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McGill University
Department of Electrical Engineering
Operating Systems
304-427B

General Information

This course deals with the structure and mechanisms of operating systems from an engineering point of view, and its purpose is to provide an understanding of the fundamentals of operating system design, relating them to current directions in their development.

Lecturer

Dr. Eng. F. G. Callari, Department of Electrical Engineering. Office hours: Mo-We-Fri, Room MC-444, 12:30-13:00 - meetings at other times by appointment only. T.A.s will also be available at times to be posted. Administrative information concerning the course will be announced in the lectures and/or made available on the CIM World Wide Web server at the following URL: http://www.cim.mcgill.ca/~franco/opsys.html. Dr. Callari can also be reached by email at the following address: franco@cim.mcgill.ca.

Textbook and References

Course textbook:
Crowley, C., Operating systems: a design-oriented approach, Irwin, 1997.

Other reference texts:
Deitel, H., An Introduction to Operating Systems, Second Edition, Addison Wesley, Reading, Ma, 1990.
Silbershatz, A., Peterson, J., Galvin, P., Operating Systems Concepts, Addison Wesley, Reading, Ma, 1991.
Tanenbaum, A., Operating Systems Design and implementation, Prentice-Hall,Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1987.

Texts suggested for case studies:
Beck, M., et al, LINUX Kernel Internals, Addison Wesley, Reading, Ma, 1996
Tanenbaum, A., Modern Operating Systems, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1992.
Bach, M., The Design of the UNIX Operating System, Prentice Hall, Englewood, N.J., 1986.
Leffler, S. J., et al., The Design and Implementation of the 4.3 BSD UNIX Operating System, Addison Wesley, Reading, Ma, 1988.

All books are held by the Phys. Sci. and Eng. Library.

Prerequisites

Proficiency in the C programming language, UNIX shell and development tools is assumed,, as is at least basic knowledge of the hardware of computer systems. Notions probability calculus and of operation research (linear programming, queue theory) will be helpful.

Lecture schedule

There will be a total of 39 lectures. The tentative schedule is as follows:

Laboratory and Tutorials

The course makes use of the Undergraduate Computing Facilities within the Department of Electrical Engineering.

Tutorials will be offered by the lecturer and the T.A.s according to the sessional calendar. All students are strongly encouraged to attend.

Computer Lab Security

The students will receive system administrator privileges on selected machines of the E.E. Computer Lab. for part of the course, as this is necessary for the completion of the coursework. Complete compliance with the McGill University codes of counduit concerning computer usage is expected and required. All abuses will be prosecuted.

Assignments

Four problem sets will be assigned, each consisting of written problems and/or laboratory assignments. Assignments availability and due dates are (tentatively) as follows:

Assignments should be handed as indicated in their text, on or before 4:00 PM on the date due. Penalties for late papers are 15/100 if handed in within 24 hrs of deadline, 30/100 if within 48 hrs, no marking thereafter. For some assignments the students may be required to demonstrate their results: in these cases the demonstration rules and deadlines will be announced along with the assignment text. Team work might be explicitly allowed and encouraged on some assignments, but even in these cases each student shall be personally responsible for the whole team result. Cooperation in all other cases is inadmissible.

Marking

All marks except the final grade will be recorded in the form of centesimal points. Marks will be combined to form the final (letter-recorded) grade according to the standard departmental conversion table, and in such a way that the final examination marks will influence 40% or less, assignments 30% or more, and the midterm 30% at most of the total.

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