Operating Systems - Winter 2008/2009

Lecture: Wednesdays @ 11:40 to 13:20 in S2|02-C120

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Exam Results

The exam results are ready now and are posted outside room E221.

The exam inspection will take place on Oct. 5th, 2009, in E202 @9-10 a.m.

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For supplemental information about operating systems-related research and thesis opportunities at DEEDS, please click [here].

Some related courses offered by our group in WS2008/2009:

a) "Secure and Reliable OS" (seminar course) that will focus on current research on security and dependability of operating systems; and

b) "Embedded Mobile Computing" (seminar course) on different aspects of mobile and embedded devices;

Credit points

SWS: 5 (2+3)
"Credits": 7,5
Track in the Diplom program: Informatik II

Lectures:

The course consists of a lecture series accompanied by both exercises and labs/projects. The purpose of the lectures is to introduce the material for the course and the students are encouraged to further study the topics using books/papers/etc.

The lecture series is divided into two parts (1-9, 10-14), where the first part covers the basics of Operating Systems, including fundamental concepts and models, Process, Thread and Memory Management, I/O and File Systems. The second part introduces the security related aspects of the course covering issues involved in assessing/achieving trustworthiness in OS's.

Exercises:

The exercises involve discussions around the topic of the week. This requires some input from you as a student, first to give us information on what we should discuss, you can for instance suggest areas that are hard to understand or were not detailed enough in the lecture. Secondly, the exercises are held in a discussion form, meaning that it is a two-way conversation between the assistants and the participants in this course. It is not the "assistant solves problems on the black-board" type of exercise!

Labs:

The labs are used to delve into the depths of one particular operating system (Linux) in order to get some insights on the complexity and structure of a modern operating system. The labs are the smallest part of the course, adding up to one hour per week.

To access any material (labs, exercises, lectures etc) you will need a username and password which was provided on the first lecture. If you weren't there, or you have forgotten it, send us an email from your RBG-account and we will send it to you.

Please note that all lectures/exercises/labs are held in English though all the course members are fluent in German.

Final Exam (& Mid-term Exam)

The final written exam is on the 16th of March 2009, in C205, 9-11a.m. Many students have asked last years about what will be asked at the exam and the major guideline we will give is that the material for the exam is defined only by the lecture slides and the exercise sheets.

No additional tools (except for pens, rulers and non-programable pocket calculators) are  allowed (or useful!) during the exam. Use black or blue ink pens. The use of unauthorized material will lead to immediate exclusion from the exam.

The exam will be in English, but you can write your answers in German, if you like. Whichever language you use, please write clearly, structured and motivate your answer. Use additional sheets for notes, these will be handed out at the exam.

Make sure that you have registered for the course properly. This includes giving us the signed form from the "Zentrales Prüfungssekretariat" (for Bachelor students). That you have registered properly is not our responsibility, it's yours!

Bonus Points

Additionally, 100 bonus points (BP) can be acquired during the semester to improve your final grade if you pass the exam successfully. Bonus points are given for (and are distributed as below):

1. Mid-term exam - 30 BP

2. Labs (optional) - 50 BP

3. Exercises - 20 BP

Rules:

1. The bonus points are only considered for the first final exam irrespective if you show up for this exam or not;

2. The bonus points can give you an increase in the final grade up to one full point

3. The bonus points (BP) are considered iff at least 50% of the exam points (EP) are reached;

4. Bonus points increase the final grade:

• 00 - 50 BP -> +0.0 points

• 51 - 70 BP -> +0.3 points

• 71 - 90 BP -> +0.7 points

• 91 -100 BP -> +1.0 points

Relevant Literature

There is a huge variety of good books covering Operating Systems. We will mainly use a book by Andrew S. Tanenbaum: Modern Operating Systems, but the other books mentioned in the list here are also useful. If you decide to buy one book we recommend to buy the Tanenbaum book which will follow the first part of the course pretty well. For the second part we will point to specific papers or the lecture slides will provide enough material. Books 3 - 6 are optional and needed only for specific lectures or for the lab.

1. Modern Operating Systems; 2nd Edition 2001, A. Tanenbaum, Prentice Hall, ISBN 0-13-031358-0

2. Operating System Concepts, 7th Edition 2005, Silberschatz et al, John Wiley and Sons, ISBN 0-471-69466-5

3. How to Break Security,  2003, J. Whittaker and H. Thompson, Addison-Wesley, ISBN 0321194330

4. Linux Device Drivers, 2005, J. Corbert et al, O'Reilly, ISBN 0-596-00590-3
   New version covering the 2.6 kernel. Published under a Creative Commons license. Download it here or buy it in paper form.

5. Linux Kernel Development, 2nd Edition 2005, R. Love, Sams, ISBN 0672325128
   Updated book (till 2.6.10) on kernel development. Sample chapter on scheduling available on the publisher's site [here]

6. Computer Organization & Design, 2nd Edition 1998, D. Patterson and J. Hennesy, Morgan Kaufmann, ISBN 155860491X
   Chapter 7 about Memory Hierarchies could be interesting. There is some overlap with the memory management parts of books one and two. Even though it is an excellent book, there is no need to buy it for this course. If you haven't read it, please do, a must for any CS student :)

7. Distributed Systems, Principles and Paradigms, 2002, A. Tanenbaum and M. van Steen, Prentice-Hall, ISBN: 0-13-0888893-1
   This book contains some useful information for the distributed systems part of the course. This book is available in the CS dept. library.