Operating Systems (Fall 2017)

Course Outline

Here is the course outline for COMP 3000: Operating Systems.

Lectures and Exams

Note that the topics below are primarily chapters from the class textbook, Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces. Note that while introductory and summary dialogues are not linked below, they are worth reading for an informal take on the material.

Assigned readings are subject to change, please check this page each week.

Date	Topic
Sept. 7	Lecture 1: Introduction
Sept. 12	Lecture 2: Processes, Process API
Sept. 14	Lecture 3: Limited Direct Execution, CPU Scheduling, MLFQ
Sept. 19	Lecture 4: Address Spaces, Memory API
Sept. 21	Lecture 5: Hard Disk Drives, File and Directories
Sept. 26	Lecture 6: I/O Devices, FSCK and Journaling
Sept. 28	Lecture 7: File System Implementation
Oct. 3	Lecture 8: TBD ([www.nspw.org])
Oct. 5	Lecture 9: Concurrency and Threads, Locks
Oct. 10	Lecture 10: Concurrent Data Structures, Semaphores
Oct. 12	Lecture 11: Midterm Review
Oct. 17	Lecture 12: Address Translation, TLBs
Oct. 19	Lecture 13: Segmentation, Free space management
Oct. 31	Lecture 14: Paging
Nov. 2	Lecture 15
Nov. 7	Lecture 16
Nov. 9	Lecture 17
Nov. 14	Lecture 18
Nov. 16	Lecture 19
Nov. 21	Lecture 20
Nov. 23	Lecture 21: TBD (US Thanksgiving)
Nov. 28	Lecture 22
Nov. 30	Lecture 23
Dec. 5	Lecture 24
Dec. 7	Lecture 25

Tutorials

Each week you will get a progress grade from 0-4, given to you by a TA. If you are being diligent, you should be able to get 4's every week. The easiest way to get your grade is to come to tutorial and meet with your TA; alternately, you can meet a TA in their office hours or, at their discretion, discuss things with them online.

Date	Tutorials
Sept. 18,22	UNIX Introduction
Sept. 25, 29	Device files, filesystems, and kernel modules
Oct. 2, 6	kernel modules and using the source
Oct. 9, 13	Filesystem concurrency
Oct. 16, 20	Openstack
Oct. 23, Nov. 3	Catch up/Project help
Nov. 6, 10	Modifying system calls
Nov. 13, 17	kprobes, calling userspace
Nov. 20, 24	Kernel map, projects
Nov. 27, Dec. 1	Projects

Assignments

Due Date	Assignments
Sept. 23	Assignment 1
Sept. 30	Assignment 2
Oct. 6	Assignment 3
Nov. 5	Assignment 4
Nov. 18	Assignment 5

Course Software

In this course we will primarily working with Ubuntu, a widely-used family of Linux distributions. We will be using its Lubuntu variant in Virtualbox earlier in the term; later on we will transition to using Ubuntu Server on the SCS's Openstack installation (accessible only from the Carleton network).

You may use other Linux distributions to complete the assigned work and do your project; there will be differences, however, in some aspects (such as installing software), particularly if you use a distribution not based on Ubuntu or Debian.

Using Virtualbox in the labs

In the SCS labs you should be able to run the course VM by starting Virtualbox (listed in the Applications menu) and selecting the COMP 2406/3000 virtual machine image. After the VM has fully booted you will be automatically logged into the student account; this account has admin privileges and its password is "tneduts!".

We highly recommend running your VM in full-screen mode (select from the menu, not by maximizing the window). Do all of your work inside of the VM; it should be fast enough and you won't have any issues with sharing files or with firewalls/network connectivity.

You can save the work you do from the course VM (in the student account) to your SCS account and restore it to any other copy of the class VM (on your machines or in the labs) by running using the following commands:

 save3000 <SCS username>
 restore3000 <SCS username>
 compare3000 <SCS username>

If you use these commands, use them consistently. That means run restore3000 when you first log in, and run save3000 just before logging out. If you don't do this, you will erase the work that you had done previously when you save.

If you forgot to restore and you want to save, try running this:

  rsync -a -v --progress ~/ <SCS username>@access.scs.carleton.ca:COMP3000/

This is the same as the save3000 command minus the options (--delete and --force) that deletes files in the destination that don't exist in the source. As a check, you may want to add the -n option to do a dry run.

Running the Virtualbox VM on your own machines

If you want to run the VM appliance on your own system (running essentially any desktop operating system you want), just download the virtual appliance file and import. The SHA1 hash of this file is:

   a8a70ec2e1b49699f4de29c872ecec7cee21888f COMP 2406 & 3000, Fall 2015.ova

On Windows you can compute this hash for your downloaded file using the command FCIV -sha1 COMP 2406-3000 Fall 2014.ova. If the hash is different from above, your download has been corrupted.

If the application is not VirtualBox, you'll need to:

• Have the VM platform ignore any errors in the structure of the appliance found during the import process;
• Uninstall the VirtualBox guest additions by typing starting a terminal application and running

  sudo apt-get purge virtualbox-guest-x11 virtualbox-guest-utils

• Install your platform's own Linux guest additions, if available.