CS 471 OPERATING SYSTEMS - Fall 2009

CS 471 Operating Systems – Fall 2009

Class 1:30 pm - 4:15 pm F Innovation Hall 134 Aug 31, 2009 - Dec 21, 2009 Lecture

Office hour: M 5:00pm-6:00pm; F: 4:30pm-5:30pm
Office: Eng. 4446; Phone: 703-993-1720; Email: jchen(a)gmu(dot)edu--or--jimxchen(a)gmail(dot)com

Instructor: Jim X. Chen

Description: This course covers the principles of operating systems theory and practice. Fundamental concepts such as processes, synchronization, scheduling, and memory management will be presented. Another emphasis will be on the principles of distributed operating systems.

Prerequisites: CS 310 and CS 367, or equivalent. A solid background in these pre-requisites imply a solid background, both in programming and in computer architecture. In order to be able to work on the programming projects, the students must be very comfortable with C/C++ or Java programming languages.

Meeting Times and Locations:

1:30 pm - 4:15 pm; Friday; Innovation Hall 134

Readings:
Required Textbook: "Operating System Concepts", by Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne (7th Edition, John Wiley & Sons 2005, ISBN 0-471-69466-5, or latest edition).

Other good references: "Modern Operating Systems" (2nd edition, Prentice Hall 2001, ISBN: 0-13-031358-0), by A. S. Tanenbaum
Distributed Systems: Concept and Design" (4th Edition, Addison-Wesley 2005, ISBN 0321263545), by Coulouris, Dollimore and Kindberg.

Teaching Assistant (TA): Changwei Liu(Coco) <cliu6@gmu.edu>

TA Office Hours: Tuesday, 2:00– 4:00pm; Thursday, 3:00 – 5:00pm, in Room 4456.

Course Web Page: http://cs.gmu.edu/~jchen/cs471/cs471-chen-j.html

Course Outcomes: At the end of this course, you will

Demonstrate knowledge about the role, purpose and evolution of the operating systems as well as their impact on the overall computer system performance
Demonstrate the knowledge about the basic operating system services, including those involving process scheduling, basic memory management, file system management and protection.
Being able to understand and solve the basic process/thread synchronization problems that arise in multi-programmed operating systems, making use of basic data structures and programming techniques covered in previous courses.
Demonstrate the basic knowledge about distributed systems and how the ever-increasing networking features have affected (and are affecting) operating system design and be able to identify potential threats to operating systems and the security features designed to guard against them.
Being able to implement (in a high-level programming language such as C or Java) a simulator for a suit of basic algorithms for the main OS services such as memory management, process scheduling.

Grading:

Midterm 25%
Final 35%
Programming Projects 30%
Homeworks 10%

No early exams will be given and make-up exams are strongly discouraged.
GMU Honor Code will be enforced. The students are supposed to work individually on the assignments/projects. We reserve the right to use MOSS to detect plagiarism. Violations of GMU Honor Code or a total score of 49 (or less) will result in an F.

Course notes: (modified from Dr. Aydin's and Dr. White's notes)

Computer Accounts: All students should have accounts on the central Mason Unix system mason.gmu.edu (also known as osf1.gmu.edu) and on IT&E Unix cluster zeus.ite.gmu.edu (Instructions and related links are here). Students can work in IT&E computer labs for programming projects during the specified hours.

Programming Assignments: http://cs.gmu.edu/~jchen/cs471/programming

Students with Disabilities: If you have a documented learning disability or other condition that may affect academic performance you should: 1) make sure this documentation is on file with the Office of Disability Services (SUB I, Rm. 222; 993-2474; www.gmu.edu/student/drc) to determine the accommodations you need; and 2) talk with me to discuss your accommodation needs.

References

http://www.cs.gmu.edu/~white/CS571/

http://www.cs.gmu.edu/syllabus/syllabi-spring09/CS571AydinH.html