CS 5460/6460 -- Operating Systems -- Fall 2007

CS 5460/6460 - Operating Systems - Fall 2007

MW 1:25-2:45PM, WEB 103

Instructor:	John Carter 3144 Merrill Engineering Building Office phone: 801-585-5474 Home phone: 801-583-8410 Email: retrac@cs.utah.edu


TAs:	Dan Gerszewski (danger@cs.utah.edu)

You can reach both of us via teach-cs5460@cs.utah.edu.

Name Office Hours Location

Prof. Carter After class or by appointment MEB 3144

Dan Gerszewski MW 2:45pm-3:30pm (later on non-colloquium days), Fri 1-4pm Cade Lab

Additional TA hours will be available during the week prior to the major assignments. Those times will be marked in italics.

Outline

This course is about operating systems. Roughly speaking, the operating system provides a well-known, convenient, and efficient interface between user programs and the bare hardware of the computer on which they run. Among other things, the operating system is responsible for allowing resources (e.g., disks, networks, and processors) to be shared, providing common services needed by many different programs (e.g., file service, the ability to start or stop processes, and access to the printer), and protecting individual programs from one another. The course will start with a brief historical perspective of the evolution of operating systems over the last fifty years, and then cover the major components of most operating systems. This discussion will cover the tradeoffs that can be made between performance and functionality during the design and implementation of an operating system. Particular emphasis will be given to three major OS subsystems: process management, memory management, and the file system. We will also cover the basics of concurrent programming, including process synchronization mechanisms, mutual exclusion algorithms, and deadlock. As time permits, we will discuss the interprocess communications mechanisms used to support distributed systems.

Announcements

The textbook for this course offering is Operating Systems Concepts (Seventh Edition) by Silberschatz, Galvin, and Gagne.

Signup for the class email list (cs5460@cs.utah.edu) ASAP. You may do so via the Mailman web interface located off of the School of Computing Facility webpage

Online resources

Lecture notes: copies of the notes from which the lectures are derived. Print out a copy of each lecture's notes prior to attending class for maximum benefit!

Handouts: Various course handouts, including project assignments.

CADE lab nodes that can currently support Yalnix (updated hourly)

College of Engineering Academic Guidelines

You can read about the College of Engineering's policies on appeals, withdrawing from courses, and repeating courses here. (link at the bottom of the page).