May 12: Grades so far are now online. Please bring me your HW 1 so I can record the rest of those scores!
May 12: I have put a few more lecture notes online. These are mostly older notes, but may still be of some help.
April 30: Homework 3 has been assigned. This consists of problems/points 5/2, 7/3, 8/2, 11/3, 15/2, 19/2, 21/3, from pages 397-399 at the end of Chapter 4, and problems 7/3, 8/2, and 10/3, from pages 504-505 at the end of Chapter 5, for a total of 25 points. The assignment is due Monday, May 12.
April 30: Time permitting, we will also cover section 5.5 of your text, on protection mechanisms.
April 28: Project 4 has been assigned. This project is optional, and may be done instead of taking the final exam.
April 28: For the remainder of the semester, we will cover sections 4.1 through 4.6 of your text, on memory management, and section 5.3, on file system implementation.
April 28: The final exam is Wednesday May 14, from 3:30 to 5:30, in our regular classroom, and is worth 100 points. The exam will cover only material discussed in class. Typical questions include modified homework exercises, other exercises from the text, and questions about your projects. Students who wish may do Project 4 instead of taking the final exam.
April 10: Machines 7, 8, 10, and 11 are running Minix only, and are set to boot Minix. You don't need a boot floppy to start these machines, though you will may still want to use a floppy for test versions of your kernel.
April 9: Homework 2 has been assigned; this consists of problems 2, 3, 8, 19, 26, 27, 31, and 32, from pages 305-308 of your text, at the end of Chapter 3. Questions 2, 8, 26, and 31 are worth 2 points each; the others are worth 3 points each. The assignment is due Monday, April 21.
April 9: A list of lab groups for project 3 is online; please check this list if you are using the lab and aren't sure which machine you should be using.
April 7: If you are using the lab machines do not start the project until your group has been assigned a machine. I am assigning one machine to each group and it is absolutely essential that I know which groups are using which machines, so that groups can at least start with a working kernel. If you want to get an early start, I can assign your group a machine by email; otherwise we will have to to it before or after class on Wednesday. (Alas, no one showed up before or after class this Monday to get assigned machines.)
April 7: Documentation for Project 3 is finally on-line.
April 7: Students who need to use lab machines should form groups of three; I will make a list of groups and their members this Monday, both before and after class, and assign lab machines to groups on a first-come first-served basis.
March 10: Homework 1 has been assigned; this consists of problems 2, 4, 8, and 9, for 2 points each, and problems 13, 15, 21, and 29, for 3 points each, from pages 149-151 of your text. This assignment is due Wednesday, March 19.
March 5: The test script and grading notes are online if you'd like to double-check how your project did. (The short shell scripts "bgtest" and "timer", used by the test script, are available if you want to run exactly the same test I did.)
March 4: There are now nine machines in the lab running Minix; these are the machines with the yellow number-labels. I've left a couple of spare boot disks in the upper left cabinet at the back of the room; please return these when you are done with them. The two "new" (to the lab) machines in the left-rear corner are for Minix only.
March 3: I have put some lecture notes online. These notes are not guaranteed to be complete, nor are they a substitute for your text. They are at best a partial outline of some of the class lectures; unfortunately, I do not have on-line notes for all lectures.
March 2: The TA for 421 is Changgong Zhang; his office hours are Tu Th 3:00 4:00 pm, in the lab. He has done project 2 and can help you with it, and has been installing Minix on more of the lab machines.
March 2: The Circuits Lab (room 237) is available for doing Minix-based projects.
Feb 18: There will be a lab session to show students how to install Minix as I set it up on the lab PCs, from 3:00 to 4:00 on Wednesday in the Circuits Lab. (This is the lab just across the hall from the CSEE student services office.) This time I'll try to remember to bring the installation disks!
Feb 15: Remember, Project 1 is due by midnight, Wednesday the 19th. Use the UCS submit program to submit your project; see the project description for more information.
Feb 5: Project 1 has been assigned. You can do the first project on any system that is vaugely POSIX compatible, including Minix, Linux, SGIs, and Sun workstations. On Monday the 10th we will review the system calls used in the project.
Feb 3: Welcome to Operating Systems! Most course information--including the syllabus, due dates, assorted handouts, project assignments, and possibly selected lecture notes--will be made available on these web pages. The 101 section has switched to Tanenbaum and Woodhull's new "Minix"-based text. Minix is a sort of "baby unix" system, simple enough to be covered in a semester but complex enough to illustrate real systems principles and practice.