This is a core course, open to 3rd year CSE B.Tech. students only. The theory part of the course (CS347) covers the fundamentals of modern operating systems. The accompanying lab (CS333) will reinforce the concepts taught in class using programming exercises.

CS347: Grading Policy

• Mid-semester exam: 30%.
• End-semester exam: 40%.
• In-class quizzes: 30%. We will have 10 short quizzes over the semester, at the start of (almost) every lab slot.

All examinations will be closed notes and closed book. No calculators will be required. There will be no make-up exams, unless in the case of emergencies. Any form of cheating will not be tolerated during the tests.

CS333: Lab policies

CS333 will have 12 labs, roughly one per week. 8 of the labs are take-home labs and 4 are lab quizzes.

Take-home labs: The take home labs are mainly designed to help you learn the lab material at your own pace; they need not be solved and submitted within the three hour lab slot. You can solve the take-home labs in groups of one or two students. If you solve the lab in a team, you are both expected to contribute equally to the assignment. You may discuss and brainstorm with your friends, but the final writeup and code must be yours. You can bring your own laptops and use them for the take home labs. You are strongly encouraged to work in the lab during the lab slot even during the weeks when the lab assigned is a take-home lab. Most take-home labs will span multiple weeks, and will take more than 3 hours to solve. Therefore, it will be most useful for you to start working on the lab before the allocated lab slot; the lab slot can then be used to get your doubts cleared by the TAs and instructor. Needless to say, any plagiarism or copying of code will not be tolerated.

Lab quizzes: The lab quiz will have to be solved and submitted within the three hour lab slot itself. The labs will be designed in a way that you can complete the lab in 3 hours, provided you have sincerely attempted the related take-home labs. No extensions will be permitted. You must solve the lab individually, without discussing with anyone. You must use the lab machines only, not your own laptops. There will be no network access during the tests, so you will not have access to any online resources. Please get comfortable using man pages and such to write code on your own. Any form of cheating will not be tolerated during the lab quizzes.

The following are tentative dates for the 4 lab quizzes: Aug 18, Sep 1, Oct 6, Oct 27.

The grade distribution will be roughly as follows:

• Lab quizzes: 80%
• Take-home labs: 20%

Textbooks

• The xv6 teaching operating system is a great way to get a hands-on feel for a simple yet functional operating system. The xv6 operating system is about 9000 lines of code; and is formatted into a nice 100-page PDF file for easy reading. You can download a local copy of the PDF formatted source code from here. You may also download a complete copy of the source code from a github repo on the original xv6 page linked above. We will devote some lectures to reading through xv6 code. It is mandatory that you have a soft copy or a hard copy of the source code in front of you for those lectures, so that you can follow along better.
• The xv6 code also comes with a small book explaining parts of the code. You can download a local copy of the book from here. It is highly recommended that you read the parts of the book corresponding to the code discussed in class.
• "Operating System Concepts", by Avi Silberschatz, Peter Baer Galvin, Greg Gagne is a good textbook that covers the basics of operating systems. It is highly recommended that you refer the textbook for the relevant parts throughout the course.

Lecture Notes

1. Introduction to Operating Systems.
2. Processes and Threads.
3. Process Management in xv6.
4. Process Synchronization.
5. Process Scheduling.
6. Scheduling and Synchronization in xv6.
7. Memory Management.
8. Memory Management in xv6.
9. File Systems and I/O management.
10. The xv6 filesystem.

Practice Problem Sets

The practice questions below will reinforce your understanding of the lecture material. These problems sets are for your practice only; they need not be submitted.

1. Problem Set 1 and solutions (covers lectures 1--3 above).
2. Problem Set 2 and solutions (covers lectures 4--6 above).
3. Problem Set 3 and solutions (covers lectures 7--8 above).
4. Problem Set 4 and solutions (covers lectures 9--10 above).

CS333: Take-home Labs