Contents

Lectures

Course Personnel

General Information

• Textbook - Operating System Concepts 6th Edition. Silberschatz, Galvin, and Gagne. John Wiley and Sons, 2002.
  • The textbook being sold in the UW Bookstore is the "Windows XP Update" of the 6th edition. It does not matter whether you have the Windows XP Update of the 6th edition or the original 6th edition. Apparently, the only difference between the two is a new appendix that is included in the XP Update version.
  • Book's authors' web page, including errata (PDF)
  • There is now one copy of the textbook on 3 hour reserve at the Davis Centre library. The reserve call number is UWD1568.
• Course Notes - CS350/354 Course Notes, Operating Systems, Fall 2003.
  The course notes are available in hard copy through the UW Bookstore. They are also available on-line in PDF format. Currently, only Part 1 of the notes is available at the bookstore. Part 2 will be available later in the term.
• Course Email - cs350@student.cs.uwaterloo.ca
• Course Newsgroup - uw.cs.cs350
  Read the newsgroup regularly. The web page contains on-line copies of the course handouts, readings, assignments and other related resources. The course email account above is for group formation and assignment submission ONLY. Please send your questions preferrably to the newsgroup and, if necessary, directly to instructors and/or TA's.
• Homepage - http://www.student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs350/F03
• Handbook Description
• Calendar Description
• Evaluation:
  • Assignments: 35% (10/15/10)
  • Midterm Exam: 20%
  • Final Exam: 45%
  To obtain a passing mark in the course, the weighted average of the two exams must be at least 50%. Otherwise the weighted average of the two exams is used for the final grade.

Exams

NOTE: In addition to materials from class; the text; and course readings, exam questions will also include Nachos specific questions. Group members are responsible for ensuring that they understand all aspects of Nachos, including those portions implemented by other group members.

• Final Exam
  • Wednesday, 10 December, 9:00 AM - noon
  • Where to write your CS350 final exam.
• Midterm Exam
  • Thursday, 23 October, 7:00 - 9:00 PM
  • Note: there will be no CS350 lectures on exam day.
  • Where to write your CS350 midterm.
  • model solution (Postscript, PDF)
• Exam-related Study Documents
  • CS354 W03 midterm with model solutions (PDF)
  • Old CS354 study questions (Postscript,PDF)
  • Model solutions for old CS354 study questions (Postscript, PDF)

    Note: the old CS354 study questions really are old. The course has evolved since they were written. Some questions may test material that is no longer covered in CS350.

Assignments

Course assignments are based on Nachos. Nachos consists of an simulator for a MIPS-based workstation plus a rudimentary operating system for that workstation, implemented in over 10,000 lines of C++. Nachos comes originally from UC Berkeley and has been modified for use at Waterloo.

Assignments may be done individually or in groups of 2 or 3 (groups of 3 is recommended). If you want a partner but do not have one, post to and/or read the course newsgroup to find one. Assignment 0 is to register your group.

Code for the assignments must be submitted electronically; documentation is to be prepared using a text formatter and good-quality printer and must be handed in as printed output. Your design documentation MUST use the marking guide as the cover page. See the general assignment information handout for more information.

Discussing assignments with other students is allowed, even encouraged, but work handed in must be that of the individual or group. The standard penalty for copying an assignment or allowing an assignment to be copied is a mark of -100% for that assignment.

Do not leave assignments until the last week. Start early!
Remember: late assignments receive a grade of 0%.

Assignment 0

• Due: Noon on Friday, 19 September
• Assignment 0 is to organize and register your project group. To do so, you should follow the instructions in the Forming Groups document. You must register your group and obtain a group number even if you are your group's only member. Without a group number you will not be able to submit the remaining assignments.

Assignment 1

• Due: Noon on Friday, 10 October
• Assignment 1 Description (PDF)
• General Assignment Information (PDF) The information in this document applies to all of the assignments.
• Assignment 1 Marking Guide/Cover Sheet (PDF)
• A NachOS test program for generating overflow exceptions:
  • overflow.s (assembly language test program)
  • overflow (noff executable file)

Assignment 2

• Due: Noon on Monday, 10 November
• Assignment 2 Description (PDF)
• Assignment 2 Marking Guide/Cover Sheet (PDF)

Assignment 3

• Due: Noon on Monday, 01 December
• Assignment 3 Description (PDF)
• Assignment 3 Marking Guide/Cover Sheet (PDF)

Nachos and Related Information

Installing Nachos

How to get started by installing Nachos in your account.

Nachos Operating System Overview

A quick tour through the operating system for the simulated workstation.

Nachos Workstation Overview

A quick tour through the simulated workstation.

Working in Groups

Some information about working in groups in CSCF's Unix environment. This includes information about file access control, and some suggestions for sharing Nachos files among the members of a group.

Unix File Permissions

Find out what various file permissions mean and how to manipulate them.

Debugging Nachos

A tour through Nachos' built-in debugging facilities, and how to get started running Nachos under GDB.

Cyclic Include Files

There are dependancies among the header files used in Nachos. Adding one #include can make your code not compile. Find out more.

Running Nachos on Linux

Some information for those who would like to run Nachos at home on a Linux PC.

Non-UW Nachos Material

Nachos Overview Paper

This is a paper about Nachos by the authors of Nachos. It describes the ideas behind Nachos and discusses the assignments as they once existed. The assignments currently being used at Waterloo are different from the ones described in this paper.

Overview of MIPS registers

A description of all the MIPS registers and a mapping between the numeric and symbolic names for them.

Road Map Through Nachos by Thomas Narten

This is a more detailed overview of Nachos, written by Thomas Narten. Previous classes have found it useful. However, you should be aware of several things before reading this. First, it describes an older version of Nachos than the one installed at UW. The descriptions are still mostly relevant, but there have been some changes. Second, the UW versions of the Nachos projects differ from others, including Narten's. Don't take assignment-specific comments too literally. A Postscript version of the Road Map is also available, perhaps unofficially.

Reappraisals

Not that we think that there is a big need for this but for those cases where it is necessary - if you have an assignment or exam that you would like to have reappraised you must use the form provided below. Print this form, fill it out, staple it to the exam or assignment in question and hand that in to your instructor. The entire exam/assignment will be reevaluated and your grade may be raised or lowered. Please look at the grading, remember that it's not an exact science/art and that while you may have deserved a few marks more on one question you may have been given more marks than you deserve on another question. Also please think about whether your final grade will actually be modified if the grade on an individual piece of work is changed.

Note that requests for reappraisal will not be accepted on the same day that work is returned. Unless otherwise specified, you have two weeks from the date that the work was returned to file a request.

Request for Reappraisal Form

Lecture Notes

Pre-printed spiral-bound copies of Part 1 of the course notes are available ($5.84) through the UW bookstore, or you may download them from here for printing or viewing. Part 1 includes the first three sections of the notes: Introduction, Processes, and Synchronization. The remaining notes will be available from Graphic Services in the Davis Centre library.

• Introduction PDF,Postscript,Postscript 2up
• Processes PDF,Postscript,Postscript 2up
• Synchronization PDF,Postscript,Postscript 2up
• Memory Management PDF,Postscript,Postscript 2up
• Nachos PDF,Postscript,Postscript 2up
• Virtual Memory PDF,Postscript,Postscript 2up
• Scheduling PDF,Postscript,Postscript 2up
• I/O PDF,Postscript,Postscript 2up
• File Systems PDF,Postscript,Postscript 2up
• Interprocess Communications and Networking PDF,Postscript,Postscript 2up
• Security PDF,Postscript,Postscript 2up

Reading List

Background and Overview

• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3

Processes and Threads

• Chapter 4, Sections 4.1-4.3
• Chapter 5

Memory Management

• Chapter 9

Concurrency and Synchronization

• Chapter 4, Section 4.4
• Chapter 7, except Section 7.9
• Chapter 8

Virtual Memory

• Chapter 10

Processor Scheduling

• Chapter 6

I/O

• Chapter 13
• Chapter 14, except Section 14.7

File Systems

• Chapter 11
• Chapter 12, except Section 12.9

Interprocess Communication and Networking

• Chapter 4, Sections 4.5-4.6

Security

• Chapter 18
• Chapter 19

Visual support

Useful Links

Programming and Source Code Control Tools

• CVS Information (source control system)
• GDB Online Documentation from www.gnu.org
• RCS paper   (postscript)
• RCS function list   (postscript)

Filesystem pathname translation algorithm (2003-11-11)

Here is a cleaned-up presentation of the Translate(p) algorithm presented in class (all sections) on 2003-11-11.

Extra Materials on IPC

• socket programming examples
  • sserv1.c - server uses datagram socket to communicate with a client on the same machine;
  • scli1.c - client uses datagram socket to communicate with a server on the same machine;
  • strserv.c - server uses stream sockets to communicate with multiple clients over network;
  • strcli.c - client uses stream socket to communicate with that server over network

    If you run it, make sure change "scg.math.uwaterloo.ca" in

            hp = gethostbyname("scg.math.uwaterloo.ca");
    

    to appropriate host name where server program runs.

• Introductory tutorial on IPC in 4.4BSD-Unix (by S.Sechrest UC-Berkeley). Postscript version of it.
• BSD Sockets: A Quick And Dirty Primer by Jim Frost.
• Beej's Guide to Network Programming Using Internet Sockets

Miscellaneous

• Operating System Resource Center

Last Modified: 09 September 2003
CS350 Web master (cs350@student.cs.uwaterloo.ca)