Robert's TA Materials for CS 537

Contact Info

• Email: robert@increscent.org
• Canvas profile
• Feedback welcome!

General Materials

• C Examples

21 Apr 2021

• Comic: https://xkcd.com/1566
• Fun reading:
  • Optimization Using Tail Calls in C
  • 99 Bits of Unsolicited Advice
  • Wirth's Law

21 Apr 2021

• Comic: https://xkcd.com/456
• Fun reading: Surprisingly Slow
• Project 7: Web Server
• pthread example
  (pthread_create(3) man page)
• condition variable example
  (pthread_cond_init(3) man page)
• signal examples
  (signal(2) man page)
  (signal(7) man page)

14 Apr 2021

• Comic: https://xkcd.com/1987 (superfund?)
• Fun reading/watching: Uppestcase and Lowestcase Letters (SIGBOVIK)
• exectest
  (Observe how exec() sets up memory)
• sbrktest
  (Observe how growproc() allocates memory)
• queuetest
  (Test your queue implementation for Project 6)

7 Apr 2021

• Comic: https://xkcd.com/1897
• Fun reading: Not Growing a Language
• Project 6: More virtual memory!
  (Beta version; expect changes)

31 Mar 2021

• Comic: https://xkcd.com/571
• Fun reading: How to Criticize Computer Scientists
• Data Lab
  (Bitwise puzzles)

24 Mar 2021

• Comic: https://xkcd.com/1755
• Fun reading: A Short Story for Engineers
• Project 5: Memory Encryption
• Xv6 Book
  (See page 30 for a depiction of the Xv6 memory system)
• Intel IA32 Documentation
  (See page 2909 for a description of Page Table Entry bits)
  (See page 1093 for a description of the INVLPG instruction to invalidate TLB entries)
  (See page 2869 for a description of the control registers)
• How to use the INVLPG instruction in Xv6:
  

  asm volatile("invlpg (%0)" : : "r" (virtual_addr));

  ("virtual_addr" is a virtual address whose mapping you want to invalidate)

17 Mar 2021

• Comic: https://xkcd.com/451
• Fun reading: Caching at the Application Layer - Cal Paterson

10 Mar 2021

• Comic: https://xkcd.com/1695
• Fun reading: -2000 Lines of Code, Andy Hertzfeld

3 Mar 2021

• Comic: https://xkcd.com/2347
• Fun reading: Trammell Hudson's Projects

24 Feb 2021

• Comic: https://xkcd.com/1323
• Fun reading (watching): Zebras All the Way Down - Bryan Cantrill

17 Feb 2021

• Comic: https://xkcd.com/898
• Fun reading: On Navigating a Large Codebase (funny quote)
• P3: Shell
• fork/exec
• C modules

10 Feb 2021

• Comic: https://xkcd.com/2033
• Fun reading: Revenge of the Nerds by Paul Graham

3 Feb 2021

• Comic: https://xkcd.com/1172
• Fun reading: Tales From a Core File - Lessons from the Unix stdio ABI: 40 Years Later
• Project 2: Xv6 System Call
• GDB Cheatsheet

27 Jan 2021

• Comic: https://xkcd.com/2391
• Fun reading: Reflections on Trusting Trust (Ken Thompson, Turing Award Lecture)
• Project 1: Simple C utilities
• Learn Vim (The Smart Way)