CompSci 143A/CSE 104 - Principles of Operating Systems - Summer, 2008 (Dillencourt)

This course covers the basic principles and concepts of operating systems. It is required for Computer Science majors at UCI. It is a lecture/discussion course, not a project course. The associated project course, CompSci 143B, is also offered this summer and may be taken concurrently.

The course will run from June 23 to August 29.

Note:The Summer Session website says ``corequisite required.'' This simply means that you should sign up for the discussion as well as the lecture.

• Instructor: Prof. Michael Dillencourt, dillenco@ics.uci.edu
  • Office hours: Click here. In addition, I am available after class.
  • Office: DBH 4086
• Teaching Assistant: Mr. Matthew Badin, mbadin@ics.uci.edu
  • Office hours, Office hour location: Click here
• Class meetings:
  • Lecture: TuTh 3:30-4:50 PM, in ICS 180
  • Discussion: TuTh 5:00-5:50PM in ICS 180
  • First class: Tuesday, June 24.
• Grading
  • Based on a midterm exam, a final exam, and four quizzes:
    • Final: 48%
    • Midterm: 37%
    • Quizzes: 15% (Lowest quiz score dropped)
• Exams:
  • Midterm exam: Thursday, July 24, 3:30PM. The midterm will be held at the time normally scheduled for the lecture, and will extend into the time alotted for the discussion section.
  • Final exam: Friday, August 29, 3:30PM
• Quiz schedule. The quizzes will be given after the lecture on the indicated days. Generally, they will be held during the time alotted for discussion section. However, they might start either before or after the official time for the discussion section, and they may be collected before the official end time of the discussion section.
  • Quiz 1: Thursday, July 3 (Week 2) (***Will be held on July 8***!)
  • Quiz 2: Thursday, July 17 (Week 4)
  • Quiz 3: Thursday, August 7 (Week 7)
  • Quiz 4: Thursday, August 21 (Week 9)
• Homework problems: Click here for the problems. Homework will not be collected or graded. The homework problems will be discussed in discussion Section and may reappear on the quizzes or the exams.
• Policy on missed quizzes/exams
  • There will be no makeups or excused absences for quizzes. If you miss a quiz, you get a zero. I will drop the lowest quiz score when computing your grade.
  • It is expected that you will take the exams at the regularly scheduled times. Exceptions will be made only under extraordinary and documentable circumstances.
    • If you have a conflict that is predictable in advance, let me know in advance. If you wait until after the exam, you run the risk that your excuse will not be approved, and then you will get a zero. (Note: "I have to work that day" is not a valid excuse. I have announced the exam times--plan ahead!)
    • If you have a conflict that is not predictable in advance (e.g., a medical emergency), I will ask for documentation.
    • If you miss the midterm for a documentable reason, at my discretion I may ask you to take a makeup exam, or I may base your exam grade solely on your final exam.
• Enrollment issues: registration, adds, drops, etc.
  • This course is taught under the auspices of the UCI Summer Session Program. To read their enrollment policy, start here. To see their calendar, and the deadlines for adds and drops, click here.
  • Adds: I am willing to sign add cards at any time, consistent with the rules of the Summer Session. If you are not enrolled in the class, I will not grade or return your work.
  • Drops: If you do decide to drop the course, you should complete all the relevant paperwork as soon as possible. The deadlines imposed by the Summer Session are firm, and if you miss them there is nothing anyone can do about it. All course drops must be completed by the earlier of the following two dates:
    1. The deadlines specified by the UCI Summer Session Program
    2. The class before the final exam.
• Email:
  • Email about the course material should be sent to compsci143a-questions@ics.uci.edu. This address is an alias for the instructor and all the instructional staff, so it will give you the fastest turnaround. Please include "CompSci 143A" in the subject line, and include your name, student number, and official UCI email address in the message.
  • Email that needs to go to a particular person (e.g., a request for appointment with the instructor or the TA) should go to that specific person.
• Return of graded work (quizzes, midterms):
  • Graded work will be handed back in class.
• Course announcements:
  • Course announcements will be sent via email to all students enrolled in the class.
  • The announcements will be set to your UCI email address. All students enrolled in this course have a UCI email address. If you have not set up your UCI email account, you can do so by going to the Student Resources web page for UCI Network and Academic Computing Services (NACS), and following the link "Getting Started with Email at UCI" at the left of the page.
  • If you are not receiving these announcements for some reason, you can view the archive by clicking here.
• Text book:
  • [BS] L. F. Bic and A. C. Shaw, Operating Systems Principles, Prentice Hall, 2003. This book is required, and it should be available at the UCI bookstore. The book web site has much useful information, including lecture notes and a list of errata.
• Course notes:
  • The slides as presented in class, and some additional material, will be available here.
  • Two sets of course notes are available at this link. The lecture notes used in class are very minor modifications of these notes.
    1. A set of notes in Powerpoint developed by Dr. Steve Franklin of UCI.
    2. A set of notes in PDF format developed by Prof. Renato Parajola, formerly with UCI, now at the University of Zurich.
  • You are responsible for all material from the lecture, discussions, and assigned book readings, even if it does not appear in the lecture notes.
• Course schedule and syllabus The following schedule is approximate and subject to change. Readings in square brackets refer to the text book by Bic and Shaw (see above).
  • Week 1:
    • Introduction. Processes. Defining and initiating processes. Process interactions, critical sections.
    • Reading assignment: BS[1, 2.1-2.3].
  • Week 2:
    • Synchronization: semaphores, event synchronization, monitors, protected types, classic synchronization problems.
    • Reading assignment: BS[2.4-2.5; 3].
    • Quiz 1.
  • Week 3:
    • Operating system kernel. Implementing processes and threads. Implementing synchronization and communication mechanisms. Interrupt handling.
    • Reading assignment: BS[4].
  • Week 4:
    • Process and thread scheduling: organization of schedulers; scheduling methods; priority inversion. Deadlocks, deadlock detection.
    • Reading assignment: BS[5; 6.1-6.3].
    • Quiz 2.
  • Week 5:
    • Deadlock recovery, deadlock avoidance strategies, deadlock prevention strategy.
    • Reading assignment: BS[6.4-6.6].
    • Midterm examination.
  • Week 6:
    • Physical memory. Preparing a program for execution. Memory partitioning schemes. Memory allocation strategies. Memory compaction strategies. Virtual memory. Paging, segmentation.
    • Reading assignment: BS[7; 8.1-8.2].
  • Week 7:
    • Page allocation strategies. Code sharing, data sharing. Distributed shared memory.
    • Reading assignment: BS[8.3-8.5; 9].
    • Quiz 3.
  • Week 8:
    • File systems: user view; directories; device organization; distributed file systems.
    • Reading assignment: BS[10].
  • Week 9:
    • Input/Output systems: devices, device drivers, device management.
    • Reading assignment: BS[11].
    • Quiz 4.
  • Week 10:
    • Protection and Security: security threats; functions of a protection system; user authentication; secure communication; access control mechanisms.
    • Reading assignment: BS[12-13].
    • Final examination.