Course Overview |
OverviewWelcome to your first course about operating systems! (well, hopefully your first course) This course will introduce you to an exciting range of materials from the broad field of operating systems, including basic operating system structure, process and thread synchronization and concurrency, file systems and storage servers, memory management techniques, process scheduling and resource management, virtualization, security, and even distributed systems (if there is time). That's a lot of material! Amazingly, even after this course, you'll realize we've just scratched the surface -- there is just so much to know about the wonderful world of computer systems. This course assumes familiarity with basic computer organization (e.g., processors, memory, and I/O devices as covered in CS354) and data structures (e.g., stacks and hash tables as covered in CS367). You will need to be able to program in C (not C++, not Java, not Python, not Javascript, not Ruby, etc.) to perform the assignments in the course. If you don't have much experience in this language, don't worry (too much), we will spend some time covering background, but of course, learning on your own is important and valuable (in this class and in real life). For those of you who are new to C (hopefully, not many of you), realize this is an opportunity to broaden your skill set, and take it seriously. Being a good programmer is not sufficient to make you a good computer scientist, but it is necessary. MaterialsFor learning about operating systems, We recommend coming to class and paying attention. Then, some time after class, read the assigned reading and do the homeworks at the end of each chapter. This way you can make sure you are understanding what is going on as we plow through the material. And plow we will! For an OS text book, we provide you with a free one we have developed here at Wisconsin. Here you can find the free operating systems book . The book pretty much covers what we talk about in class, and more! All yours for the amazing price of free. Of course, you can buy a printed one if you like, or even shell out 10 bucks to own a full DRM-free digital PDF. For help with projects, you should probably buy the following two books. They are awesome and useful. The first is about C programming, written by the people who invented it. This is the only required book for the course; hopefully, you already have it! The second is about programming in the Unix environment, and is the absolute bible. It is particularly important if you'd like to become a Unix expert. But this is more for your own good; you can definitely get by in class without it.
Also useful: Expert C Programming by Peter Van der Linden. I really like this book a lot (though it is a bit dated). There is also a free resource on learning to program in C by Zed Shaw. It is called Learning C the Hard Way. For those of you looking for some exercises on getting up to speed with C, this is a reasonable way of doing so. You might also read this short, free, and incomplete introduction to the C programming environment, available for your viewing convenience off of the book home page here. Other textbooks worth taking a look at: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) . Also: (1) (2) . Read these too if you'd like to learn more about operating systems. The more you read (and understand), the better off you will be (this is true in life too). |
Mailing ListsImportant announcements will be sent to the class mailing list (compsci537-1-s18@lists.wisc.edu) as well as posted to the web page, so please read your mail frequently (particularly around project time)! You are responsible for the material sent to that list. Note that the class list is automatically generated based on who is enrolled in the class. HomeworkMany of the book chapters have homework assignments at the end -- see here for a list . All of these will strictly be optional - you don't have to turn them in. However, as exams will certainly contain some material that is quite similar to the homeworks, it is probably in your best interest to do these homeworks to see if you are really understanding what is going on in the class. We'll also do some in class along the way. ProjectsAs part of the course, you will complete a number of programming assignments. Project are worth 50% of your grade. You should perform these projects on departmental PCs running the Linux operating system . New Unix users to CSL Unix facilities should attend an orientation (if they still have those) or just find and complete an online tutorial. We'll also cover some aspects of Unix/Linux in class and discussion. The projects are a fundamental part of this course. Projects always require a significant amount of time because we grade them only on success -- if your project doesn't work, you won't get credit for trying (sorry!). Do not procrastinate! It is likely they will take longer than you expect. Do not wait until the day before the assignment is due to start. These assignments should be started pretty much when they are handed out. All information necessary to complete the assignments will be available from the class web page. As stated above, all of the assignments will be in C. We assume that you have enough programming background that learning the basics of a new language (if it is indeed new to you) will not be difficult. As we said above, for the projects, you will primarily be graded on how well your implementation works. We will test your program on a suite of input sets. Your grade will be based on how many of the tests your application passes; we will only briefly examine your code to ensure that you followed the specifications of the assignment. Also, don't cheat (duh). Cheating hurts others and hurts yourself. Later in life, you won't be able to take other people's code to do your job; why do it now? ExamsThere will be some exams to test your knowledge. Exams are worth 50% of your final grade. The exams will be closed book, and will cover material from class and the projects.
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