CS471 Operating Systems

CS471 Operating Systems

Section: 004
Location: Horizon Hall, Rm 1014
Meeting Time: Tue Thu 10:30 - 11:45 pm
Course Website: https://cs.gmu.edu/~zeng/cs471-f24 (for slides and exam dates);
Blackboard (for project announcements and submissions)
Instructor: Dr. Qiang Zeng
E-mail: zeng AT gmu dot edu
Office Hours: Tue Thu 3-4 PM or by appointment
Office Location: Engineering Building 4448
GTA: Xiang Li
E-mail: xli62 AT gmu dot edu
Office Hours: Friday 10AM-12PM
Office Location: Engineering Building, Rm 4456 D5

DESCRIPTION

This course covers the basic principles of operating systems. Major concepts to be discussed include processes and threads, concurrency and synchronization, CPU scheduling, memory management, storage, file systems, and security.

PREREQUISITES

(Grade of C or better in CS 310) and (grade of C or better in CS 367 or ECE 445). The students should be fluent in C programming language in order to complete the course work, which includes substantial programming projects.

TEXTBOOK

Required textbook:
1. Operating System Concepts, 10th edition, Silberschatz, Galvin, and Gagne. Wiley.

Recommended textbooks:
1. Computer Systems - A Programmer's Perspective, 3rd edition, Bryant and O'Hallaron. Pearson, 2016.
2. Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces, by Remzi H. Arpaci-Dusseau and Andrea C. Arpaci-Dusseau (free online)
3. Operating System Concepts, by Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne, 10th Edition, John Wiley & Sons 2018, ISBN: 978-1-118-06333-0.

COURSE OUTCOMES

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

TOPICS

CLASS MATERIALS

All class materials are available through the course homepage in Blackboard, accessible from your Blackboard accounts.

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 is via the Blackboard.

GRADING POLICY

Your grade will be calculated as follows:

No credit if your project does not compile. Late homework/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, corrupted, or empty file will 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.

Questions about the programming projects should be directed to the Piazza forum or the section GTA. All other questions (lecture-, exam-) should be sent to the instructor.

AI tools: The use of assistive technology or artificial-intelligence-based tools is not allowed in any assignment/project/assessment.

GRADING SCALE

COMPUTER ACCOUNTS

All students should have accounts on CEC Unix cluster (aka zeus.vse.gmu.edu). Information can be found here. Your programs will be tested and graded on the CEC Unix Cluster. If you develop your programs on systems other than zeus, it will be your responsibility to port them to zeus before the submission deadlines.

ACADEMIC INTEGRITY

All students must abide by the GMU Academic Standards Code and CS Department's Honor Code and Academic Integrity Policies during the semester. The students are supposed to work individually on the assignments. Collaboration will be allowed only for the group assignments, within each group. We reserve the right to use automated tools such as MOSS to detect plagiarism. The violations of Honor Code will be reported to GMU Academic Office without any exception. The university procedures for adjudicating such violations, including types of sanctions and GMU Sanctions Matrix can be found at the following link . All students must be familiar with the Academic Standards code, as well as Common Policies Affecting All Courses at George Mason University.

DISABILITY STATEMENT

If you have a learning or physical difference that may affect your academic work, you will need to furnish appropriate documentation to GMU Disability Resource Center. If you qualify for accommodation, the DRC staff will give you a form detailing appropriate accommodations for your instructor. If you have such a condition, you must talk to the instructor during the first week of the term about the issue.

MISC RESOURCES

GMU Academic Calendar

Academic Integrity

Disability Resource Center

University Catalog

University Policies