CS571: Operating Systems

This page last updated: 14:26 20 Jan 2003

Where & When: Wednesdays, 16:30 to 19:10, Science & Technology I, room 126.
Also available through Distance Learning. Students may take any of the course's classes over the web using the distance learning software but:
  1. students must ask for a password to have access to the network-accessible version (see below),
  2. students may view the live or recorded lectures anywhere (home, office, on campus), but must be present, in person, to write the midterm and final examinations.

One other sections of this course are offered:

Instructor: Charles Snow, Adjunct Professor
Office Hours: Wednesdays, 14:00 to 15:30, room across from main Department office, 4th floor ST2.
Email: csnow@cs.gmu.edu
Pre-requisites:
Description: This course examines the operating system concepts that make a collection of electro-mechanical parts a useful computing resource for one or more users. It looks at resource creation and management (cpu, storage, networks) and security measures used to protect the resources. The course also looks at the users of the resources (processes, threads), their interaction (intended and unintended) with the resources and with each other.
Texts: Only one book is required. The other book (by Tanenbaum) is shown as a useful reference.
Required: Silbershatz, Galvin and Gagné, Applied Operating System Concepts, 1st Ed., John Wiley and Sons. ISBN: 0-471-26314-1
(bookstore may have “Windows XP Update” edition) 		Tanenbaum, Modern Operating Systems, 2nd edition, Prentice Hall. ISBN 0-13-031358-0

Look for these books in the GMU Bookstore.
Grading: The final grade for this course is made up from:
  1. 25% Midterm,
  2. 35% Assignments,
  3. 40% Final Exam

Course work is submitted electronically using the department's upload system. This system enforces deadlines on submissions. Generally, an assignment is due by the end (23:59:59 eastern) of the day on which it is due. Each assignment will specify what you are to hand in, hence upload. Late work is subject to a penalty that begins at 10%, and doubles for each class the work is late. No assignment or project work will be accepted for points after a solution to that assignment or project has been posted.

Missed exams must be arranged with the instructor before the exam date.

While students are encouraged to discuss solutions to homework and project problems, each student must submit their own, original, work. Students are expected to abide by both the George Mason University Honor System and Code (which contains a definition of plagiarism, amongst other things). and the Computer Science Department Honor Code Policy for Programming Projects. Further academic policy information is available here.

Note that we reserve the right to submit student work for automated testing to assure the submission's originality.

No student who fails the final exam will receive a grade higher than C.

Syllabus: Topics covered will include:
  • basic machine operation: components, instruction execution, traps, interrupts, privilege level
  • basic OS designs: goals and approaches in different designs
  • processes: basic consumer, threads, IPC, exceptions, concurrency, distributed, scheduling
  • memory and memory management: maps, overlays, segments, pages, virtual memory, distributed systems
  • disks and file systems: media/device characteristics, files, file system organizations, performance
  • networks: goals, behaviour, and implementation
  • security: threats, weaknesses, countermeasures

Other Notes:
  • Course notices and assignments will be provided via email and/or on the course web site http://cs.gmu.edu/~csnow/cs571/2003B.
  • Students are responsible for ensuring that the instructor has a valid email address at which the student can be reached. Students assume all responsibility for the security of their email.
  • Course material (e.g., pdf versions of class slides, supplementary material, homework solutions) will be available on the course web site.
Distance Learning: This course is available, in real-time, via Internet, to computers anywhere using a package called NEW, developed at GMU. Students may use any Internet access they have available to them. The web-cast of the classes provides the slides presented in class, with any annotations drawn/written on them by the instructor, synchronized with the instructor's voice. If their network connection has high enough bandwidth, students may also receive video of the presentation. Students may submit written questions to the instructor during the class. If the computer used to view the class is equipped with a microphone, the student may speak the question. The classes are also recorded (slides, annotations, instructor's voice but not video), and are available for playback later.

To use NEW, you need:

  1. to obtain a password to access the NEW system: go to the disted home page to do this (use your standard GMU computer account username).
  2. to obtain the client software and install it on your computer: go to the disted home page, log in using the password you now have (see (1) above) and select “Download/install software”, click on ‘Next’ and follow the instructions. The client software works, for the moment, only under Windows (tested and known to work with 98, 2k and XP; not tested but may work with 95).