, Oct. 4 and 5. Projects 1 and 2 are the same for 436 and 536.

(2) We strongly recommend that you carefully read both Thomas Narten's A Road Map Through Nachos (except the parts about virtual memory) and Mike O'Donnell's Guide to Reading the [Nachos] Source Code, if you haven't already.

(3) To help you schedule your semester, here are tentative due dates for future projects: Project 3, due Sun, Nov. 10; Project 4, due Sun, Nov. 24; Project 5, due Sat, Dec. 14. [This has changed; see below.]

Week of September 16

Temporary Change in Office Hours: On Sep. 16, the instructor's office hour will be cancelled. A replacement office hour will be held on Sep. 17, 11AM-12AM.

Textbook Readings: start Tanenbaum, Chapter 6.

Project: Project 0 is due on Sep. 20. The instructions in the Project Mechanics handout for submitting a project were flawed. A posting to ac.c.436 describes the problem; you can also read that posting here.

Week of September 9

Textbook Readings: Tanenbaum, Sections 2.1-2.3 and 12.1.

Project:

(1) You should read A Quick Introduction to C++, by Tom Anderson. This was distributed in the discussion section on Sep. 5; if you didn't get a copy, you can print one yourself, or you can ask us to print one. I recommend reading it even if you are familiar with C++, because it contains some useful stylistic guidelines. The code for the stack example is in ~c536/docs/c++example/.

(2) A detailed version of Project 0 was distributed on Sep. 11. It is due on Sep. 20.

Week of September 2

Textbook Readings: Tanenbaum, Chapter 1

Project:

(1) Try to form teams by Monday, Sep. 9, so that you can start on Assignment 1 when it is distributed. As mentioned in the Project Mechanics Handout, you should notify us by email when you form a team.

(2) Read the Project Mechanics Page.

(3) Start reading the A Road Map Through Nachos and the code in ~c536/nachos-3.4/code/threads. Printouts of the Roadmap and the threads code will be distributed on Sep. 4. Another very helpful resource is Mike O'Donnell's Guide to Reading the [Nachos] Source Code. Mike's Guide is available only in HTML format, so we won't be supplying printouts; this doesn't mean you shouldn't read it!