1
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What are the main philosophical differences in design of the THE system and the Nucleus system?
A good example of a write-up:
here.
HYDRA: The Kernel of a Multiprocessor Operating System
2
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What is the major weakness of the Hydra system? (discuss)
A good example of a write-up:
here.
The UNIX Time-Sharing System
Pilot: An Operating System for a Personal Computer
3
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How should the OS for a personal computer (a PC on your desktop) differ from the OS for a minicomputer (a shared machine in the basement)?
A good example of a write-up:
here.
Disco: Running Commodity Operating Systems on Scalable Multiprocessors
4
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Other than performance, what is your major criticism of the approach that Disco takes in constructing an operating environment for a shared-memory multiprocessor?
A good example of a write-up:
here.
Exterminate All Operating System Abstractions
Exokernel: An Operating System Architecture for Application-level Resource Management
5
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Compare and contrast the philosophy of Exokernel with that of Nucleus.
A good example of a write-up:
here.
6
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LFS argues that if workloads are write-dominated, LFS is a good idea. If workloads remain read-dominated (say 70% reads, 30% writes), would you still want to use LFS? (why or why not?)
A good example of a write-up:
here.
Deciding When to Forget in the Elephant File System
7
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How would you build Elephant on top of LFS? (just include a brief discussion of LFS data structures and mechanisms that would need to change).
A good example of a write-up:
here.
A Case for Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks (RAID)
8
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Assume you have a RAID-5 array. Which file system would you choose to use with it, FFS or LFS? Why?
A good example of a write-up:
here.
9
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Which parts of the lottery scheduling system are mechanism, and which are policy? Which parts of the resource container system are mechanism, and which are policy?
A good example of a write-up:
here.
Scheduler Activations: Effective Kernel Support for the User-Level Management of Parallelism
10
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Discuss a system that tries to utilize lottery scheduling, resource containers, and scheduler activations (this can be done simply by describing a scenario where a few jobs are active). Are these techniques all complementary?
A good example of a write-up:
here.
11
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As compared to traditional memory management systems such as the one described in the VAX/VMS paper, Mach provides a higher degree of flexibility to applications. Discuss two potential negatives of such flexibility.
Virtual Memory, Processes, and Sharing in MULTICS
12
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Where in the Unix operating system do you see influence from MULTICS? (name and discuss at least two items)
13
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Describe how you would build RPC on top of U-net. As the
implementor of the RPC package, what functionality would like from U-net that
is not present?
A Comparison of Two Distributed Systems: Amoeba and Sprite
Cluster-Based Scalable Network Services
14
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Let's say you are building a system similar to that described in the cluster-based scalable services paper. Name and discuss three features you would like to have provided by a distributed operating system.
15
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Compare the protocols of AFS and NFS to HTTP. Discuss similarities and differences in terms of performance, consistency, and crash recovery.
Measurements of a Distributed File System
16
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Name two trends in this paper that seem like they will continue. Name two that seem unlikely to do so. Discuss.
17
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Compare Coda and Bayou. What is the main advantage of a system like Coda? What is the main advantage of a system like Bayou?
18
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Last one! Discuss denial of service attacks (such as the one that shutdown Yahoo last year) and methods that could be used to prevent them from occuring.