CS471 Operating Systems

Meets:	asynchronously (with synchronous exams and class activities)
Instructor:	Dr. Songqing Chen
E-mail:	sqchen AT gmu dot edu
Office Hours:	Friday 4:30 to 6:00 PM (on Blackboard Collaborate Ultra), or by appointment

DESCRIPTION

PREREQUISITES

TEXTBOOK

The required textbooks for this class is:
Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces, by Remzi H. Arpaci-Dusseau and Andrea C. Arpaci-Dusseau, Arpaci-Dusseau (Version 1.00) (free PDF for each chapter available online)
The recommended textbooks are
1. Operating System Concepts by Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne, 10th Edition, John Wiley & Sons 2018, ISBN: 978-1-118-06333-0.
2. Operating Systems Principles and Practice, by Thomas Anderson and Michael Dahlin, Second Edition. ISBN: 978-0-9856735-2-9, Recursive Books, Ltd.

COURSE OUTCOMES

Upon completion of this course, the students should be able to:

• Demonstrate knowledge of operating systems features, evolution, and design
• Show an understanding of the need for concurrent operation of multiple tasks (processes/threads) and an ability to solve basic process synchronization problems that arise from concurrent operation settings
• Demonstrate knowledge of process scheduling, basic memory management, storage systems, and file system manageme
• Be able to implement basic algorithms for OS services such as memory management and process scheduling
• Demonstrate knowledge of security threats to an operating system from both processes and networked sources and show an understanding of protection techniques
• Demonstrate knowledge of how system calls work along with the mechanisms for interrupt handling

TOPICS

• Introduction
• Processes
• Threads
• Concurrency and Synchronization
• CPU Scheduling
• Memory Management
• Virtual Memory
• Input/Output & Disk
• RAID and Flash
• File Systems

CLASS MATERIALS

All class materials, including lecture notes and recordings, are available through your Blackboard accounts. The lecture notes and recordings will be made available on Blackboard on a weekly basis.

PROJECTS

There will be several programming projects in using the Operating System OS/161. All projects will be programmed using the C language. Submission of the projects and homeworks is via the Blackboard.

Please NOTE

• If your code does not compile, you will get no credit.
• We reserve the right to use MOSS and other software to detect plagiarism.

GRADING POLICY

Your grade will be calcuated as follows:

• 30% Programming projects
• 15% Homeworks assignments
• 30% Midterm exams (two)
• 25% Final exam (cumulative)

Tentative dates for midterm exams and the final exam are Oct. 2, Oct. 30, and Dec. 11, 1:30-4:15 pm.

No credit if your project does not compile. Late homeworks/projects will have a penalty (specified in each assignment) and will not be accepted 3 days after the due date. There is no make-up for missed exams. The students are responsible for keeping back-ups of their work while they are working on an assignment. For group programming assignments, each member of the group must make a separate submission. If a student makes multiple submissions, only the last submission will be graded. It is critical that the students double check the files they are submitting, as submitting a wrong, corrupt, or empty file is very likely to result in a score of 0 for that assignment.

If you think your work is not correctly graded then you must initiate contact with the grader within a week of receiving the grade (either email or on the Blackboard). Grade contesting beyond this time window will not be allowed.

GRADING SCALE

• A+: >= 95%; A: [90%, 95%); A-: [85%, 90%)
• B+: [80%, 85%); B: [75%, 80%); B-: [70%, 75%)
• C+: [66%, 70%); C: [63%, 66%); C-: [60%, 63%)
• D: [50%, 60%)
• F: < 50%

ACADEMIC INTEGRITY

You are expected to abide by the University's honor code and the CS Department's Honor Code and Academic Integrity Policies during the semester, i.e., collaboration between students in different groups on an assignment is unacceptable. Any violation of the honor code will result in referral to the honor council.

DISABILITY STATEMENT

MISC RESOURCES

GMU Academic Calendar

Honor Code