Semester

Semester 2, 2018

• Robert Sheehan (director, coordinator)

Tutors associated with the course:
Luman Wang - lwan353@aucklanduni.ac.nz
Nacha Chondamrongkul - ncho604@aucklanduni.ac.nz
Shyamli Sindhwani - ssin820@aucklanduni.ac.nz

The first 3 weeks of lectures are given by Dr Wanqing Tu.
The remaining 9 weeks are given by Dr Robert Sheehan.

History of operating systems. Multi-user systems. Scheduling. Concurrent processes, threads and synchronisation. Memory allocation and virtual memory. Managing files, disks and other peripherals. Security, protection and archiving. Engineering distributed systems; location, migration and replication transparency. Real-time programming and embedded systems. Prerequisite: COMPSYS 201 or SOFTENG 252, 250Restriction: COMPSCI 340

Further notes

Introduction
An operating system is the software which makes a raw computer more or less usable by people. To most people who use computers, the operating system is indistinguishable from the hardware; they never experience the machine by itself. It is the operating system's job to communicate with the people who use it, to look after their files, to do sensible things when they do silly things, and generally to look after all the jobs that must be done but which are too complicated (at the moment) to be built into the hardware.

This course looks at general principles of operating systems, but we do look at some low level details as well. You are expected to be a competent programmer in a language such as Java or C++. Some assignments this year will use C.

Lecturer and Topics

Dr Wanqing Tu
Introduction to the course - OS structure
History of OSs - up to batch systems
History of OSs - time-sharing systems, PCs, the Web and smaller OSs
Distributed File Systems
Networked Operating Systems
Networked File Systems
Distributed Services: two phase commit, remote procedure call
Cloud Computing: a general introduction, SaaS, PaaS, IaaS
Cloud Operating Systems: challenges of cloud computing, cloud operating systems, a case study

Dr Robert Sheehan
Systems programming languages
Virtualization, Processes and threads - implementation
PCBs, Process states, Process creation
Running, waiting and stopping
Scheduling
Real-time scheduling
The problem of concurrency - locks and semaphores
Readers/writers, monitors
Dining Philosophers, Equivalence of concurrency constructs
IPC, Distributed concurrency control
Deadlock
File Systems
Representing files on disk
File allocation techniques
Versioning File Systems
Memory management, Pages, Segments
Virtual memory, page faults
Page allocation algorithms
Meltdown and Spectre
Protection and the access matrix
Capabilities and Access Control Lists
Cryptography and Authentication, Kerberos
Intro to mobile security
Device drivers
Linux modules and general device services
Disks as special devices, disk scheduling

Assignment 1 - due 9:30pm Monday the 13th of August (worth 5% of course total)
Assignment 2 - due 9:30pm Friday the 21st of September (worth 8% of course total)
Assignement 3 - due 9:30pm Friday the 12th of October (worth 7% of course total)

Test - in class 9:00am Thursday the 23rd of August (worth 10% of course total)

To pass the course you need to get > 50% overall and > 50% on the test and exam combined.

Exam
Worth 70% of the course total
2 hours long
Closed book
No calculators

Students are urged to discuss privately any impairment-related requirements face-to-face and/or in written form with the course convenor/lecturer and/or tutor.

A2 and A3 will have a graduated penalty scheme for late submission.
-5% of earned mark for 1 day late
-10% of earned mark for 2 days late
-15% of earned mark for 3 days late
No assignments accepted after that except in verified cases of ill health or similar circumstance.

The University of Auckland will not tolerate cheating, or assisting others to cheat, and views cheating in coursework as a serious academic offence. The work that a student submits for grading must be the student's own work, reflecting his or her learning. Where work from other sources is used, it must be properly acknowledged and referenced. This requirement also applies to sources on the world-wide web. A student's assessed work may be reviewed against electronic source material using computerised detection mechanisms. Upon reasonable request, students may be required to provide an electronic version of their work for computerised review.

All students enrolled at the University of Auckland are required to complete a compulsory Academic Integrity course, usually in their first semester/year of enrolment. The University of Auckland’s full guidelines on procedures and penalties for academic dishonesty are available here.