| Operating Systems - CS 3013 |
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CS 3013: Operating Systems
Section: C02 - Shue
Class Dates: C Term 2021, Tuesdays and Fridays
Meeting Time and Place: 12:00pm to 1:50pm in Higgins Labs 116
This course provides the student with an understanding of the basic components of a general-purpose operating system. Topics include processes, process management, synchronization, input/output devices and their programming, interrupts, memory management, resource allocation, and an introduction to file systems. Students will be expected to design and implement a large piece of system software in the C programming language. Undergraduate credit may not be earned both for this course and for CS 502. Recommended background: CS 2303 or CS 2301, and CS 2011.
Operating systems are present in a broad range of devices, from embedded systems to powerful supercomputers. This course is designed to help students learn more about operating systems, allowing students to know how to write applications that leverage operating system resources or for those that wish to develop operating systems themselves. The course will introduce the concepts of concurrency, abstracton, and caching. Other topics, such as file systems and networking, may be discussed only briefly, but are described in greater detail in separate courses (CS 4513 - Distributed Systems and CS 3516 - Computer Networking, respectively).
Course Instructor (Section C02): Craig A. Shue, Ph.D.
Email: please post via the class discussion board
Office: Zoom
Office Hours: Tuesdays: 3pm-4pm; Fridays: 10am-11am
Teaching Assistant: William Campbell
Office: Zoom
Office Hours: Mondays, 3pm-4pm; Tuesdays, 4pm-5pm; Fridays, 3pm-5pm
Teaching Assistant: Songlin Hou
Office: Zoom
Office Hours: Wednesdays, 1pm-3pm; Thursdays, 4pm-6pm
We will be using the following textbooks for the course:
Students must complete readings from the OSTEP book before each class. A quiz at the start of class will include contents from the readings. Failure to read the book will likely lead to poor performance in the course.
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted higher education broadly and the format of instruction in particular. WPI will be in "Stay in Place" status until at least February 11. During that time, all instruction and office hours in CS 3013 will be remote and conducted online. If the university extends the "Stay in Place" status, remote instruction will likewise be extended. If this status expires, the course instructor will evaluate the situation on campus and, at his discretion, determine whether to convert to an online/in-person hybrid format. Such a decision will be communicated via InstructAssist and is subject to revision as needed. The safety of all participants will be the key consideration in all such decisions.
If the course transitions to a hybrid format, students will continue to be able to take the course in a fully online/remote format, should they desire to do so. Everyone must make their own risk decisions and the instructor will strive to ensure remote participants feel as welcome in the course as any in-person participants.
This schedule is subject to change. Any changes will be announced in class with at least one week's advance notice, when possible. All readings are out of the OSTEP textbook unless otherwise noted. All readings are due before class on the date indicated. Students are expected to have read the readings prior to arriving for class. All projects are due at 11:59:00pm on the date indicated.
| Class | Date | Required Reading | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Friday, Jan. 29, 2021 | Course Syllabus, OSTEP Chapter 2 | Class: Course Introduction |
| 2 | Tuesday, Feb. 2, 2021 | OSTEP Chapters 4 and 5 | Class: System calls, Threads, Synchronization |
| 3 | Friday, Feb. 5, 2021 | OSTEP Chapters 26 and 27 | Class: System Calls, Introduction to Concurrency |
| Friday, Feb. 5, 2021 | Due: Project 1 - Checkpoint | ||
| 4 | Tuesday, Feb. 9, 2021 | OSTEP Chapter 28 | Class: Intro. to Concurrency, Processes |
| Tuesday, Feb. 9, 2021 | Due: Project 1 - Final | ||
| 5 | Friday, Feb. 12, 2021 | OSTEP Chapters 29 and 30 | Class: Synchronization, Concurrent Applications |
| 6 | Tuesday, Feb. 16, 2021 | OSTEP Chapters 31 and 32 | Class: Concurrent Applications |
| Tuesday, Feb. 16, 2021 | Due: Project 2 - Checkpoint | ||
| 7 | Friday, Feb. 19, 2021 | OSTEP Chapters 7, 13 and 14 | Class: Scheduling, Memory Management |
| Friday, Feb. 19, 2021 | Due: Project 2 - Final | ||
| 8 | Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2021 | OSTEP Chapters 15, 16, and 17 | Class: Memory Management |
| 9 | Tuesday, Mar. 2, 2021 | OSTEP Chapters 18, 19, and 20 | Class: Caching Principles and Paging |
| Tuesday, Mar. 2, 2021 | Due: Project 3 - Checkpoint | ||
| 10 | Friday, Mar. 5, 2021 | OSTEP Chapters 21 and 22 | Class: Caching and Paging Performance, Virtual Memory |
| Friday, Mar. 5, 2021 | Due: Project 3 - Final | ||
| 11 | Tuesday, Mar. 9, 2021 | OSTEP Chapters 36 and 37 | Class: Input and Output |
| 12 | Friday, Mar. 12, 2021 | OSTEP Chapter 39 | Class: Input and Output, File Systems |
| Friday, Mar. 12, 2021 | Due: Project 4 - Checkpoint | ||
| Monday, Mar. 15, 2021 | Due: Project 4 - Final | ||
| 13 | Tuesday, Mar. 16, 2021 | OSTEP Chapters 53 and 54 | Class: System Security and Protection |
| 14 | Thursday, Mar. 18, 2021 | Class: Special Topics |
The following represent the official policies and procedures for the course. Please review this information and discuss any questions with the professor as soon as possible.
The university-wide myWPI system is insufficient for the course's needs. Instead, we will be using InstructAssist, a custom-built course management tool created by the instructor. This system will be used for posting grades, submitting projects, obtaining slides, scheduling project demonstrations, and posting partner evaluations. It is available at https://ia.wpi.edu/cs3013-shue/. InstructAssist uses a WPI SSL certificate for authenticity and encryption to protect student records.
Class discussion, class hand-outs, posts on the class forum, emails to the student's WPI email account, and the course Web pages are avenues for official course communication. Students are responsible for any information distributed through any of these venues.
Students must check their WPI email daily. The instructor and TAs will use email to send urgent information to the class. Classmates collaborating on teams may also use email to coordinate efforts, so checking email periodically will be essential for timely responses.
Students should post all questions about the course on the class discussion board. The teaching staff will use the discussion board to keep track of assistance requests. Further, posts on the discussion board will be available to all students by default, allowing everyone to learn from these questions.
By default, all students will be subscribed to receive email copies of the classwide announcements sent by the teaching staff. Students may unsubscribe from non-urgent postings by adjusting their profile settings. Students are responsible for all announcements, even if they elect not to receive email copies.
If a question is of a more personal or private nature, students can choose to create a new discussion topic and select the "Visible by Invitation Only" topic privacy option. Any communication in that topic will be visible only to the Instructor, the TAs, the student creating the topic, and any individuals the student explicitly invites to the topic. This approach will allow students to have a private discussion with the staff while still allowing the staff to keep track of unresolved issues and address them in a timely fashion.
The CS Department Documentation Format should be considered when programming. In general, code must be clean and organized. It must be appropriately commented as well. During project demonstrations, students may be graded on their ability to accurately describe what a code segment does, so students are well-advised to aim for clairity in their programming.
Submissions must include a README file and a Makefile for compilation. All programs must compile and execute on the provided virtual machines. Programs that do not compile, or programs lacking commenting, will not be graded and will be assigned a score of 0.
For students working in pairs, each student must complete a partner evaluation indicating the contributions of each team member. Failure to complete an evaluation will result in a penalty. Students who are found to not have contributed their fair portion of the assigned deliverables may face grade deductions at the discretion of the teaching staff.
Students with a strong computer science background develop the ability to quickly pick up a new programming language as needed. This provides them the flexibility to adapt to changing work requirements and the ability to recognize the most efficient tool for the job. Students pick up these abilities through exposure to different programming languages, especially those that serve as the model for future languages.
In this course, we will be using the C programming language. This language is the basis of many common operating systems and network programs, with operating system APIs designed with these languages in mind. Students without experience in C will have to develop such a background while concurrently developing course projects. This is extremely challenging and prior courses have shown that students without a background in C programming generally do not perform well in CS 3013.
The C Programming Language, by Kernighan and Ritchie, (ISBN: 0-13-110362-8) is the de facto standard guide to programming in C and provides a good reference in addition to the textbooks.
During lectures, students are to be focused on the course. Students should not use materials or electronic devices that would inhibit their attention to the course lecture and discussion. Laptops may only be used for note-taking purposes; transmission capabilities on these devices must be disabled and only appropriate note-taking application may be used in class. Mobile devices, such as phones or PDAs, are not to be used in class. Significant penalities may be assessed for repeated infractions.
Students must treat each other and the teaching staff with respect at all times. Disagreement, debates, and criticism of ideas are healthy aspects of academic environments; however, students should avoid demeaning language or comments which can be taken personally. The ability to handle conflict professionally and work with a variety of people is an acquired skill, yet is increasingly important in technical careers.
All other programming projects may be submitted late, but with significant penalties. Programs that are late by a certain amount of time, denoted as t, will incur the following penalties:
| 0 minutes < t ≤ 1 day | 10% deduction from maximum grade before the rest of the grading begins |
| 1 day < t ≤ 3 days | 30% deduction from maximum grade before the rest of the grading begins |
| 3 days < t ≤ 5 days | 50% deduction from maximum grade before the rest of the grading begins |
| 5 days < t | no credit will be awarded |
Any projects submitted after 4pm on Tuesday, March 16, 2021 will not be graded.
The course programming assignments and in-class quizes form the basis for 95% of the course grade. The remaining 5% of the course grade will be attributed to in class participation and professionalism associated with the course. Details on each of these components are as follows:
Students with approved academic accommodations should plan to submit their accommodation letters through the Office of Accessibility Services Student Portal. Should you have any questions about how accommodations can be implemented in this particular course, please contact me as soon as possible. Students who are not currently registered with the Office of Accessibility Services (OAS) but who would like to find out more information regarding requesting accommodations and what that entails should plan to contact them via email: AccessibilityServices@wpi.edu and/or via phone: (508) 831-4908.
The WPI Academic Integrity Policy describes types of academic dishonesty and requirements in documentation. In the case of academic dishonesty, I am required to report the incident to the Dean of Student Affairs. Further, my penalty for academic dishonesty is to assign a NR grade for the course.
In this class, students may not look at any previous versions of a course assignment or project, regardless of how it is posted. If a student accidentally discovers such a posting, they must report it to the instructor immediately, avoid the resource in the future, and delete any copies that are cached on their computer.
Students are likewise forbidden from facilitating other students, current or future, in plagiarism or cheating. Students may not distribute their code publicly on the Internet, or in other means, during the term or even after the class has concluded. Students may share their code with potential employers or other individuals privately, so long as the code would not become available to other WPI students.