CS4411 Introduction to Operating Systems
Course Information Page
Fall 2008

Course Instructor		Dr. C.-K. Shene
Office		Rekhi 305
Class Meeting		Monday and Wednesday, 15:05 - 16:20
Classroom		Rekhi 214
Office Hour		Monday and Wednesday 16:30-17:00
Office Hour		Tuesday and Thursday 15:00-15:30
Phone		(906) 487-3392
e-mail		shene@mtu.edu

Click here to see the most recent announcements (December 14, 2008)
Click here to see the most recent ThreadMentor FAQ (October 1, 2006)
Click here for the most recent grade posting (December 22, 2008)

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Some Important Advises

This course will use C and C++ exclusively. Since we will not cover C/C++ in this course, you should get a good reference of C/C++ in hand.

Always start doing your programming assignment EARLY. Waiting until the last few hours is definitely not a wise move, because there could be too many people running their programs at the same time making system response time extremely slow. Moreover, machines may crash causing extra delay. Normally, I do not grant any extension if your home machine, your phone line or the department machines crash in the last minutes. Always start early.

Multithreaded programming requires a careful planning, which may need a mindset that is different from that of sequential programming you learned in previous courses. When you receive a programming assignment, do not sit in front of a workstation and start typing your program immediately. This trial-and-error approach, in general, DOES NOT work and may require longer time to finish your assignment. The best way of doing multithreaded programming assignments is to think carefully with a pencil and a piece of paper before touching a computer keyboard.

Since the behavior of a multithreaded program is dynamic, which means it acts differently from time to time, you should try to reason about the correctness of your program. In general, just running for one or two test cases is not sufficient. Your grader will read your program to find possible errors. When writing sequential programs, the same bug appears at the same place every time you run the same program. However, bugs of a multithreaded program (e.g., race conditions and deadlocks) may not appear every time. As a result, you may have an incorrect program even though you may have had hundreds correct test output.

Due to security reasons, starting with Fall of 2008, you will not receive submission confirmation e-mails. As a result, you should use the interactive version of submit and ensure all required files are submitted properly. If you choose to use the command line version of submit, you should use the recover command to verify your submission. More information will be available later in this semester.
After submitting your assignment, DO NOT modify your files so that the system administrator can retrieve your files in case your submission did not go through successfully.

Always read the assigned materials listed in the weekly reading lists and do the problems. Weekly reading lists are available near the bottom of this page.

Textbook

Abraham Silberschatz, Peter Bear Galvin, Greg Gagne,
Operating Systems Concepts, 8th edition
John Wiley & Sons, 2009

Other Materials

Make your program
Multithreaded Programming with ThreadMentor
Solaris multithreaded programming
Unix Multiprocess Programming
Signals
Non-Local GOTO: setjmp() and longjmp()

Meeting Time and Office Hours

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
1:00 - 2:00 pm		Dept. Meeting
2:00 - 3:00 pm	CS3911		CS3911		CS3911
3:00 - 3:30 pm	CS4411	Office Hour	CS4411	Office Hour	Dept. Seminar
3:30 - 4:00 pm
4:30 - 4:30 pm
4:30 - 5:00 pm	Office Hour		Office Hour

After class and e-mail discussions are welcome

Course Syllabus

*Week*		*Topics*	*Reading*
1	August 31	Overview	Chap. 1 - 2
2	September 7	Processes and Threads	Chap. 3 - 4
3	September 14	Processes and Threads	Chap. 3 - 4
4	September 21	Synchronization	Chap 6 and web notes
5	September 28
6	October 5
7	October 12	CPU Scheduling	Chap 5
8	October 19	Deadlock	Chap. 7
9	October 26	Memory Management	Chap. 8 - 9
10	November 2
11	November 9
12	November 16	File and Input/Output Systems	Chap. 10 - 13
13	November 30	File and Input/Output Systems	Chap. 10 - 13
14	December 7	Protection and Security	Chap. 14 - 15

Important Dates

Week 4	September 26	Friday	11pm	Program 1 due
Week 5	October 1	Wednesday	in class	Exam 1 (80 min)
Week 7	October 17	Friday	11pm	Program 2 due
Week 9	October 31	Friday	11pm	Program 3 due
Week 10	November 5	Wednesday	in class	Exam 2 (80 min)
Week 11	November 12	Wednesday	11pm	Program 4 due
Week 12	November 21	Friday	11pm	Program 5 due
Week 13	December 1	Monday	0am	Mini-Project starts
Week 14	December 12	Friday	11pm	Mini-Project due
	December 17	Wednesday	3 - 5pm	Final (2 hours) Rekhi 214

Weights Assigned to Programs

*Program 1*	*Program 2*	*Program 3*	*Program 4*	*Program 5*	*Mini-Project*
50	70	70	70	70	100

Weights Assigned to Exams

*Exam 1*	*Exam 2*	*Final*
150	150	200

Grading

There are 930 points possible in this course - 430 from programs, 500 from the exams. You will be graded on the percentage of these points you accumulate. Grading will be based approximately on the scale shown in the table below.

Grade	A	AB	B	BC	C	CD	D	F
Scale	90-100%	85-89%	80-84%	75-79%	70-74%	65-69%	60-64%	0-59%

In addition, you will not receive a passing grade in the course unless you receive a passing grade on the exams alone (i.e., 60% or 300 points). Likewise, you will not receive a passing grade in the course unless you receive a passing grade on the programming assignments alone (i.e., 60% or 258 points).

Late Policy

No late programming assignments will be graded, except that you have a valid excuse.

Collaboration and Cheating

No assignment-specific assistance should be given nor received on any programming assignment. Any outside help concerning the use of the computer facilities is acceptable. You may discuss the meaning or intent of an assignment, but not ways to program it. All work turned in must be completely your own. You must not share code or even outlines! Any and all use of programs from other texts or references must be explicitly stated as part of program documentation. In general, any acts of plagiarism will result in a failing grade for the course along with the submission of a report to the Dean of Students. See the hand-out on Computer Science Policy on Cheating and Academic Integrity Policy for more details.

Exams and Final

You are responsible for avoiding exam time conflicts!!

ADA

``MTU complies with all federal and state laws and regulations regarding discrimination, including the Americans with Disability Act of 1990 (ADA). If you have a disability and need a reasonable accommodation for equal access to education or services at MTU, please call Dr. Gloria Melton, Dean of Students, (2212). For other concerns about discrimination, you may contact your advisor, department head, or the Affirmative Action Office (3310).''

The following two web sites may provide you with more information:

Disability Services.
Affirmative Programs Office (commonly called the Affirmative Action Office, or AAO)

Other Useful Information

Downloadable Stuffs

Files are in PDF format.

Programming Information: Programming Assignment 1; Programming Assignment 2; Programming Assignment 3; Programming Assignment 4; Programming Assignment 5; Mini-Programming Project
Exam Information: Exam 1 Solutions (PDF file); Exam 2 Solutions (PDF file)
Reading Lists

Week 1	Week 2	Week 3	Week 4	Week 5	Week 6	Week 7
Week 8	Week 9	Week 10	Week 11	Week 12	Week 13	Week 14

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since July 1, 1998.
Last update: August 25, 2008

Please send comments and suggestions to shene@mtu.edu

CS4411 Introduction to Operating Systems Course Information Page Fall 2008

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!