Operating Systems

Clay Shields, Department of Computer Science, Georgetown University

Assignments, Exams, and Readings

Graded Assignments

Assignment	Due Date
Homework 1: Familiarization with Unix	January 18, 2017
Project: Writing a User Shell, Part 1	January 30, 2017
Project: Writing a User Shell, Part 2	February 15th, 2017
Homework 2: Problems posted to Piazza	February 22nd, 2017
Midterm Exam	In class, March 1st, 2017
Project: Scheduling Algorithm Simulation	March 22, 2017
Project: Paging Algorithm Simulation	April 5th 19th, 2017
Homework 3: Problems posted to Piazza	May 1st, 2017
Final Exam	Thursday, May 11, 2017, 12:30 to 2:30 - BUT CHECK RESGISTRAR SCHEDULE

Resources

• Textbooks

There are two books for this course. Both are available for free, at least to Georgetown Students.
• Sort of required texts. These are for students who would like to refer to readings of material covered in class.
  
  • Operating System Concepts Essentials, 2nd edition. The bookstore may have it; you can find it elsewhere; or it is available online through the Safari Bookshelf, but only 10 people can access this service at any time from GU.
  • Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces. This is a fully-free OS book.
• Recommended texts:
  Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment: Second Edition, available online for GU students via the Safari Bookshelf; again, there is a limit on the number of concurrent users. You do not have to purchase it, but it is a valuable programming reference.
• A fun but now dated reading on operating systems. In the Beginning was the Command Line.

• Accounts

You will be given an account on a server named mclovin.cs.georgetown.edu. This will be the official machine for programming assignments. You can work on your own computer, but your code must work on and be readable on mclovin. Please note: mclovin is not always backed up properly, so you must make sure to keep copies of your code in a safe place.

Instructor and Course Information

• Instructor

  Clay Shields
  Office: 323 St Mary's Hall
  Office Hours: Wednesday 2:00-4:00 PM, or just knock on my door or email and we can arrange a time.
  Contact information here.

• Course Description

  This course studies the software systems that provide the interface between the computer system hardware resources and the users of the system. This interface is composed of a large collection of programs that provide simplified and uniform access to information storage (data and programs on tape, disk, and in memory), processing elements (CPUs and remote computers), input/output devices (telecommunications, keyboards, mice, video displays, printers, etc.), and data acquisition and equipment control devices. Topics include processes and threads of execution, concurrent process synchronization, concurrent access to hardware resources, file systems, memory management and virtual memory, job scheduling, and system modeling and performance evaluation. A variety of example operating systems of different types will be examined and their characteristics compared.

• Classroom Location

  ICC 106

Policies

All of my courses are conducted under the same set of policies, described on this page.