Class Meets Mon. and Wed. 9:30 AM - 10:45 AM in Phelps 3505
Discussion sections:
Grading is roughly 50% labs, 20% midterm, 30% final, 10% class participation.
Lab grading criteria will be set by TAs. There will be five full credit labs and an extra credit lab.
All programs that I go over in class will be available on-line. The point here is that you don't have to try to copy them down in class. That is a waste of your time, which is best occupied otherwise. Code examples will all have been tested on the department's Linux machines. Some of you may have access to your own Linux machines. You can use your own machine for the class, but you (and only you) will be responsible for making all of the software work.
The course materials are evolving. Please check the web pages early and often and RELOAD each time as I will be tuning the course as we go along. Report problems with any of the the web pages to the TAs.
The labs are where you are going to learn the most in this class. They are fairly labor intensive and some of them require quite a bit of thinking. Start early. Put another way, don't leave the work until the last minute. In other words, don't procrastinate. We will be using pthreads and a MIPS simulator for most of the lab work. Neither one is particularly easy to debug. You should also be fairly proficient with C and Unix. The course schedule assumes that you can program at better than a beginning level in C, and that you are intimately familiar with the standard Unix system calls. If this doesn't sound like you, start earlier or consider taking this course at another time. The TAs will not, unfortunately, have time to teach C and Unix programming.
These points are important enough to our combined stress levels to be worth repeating. Operating systems, when taught as a projects course, is a labor intensive endeavor. For this course, you will need to be a better than beginner C programmer (C++ does not count and forget Java), you will need to know how to use the Unix system calls (not just the command-line utilities), and you need a basic understanding of computer architecture. If you don't fit these characteristics, and you are concerned about your grade in the class, you should think about taking the class another time. Or, if you fit the pre-requisites, but you have a busy, labor intensive quarter on your docket -- again discretion may be the better part of valor for you. Lastly, if you find that you are someone who is most comfortable waiting until the last minute to begin a project, you need to understand that the success rate for students who share this predilection is abysmally low for this material. In this case you should either modify your habits to your discomfort or, again, think about taking this course at another time.
The point totals for the labs are, roughly,
An interesting feature of operating systems development is that generally, it takes place in layers, from the bottom up. That is, upper-level features depend on the correct functionality of lower level code. In this class we will experience such realism starting with lab3. Each lab after lab3 depends on the correct function of all of the previous labs up to and including lab3.
All technical questions regarding the labs should be directed to the TAs first and only to me if they are unable to resolve them. The TAs will be responsible for managing the lab projects. Your should enjoy their guidance as much as possible. Administrative issues, however, should be directed to me, exclusively, by email.
WARNING: Due to the size of the class course material, no late work will be accepted. None. I'll explain why in class, but really, if it is late, it won't be graded and it will be counted as a zero.
Please read the previous 4 paragraphs again carefully. They are important. Consider what they mean with respect to your schedule. No work will be accepted late, the later labs are worth more than the earlier labs, and you need to get to the earlier labs working to get the later labs working. We will not be distributing solutions to any of the labs during the course. Therefore, it is imperative that you correctly budget your time for this class.
To see why, consider the following scenario in which a nameless student fails to complete lab3 on time. The score for lab3 will be recorded as a zero, but lab4 depends on a working solution to lab3. The hapless student is now faced with the tasks of completing lab3 and developing a solution to lab4 in time allocated for lab4 alone in order to get a score for lab4. The same is true for lab5 with respect to both lab3 and lab4. Thus, lab5 is, for the most part, an operating system that you have developed yourself, but it will depend on your ability to develop all of the other components in the previous labs -- and to do so on time. Learning to gauge your development effort and time-to-solution is a big part of what I am trying to convey in this class.
Please do not wait until the last minute to begin the labs -- any of them. I'm not kidding. Really. No matter what temptation may come your way to do otherwise, you will need to stay on top of the work required for this class in order to receive a successful grade.