CS-736: Reading Questions

Recall that answers to reading questions should be sent via email to remzi AT cs before 9am on the day of the class.

Tip #1: Don't spend time regurgitating obvious stuff from the papers! The point of these questions is to think , and then to write down what it is that you thought about. I read 20 to 30 write-ups, so the more interesting you are, the better! If you find yourself just repeating a lot of details from the paper, you are going down the wrong path.

Tip #2: Don't spend time criticizing how the authors wrote the paper. That is, I don't need to know whether you thought the paper was well written or not. We'll have plenty of time to talk about those types of things later in the class. Focus on technical aspects for these questions.

Questions for the Week (10/18)

No questions this week, as you start to think about exam prep. That said, please carefully read the papers as always! They of course will be covered on the exam.

Questions for the Week (10/11)

Q9, 10/13: What is the difference between how LFS and a journaling file system commit data to disk? At what point does an update to those files systems become part of permanent, on-disk state?

Q10, 10/15: Assume you are using a RAID primarily for backup. Which RAID level should you use: mirroring, parity ala RAID-5, or AutoRaid?

Questions for the Week (10/04)

Q7, 10/06: Should a desktop file system, designed for a single disk, include parity protection, as discussed in the IRON FS paper?

Q8, 10/08: Describe the most novel aspects (in your opinion) of the ZFS file system on-disk structures. What are they, and why are they useful?

Questions for the Week (09/27)

Q5, 09/29: What makes efficient virtualization hard to achieve? Use specific examples from Disco to make your point.

Q6, 09/31: How is exokernel similar to Nucleus? How is it different?

Questions for the Week (09/20)

Q4, 09/22: In what way is Nooks like a microkernel (such as Mach)? In what way is it different?

Questions for the Week (09/13)

Q3, 09/13: 09/15: Describe three workloads that would not work well on FFS.

Questions for the Week (09/06)

Q1, 09/08: Part 1: THE and Nucleus present different philosophies for system design. What are they, and which is better? Part 2: why did UNIX become the dominant OS of its era?

Q2, 09/10: VMS uses a number of techniques to overcome hardware deficiencies. Describe three of them. Which would be useful on modern systems?