CS 395T, Fall 2010: Operating Systems Implementation

Latest Announcements

12/17: Final grades sent to registrar
12/17: Project grades posted to egradebook
We gave each project a letter grade and mapped it to a number. See the comments on egradebook for the exact mapping that we used.
12/6: Make-up rescheduled to Monday, December 6, 4:30 PM, ACES 6.302
12/2: Make-up tomorrow canceled
Please send us email if you'd like to make-up the make-up on Monday.
11/30: Prep for Thursday
In preparation for Thursday's class, please do the following: (1) Read the Hints paper. For several of the hints in the paper (your choice which hints), think through where we have seen these hints applied in systems we have read about. (2) For several of the hints in the Hints paper (again, your choice about which hints; they need not be the same as in (1)), think through where we have seen these hints NOT applied in systems we have read about. (3) For the Secure File Nets paper, please pay particular attention to the graphs.
11/24: Project demo sign-up
Don't forget to sign up for a demo slot. The instructions are posted in the lab 7 text.
11/20: Removed bogus hints page from lab 7
Those hints pertained to an old version of lab 5. Apologies for the false hints. Note, though, that if you're having trouble with lab 7, a possible source of bugs is your lab 5 code
11/15: Office hours this Friday rescheduled to next Monday
Mike's office hours will be at 4:00 PM Monday, November 22 (not 3:00 PM on Friday, November 19). As always, send email if you'd like to meet at another time.
11/4: Updates to labs 6 and 7
Please git pull the changes immediately if you have started either lab.
10/31: Lab 5 typo.
The comment at the beginning of fs/serv.c that says 'There can be at most MAXFILE files open concurrently.' should say MAXOPEN instead of MAXFILE. The repo is updated and you may 'git pull' the change if you'd like.

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Course Information

Description

This course is for students who want to hack on operating systems and more generally learn how they work. Class meetings will cover research papers (both classic and recent) and readings on operating systems, with a significant portion of class time devoted to discussion. Time permitting, we will focus on security-related questions. A crucial component of the course is the labs. Students will implement the core of an exokernel-style operating system, called JOS. (JOS was developed for MIT's 6.828 and has been used in courses at several other schools, including UT.) Starting in fall 2010, this course counts as a diversity course in Systems (thread 1).

The work

The class will consist of assigned readings, twice-weekly discussions, labs, a midterm exam, and a final project:

Prerequisites and suggested background

A note about the labs

Regardless of whether you have the suggested background, we recommend that you start the labs long before they are due. The standard advice is "Start the labs early", but that is not quite right. The best advice, I think, is "Start the labs on time, but on time is probably much earlier than you think it is".

Acknowledgments

We are indebted to the present and past staffs of related courses elsewhere: MIT, UCLA, and Stanford.

Last updated: Fri Dec 17 01:51:19 -0600 2010 [validate xhtml]