Operating Systems (2IN05) 2010-2011

9-2: exams and final scores are public. See the end of the page

 

Introduction

This course is intended as an introductory course into Operating Systems for Computer Science bachelor students. The course contents can be regarded as fairly traditional. The used text is by Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne, Operating System Concepts, 8th edition, and is obligatory. This means that the lecturers assume that you have and use the book and that we assume that exercises in the book have been done. The lectures will not just follow the book but provide additional points of view and background knowledge.

 

Examples will be taken from the book and from other literature and refer often to Linux and Windows. In many cases we will also use POSIX, the portable operating systems interface. For these examples we will use mainly C as the language. For other examples we use an ad-hoc Pascal-like language to express our algorithms. For the practical we use C and a Linux operating system that you can download from our site. We expect that you have access to an installed Linux system, including sources, and that you know how to program.

 

There will be 16 weeks of lectures, of 2 hours each. In addition there are 2 hours of practical. For the first block we also have 2 hours of instruction. For the second block these are replaced by one hour of open consultation (‘vragenuur’). In the first week we spend the time to get acquainted with the Linux operating system.

  

The purpose of the instructions is to discuss exercises from the book and from the site, and to provide you with information about the practical. Typically, exercises and lecturing are somewhat mixed during the instruction sessions as indicated above. Passing the course is through a final exam, a series of practical exercises for which a report has to be handed in and writing an essay on a research paper.

 

The scheduling is distributed over two blocks, both concluded with an exam. Exam retries will always be separate for the two blocks. The essay topics become available at the beginning of October. The essay deadline is January 14, 2011.

 

Examination

There are two written exams, a practical and an essay. The written exam will start with a collection of short knowledge oriented questions. After that has been handed in, the book, and the slides may be used with the remainder of the exam. It is not allowed to use anything else, including copies of previous exams and solutions to exercises. You will find example examinations plus solutions at the bottom of this page.

The final grade is determined as (2w1 + 2w2 + 2p + e)/7, where w1 and w2 are the grades for the written exams, p is the grade for the practical and e the grade for the essay.

 

The retry for the first block is in January, together with the exam of the second block. The retry for the second block is in the examination period of the second semester. The exam in January therefore consists of two parts: a retry of block 1 and the exam of  block 2. The structure is the same: the first part consists of knowledge questions, the second part of exercises. You may use the slides and the book with the second part, so you can start with it only after you have handed in the first part(s).

 

Practical

 

Paper/Essay                                                                   

The details of the essay assignment are found here. The deadline for the essay is given on Peach. Read the instructions carefully; not preparing the essay according to the instructions will certainly lead to a low grade.

 

Lecturers

 

Time and location

Lectures: see the schedule on owinfo. The lectures are given Tuesdays 16.45-17.30 (I did not choose this….) The slides will become available incrementally. After presentation on the lecture they will not be altered anymore; up until that moment, they may be modified.

 

See the schedule below (it will be growing) for details.

 

Lectures & slides

 

Block 1 – chapters 1-7 [execept 3.6.2, to be announced]

 

Block 2 – chapters 5,8-13

·         chapter 8, memory management

·         chapter 9, memory management

·         chapter 5+ part of chapter 6, Kernel issues + scheduling

·         chapter 10, File systems

·         chapter 11, Implementing filesystems

·         chapter 13, Input / output, second part

 

 

Instruction & practical

 

Literature

There are a number of good books on the subject, there are journals devoted to it and the Internet hosts many relevant papers. There is a tendency for texts to be rather bulky though. We selected a concise book with a good level of abstraction and a good amount of detail. Nevertheless you may benefit from studying things from a different point of view. For the lectures and the examination we assume that you have studied the selected parts of the obligatory text.

Operating systems courses and presentations like ours necessarily are a bit high-level in the sense that the detailed operation of a real operating system is not discussed but rather the general issues. We list here some links that provide much more details on UNIX-related operating systems.

·        www.minix3.org, and the correspondent book: A.S. Tanenbaum, Alber S. Woodhull, Operatings Systems, Design and Implementation – The MINIX book, Pearson Education, 2006, ISBN 0-13-0-13-142938-9

o       presents the implementation of MINIX3, a microkernel, with a codebase of less that 30k lines. Code is included.

·        http://www.tldp.org/guides.html, the Linux Documentation Project with references to the kernel.

·        http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~cs9242/03/lectures/lect11.pdf, a discussion and literature comparison of multi-processor and locking.

·        http://www.xml.com/ldd/chapter/book/, is an online book on how to write Linux modules and device drivers. While doing so it gives a comprehensive discussion on how to deal with interrupts, in chapter 9.

 

Sample examinations

Notice that some of these examinations are from the older versions of the course. They are, however, indicative. The current course covers more material since 2008. Note that you cannot bring these exam documents to the examination!

 

Results

 

These are the results to date. For some students the boundary conditions on the grades (5.5 for P and 6 for E) turn out to be close to the edge. I propose they contact us.

 

ID nr.

A1

A2

B2

B1

Assignments

Essays

Eind

Afgerond

578915

3,8

 

 

 

3,4

0

2,057143

NV

584638

1,25

 

 

 

7

8

3,5

NV

592621

6,5

 

 

 

8,4

8

5,4

NV

598038

6,75

 

 

 

8,4

9

5,614286

NV

608553

5,4

 

 

4,25

6,6

8

5,785714

6

619251

5,75

6,5

 

7,7

8

8,5

7,557143

8

628297

9

 

 

7,8

8,6

9

8,542857

9

628731

6,1

 

 

7,25

6,6

8,5

6,914286

7

630291

8,5

 

 

6,6

5,2

8

6,942857

5

637586

6

1

 

3,4

8,8

7

6,2

6

651077

5,75

 

 

5,7

7

7,5

6,342857

6

653842

6,4

 

 

3,35

8,6

7,5

6,314286

6

654113

6,5

 

 

5,7

8,4

8,5

7,1

7

654428

2,95

3,6

 

0,95

8,8

7

4,814286

5

654741

6,25

 

 

3,1

8,6

7,5

6,2

6

656718

6,8

 

 

4,45

6,8

8

6,3

6

660703

5,7

 

 

4,15

6,8

8

5,9

6

672197

7,55

 

 

3,2

7,2

8,5

6,342857

6

674244

6,5

 

 

5,1

6,6

8,5

6,414286

6

674790

7,8

 

 

5,45

7,2

8,5

7,057143

7

675027

6,35

 

 

5,55

7,6

9

6,857143

7

675271

7,95

 

 

6,1

8,8

8

7,671429

8

675355

8,05

 

 

5,3

7,4

8

7,071429

7

675518

7,75

 

 

5,15

8,4

8,5

7,3

7

675661

0,6

2

 

 

2,8

0

1,371429

NV

676069

4,75

2,3

 

1,35

5,8

0

3,4

3

676238

5,05

 

 

2,7

7,4

8

5,471429

5

676727

3,1

5,9

 

2,2

5,6

8

5,057143

5

678801

6,2

6,3

 

6,3

7,6

7

6,771429

7

679458

7,75

 

 

3,5

8,6

8

6,814286

7

679808

3

 

 

 

6,4

7

3,685714

NV

714617

5,7

 

 

2,75

5,8

6,5

5

5

714644

5,3

 

 

4,85

6,6

7

5,785714

6

714680

4,4

0,5

 

0,75

5,4

8

4,157143

4

715105

4,95

2,9

 

3,55

7,8

7,5

5,728571

6

715810

3,1

3

 

2,85

3

6,5

3,485714

3

716090

5,1

 

 

 

2,8

0

2,257143

NV

716330

9

 

 

6,4

8,6

9

8,142857

8

716597

3,65

4

 

4,45

5,6

8

5,157143

5

716993

7,65

 

 

6,45

5,4

8

6,714286

5

720008

5,4

1

 

2,3

6,8

8

5,285714

5

720167

4,4

3,5

 

3,35

7,8

7,5

5,514286

6

720803

6,35

6,5

 

6,15

6,6

8,5

6,714286

7

721553

5,75

 

 

3,95

7,4

8

6,028571

6

721908

4,85

1,5

 

0,8

0

0

1,614286

2

721913

3,55

 

 

 

5,8

0

2,671429

NV

722672

8,3

 

 

8,55

8,8

6,5

8,257143

8

722909

5,05

3,5

 

1,85

8

7,5

5,328571

5

729025

7,1

 

 

5,95

8,6

8

7,328571

7

729033

8,45

 

 

5,35

8,8

6,5

7,385714

7