CEG 433: Operating Systems Course Review

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CEG 433 Operating SystemsCourse Review

• Coordinator Prabhaker Mateti

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Course Content

1. Operating Systems, Systems implementation
   languages From booting to shut down.
2. Unix file system design. The structure of
   i-nodes. The mechanism of mount.
3. The semantics and mechanics of file open,
   read/write, close and unlink.
4. Shell Programming, File IO, redirection, Filters
   and pipes. Pointers to functions.
5. main(argc, argv, envp). Unix system calls, Signal
   handling. setjmp and longjmp.
6. Dynamic storage allocation and liberation.
7. Virtual memory. Address spaces. Swapping, Page
   replacement algorithms.
8. IO subsystem DMA Interrupt handlers driver
   interfaces overview of drivers.
9. Case Studies Linux or Windows.

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Class/Laboratory Schedule

• Each week has two lectures of 75-minutes each.
• There is no scheduled lab. Students are expected
  to work in open labs for no less than 2 hours a
  week.
• There is one project for the course. Typically,
  the project is split into five pieces worth
  551055 respectively.

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Grading

• Mid Term 30
• Final 35
• Project 30
• Newsgroup 05

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Prerequisites by Topic

1. Programming experience in C .
2. Program development tools editors, compilers,
   linkers, debuggers.
3. Data structures arrays, stacks, queues, lists,
   binary trees.
4. Familiarity with the Unix environment.
5. Computer Architecture Interrupts, Kernel/User
   modes, Hardware Protection

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Discussion of Prerequisites

• Prerequisite courses CEG 320, CS 400
• CEG 320
• CPU Architecture details are essential.
• CPU modes remain confusing.
• Can use more of
• interrupts and traps.
• IO devices
• Virtual memory does not belong in 320.
• Assembly language unused.
• CS 400
• Unused The advanced data structures.
• Used Developing larger programs.

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Contribution to Professional Component

• CEG 433 contributes 4 hours to the Criterion
  4(b), and also contains engineering design.

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Course Contribution to Program Educational
Objectives

• CEG 433 contributes to Objectives 1 and 2. 
• Through exposure to the internals of operating
  systems, it deepens the skills to produce
  efficient software. 
• The design experience gained through the course
  project is realistic. 
• The student is also prepared to move on to other
  operating systems both past and future ones.

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Course Objectives The student should have
learned the following

1. Design issues in developing larger and complex
   programs.
2. Internal structure of hierarchical file systems.
3. Memory allocation, and virtual memory usage.
4. Signal and exception handling.
5. The interactions between applications and the
   hardware.

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Learning Outcomes The student should be able to

• Develop, test and debug programs in Unix.
• Able to use system calls and library calls
  effectively.
• Improve performance of programs by tuning virtual
  memory usage, and file IO.
• Design and build newer file systems for newer
  storage devices on any OS.

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ABET Criteria 3 Supporting Statements

• A1 The directory structure in file systems is a
  tree. The addition of soft-links makes them
  arbitrary directed graphs. Traversals of these
  structures is assumed.
• A3 The engineering product development life
  cycle of requirements, specifications, design and
  construction occurs in the OS projects. Also,
  trade-offs in simplicity of design versus
  achieved functionality are considered.
• B The quality of memory management algorithms is
  evaluated via experiments.
• C This is a project driven course.
• E Because of an understanding of the internals
  of an OS, better computer solutions can be
  formulated.
• G There is a short written report describing the
  design and testing aspects of the project.
  Communicating with precision, knowing when to use
  prose and when to use appropriate technical
  terms, and programming notation is emphasized.
• H The development of user interfaces, and
  permissions to various computer resources is
  presented in the societal context.
• I The student realizes that in his/her life-time
  he will need to work with many OS, that there
  will not always be courses to take, that he
  should engage in life-long learning.
• J The student learns about contemporary issues
  such as the open source movement, and the
  anti-trust case of Microsoft.
• K Modern program development tools are used in
  the project, and Internet based discussions
  (newswright.cs.433 ) help the student receive
  prompt answers from other students and the
  instructor.

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Conformance to ABET Syllabus

• The course conforms to the published ABET
  syllabus.
• Course Content
• The course has been taught by the coordinator for
  the last ten terms.
• There are no issues of conformance that need to
  be addressed.
• Grading
• Minor (lt 6) variations in grading weights have
  occurred.
• Project work, Midterm and Finals remained at
  about 30 each.

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Course Evolution

• Course content has been stable for the last ten
  terms.
• Across the country, undergrad OS design courses
  have remained the same for the last several
  years.
• The text book by Silberschatz et al., now in 7th
  Ed., is essentially the same as it was about a
  decade ago (but for the addition/deletion of case
  study OSs).

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Course Evolution

• Project work moved from X11 terminal labs to
  well-equipped Linux PCs.
• Students experience KDE and Gnome desktop
  environments.
• Many students have their home PCs running
  installed/LiveCD Linux.
• Many students have better PCs at home than our
  lab PCs.

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Course Improvement

• Students need significantly more help hours
  than we can provide with instructor and grader
  office hours.
• Grader (limited to 10 hours/week) has 4
  hours/week of help hours and the rest for
  grading. Not enough.
• No TA has been assigned for the last 15 years to
  this required course.

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Teaching Assignments

• Should the course be assigned to the same
  instructor again and again?
• My answers
• Alternate terms taught by different instructors.
• When the course was taught by multiple
  instructors (several years ago) significant
  conformance issues were observed.
• Common problem with several of our courses.

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Course Schedule

• Should the course be taught every term?
• We typically scheduled it four times (including
  Summers) an year. (From 1989 to Spring 2005?)
• Not offered in Summer 2005, Summer 2006.
• With GTA support, class size can be increased,
  and class scheduled in alternate terms only.

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Course/Curriculum Revision Suggestions

• Redistribute 433 434 into 433new and 434new.
• 433old 434old 433new 434new.
• Move concurrency basics into 433new.
• Move IO subsystem and advanced file system design
  to 434new.
• Keep CEG 433new as a Required Course.
• Move CEG 434new into Electives.

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Course/Curriculum Revision Suggestions

• Observation
• Our lower level courses are Windows based.
• Our higher level courses are Unix based.
• Is this good?
• Is this what our constituencies want?
• Opinions
• CEG 433 and 434 (new or old) can be taught based
  on Windows XP/Vista without compromising
  conceptual strengths.
• Exposure to multiple OSs is crucial to prevent
  intellectual crippling of the students in the
  long run.

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CEG 433 4 credit hours

• Scheduled Work
• 75-minute lectures 2 per week
• Expected lab work 2 hours per week
• Unscheduled labs
• Open 24x7
• Official Lab OSIS Lab (429 RC)
• 26 general purpose PCs.
• One file server/firewall.
• Configured to multi-boot into several Oss.
• Can the assigned project work be done elsewhere?
• Yes.
• Suggestions
• Scheduled lab hours.
• Teaching assistant stationed in the Lab.