COMP3301/7308
Operating Systems Architecture
Semester 2, 2009
This course assumes an elementary understanding of operating systems concepts and a strong background in C programming.
The course is based on understanding operating system concepts mainly using the Minix 3 operating system for examples, but with excursions into systems used in the real world.
News and Website updates
- 3rd November 2009 - EXAM DETAILS The exam will be held in the Social Sciences Building, Room 24-S603 at 8:00am Monday 9th November. Room details here
- 23rd October 2009 - Sample Exam posted
- 23rd October 2009 - Course Evaluations will be held at 2pm on 23rd October. Please come on time to provide your (anonymous) feedback
- 15th October 2009 - Lecture 10 slides posted
- 9th October 2009 - Assignment 3 posted
- 9th October 2009> - Assignment 1 results available (A few missing, marked "not recorded". I will update them ASAP)
- 9th October 2009 - Lecture 9 slides posted
- 24th September 2009 - Lecture 8 slides posted
- 17th September 2009 - Lecture 7 slides posted
- 9th September 2009 - Assignment 2 posted
- 4th September 2009 - Lecture schedule updated
- 28th August 2009 - Week 7 Guest Lecture details posted
- 28th August 2009 - Lecture 5 slides posted
- 27th August 2009 - Lecture 4 slides posted
- 18th August 2009 - Revised Prac 2 posted to fix minor errors and clarifications
- 18th August 2009 - "diff.sh" wrapper scipt posted - useful for generating patches for Assignments
- 14th August 2009 - 1 week extension to Assignment 1.. New due date Friday 4th September.
- 13th August 2009 - Lecture 3 slides posted
- 13th August 2009 - Prac 4 (for week 6) posted
- 10th August 2009 - Prac 3 (for week 3) posted
- 7th August 2009 - Assignment 1 posted
- 7th August 2009 - Wednesday prac session 2pm-4pm open for sign-on
- 3rd August 2009 - Minix Tip Sheet posted
- 3rd August 2009 - Prac 2 (for week 2) posted
- 31st July 2009 - Lecture 2 slides posted
- 30th July 2009 - Lecture schedule updated
- 24th July 2009 - Course profiles published
- 24th July 2009 - Lecture 1 slides posted
- 24th July 2009 - Lecture schedule posted
- 10th July 2009 - Timetable and lab information updated
Is this course for you?
This course is intended to provide in-depth study and understanding of operating system implementation. It will prepare you for research in operating systems and distributed computing, implementation of novel operating systems or existing operating systems on novel devices, and development of device drivers.
The course is compulsory for the Computer Systems and Networks major in BInfTech.
You should not take this course if you have weak programming skills. A good test of whether this course is for you is if you did COMP2303 or similar, and did well in the C programming component.
All of the assignments will require extensive C programming skills, if you haven't programmed in C, or are not willing to put in significant extra effort to learn C in detail, I would discourage you from enrolling in the class.
You should consider taking this course if you want to develop an insight into how things work.
Lecturer: John Williams
IMPORTANT - to ensure a timely response, please include the course code (COMP3301 or COMP7308) in the SUBJECT line of all emails.
Timetable
We will have a 3 hour block on Fridays from 2-5pm. This will consist of lectures and tutorial material, but the tutorial material will normally be in the first hour.
There are 2 scheduled lab sessions - please sign-on for one of these, I'll open sign-on around July 14th.
Textbook, Webites, Software
A.S Tanenbaum & AS Woodhull: Operating Systems, Design and Implementation (3rd Edition).
We will follow this textbook quite closely and it will be very useful for the assignments
Also see the minix website: www.minix3.org
For assignments, you will be running MINIX on VMplayer. You can download this from the minix website above onto your own computer if you want to get some experience before the start of semester. A "clean" Minix VM Image is available in the Resources page. This will be the standard reference point for all programming assignments, so take some time to download it and get familiar with running it under VMPlayer.
The course will run slightly differently this year - but if you wish to look at last year's course run by Neil Bergmann, etc see the 2008Archive link on the left menu.
Dr
John Williams
School of Info. Tech. and Elec.
The
Phone:
+61-7-3365-2185
Fax: +61-7-3365-4999
E-mail: jwilliams@itee.uq.edu.au
CRICOS Provider No: 00025B