Course material 2010–11
Paper 2: Operating Systems
This course is not taken by NST or PPST students.
Lecturer: Dr S.M. Hand
No. of lectures: 13
Prerequisite courses: Computer Fundamentals, Digital Electronics
This course is a prerequisite for Concurrent & Distributed Systems (Part IB), Security (Parts IB and II) and Mobile and Sensor Systems (Part II).
Aims
The overall aim of this course is to provide a general understanding of the structure and key functions of the operating system. Case studies will be used to illustrate and reinforce fundamental concepts.
Lectures
- Introduction to operating systems. Abstract view of an
operating system. OS evolution: multi-programming, time-sharing.
Dual-mode operation. Protecting I/O, memory, CPU. Kernels and
micro-kernels. [1 lecture]
- Processes and scheduling.
Job/process concepts. Scheduling basics: CPU-I/O interleaving, (non-)preemption, context
switching. Scheduling algorithms: FCFS, SJF, SRTF, priority
scheduling, round robin. Combined schemes. [2 lectures]
- Memory management. Processes in memory. Logical
addresses. Partitions: static versus dynamic, free space
management, external fragmentation. Segmented memory. Paged memory:
concepts, internal fragmentation, page tables. Demand
paging/segmentation. Replacement strategies: OPT, FIFO, LRU (and
approximations), NRU, LFU/MFU, MRU. Working set schemes. [3 lectures]
- I/O subsystem. General structure. Polled mode versus interrupt-driven I/O. Application I/O interface: block
and character devices, buffering, blocking versus non-blocking
I/O. Other issues: caching, scheduling, spooling, performance.
[1 lecture]
- File management. File concept. Directory and storage
services. File names and meta-data. Directory name-space:
hierarchies, DAGs, hard and soft links. File operations. Access
control. Existence and concurrency control. [1 lecture]
- Protection. Requirements. Subjects and objects. Design
principles. Authentication schemes. Access matrix: ACLs and
capabilities. Combined scheme. Covert channels. [1 lecture]
- Unix case study. History. General structure. Unix file
system: file abstraction, directories, mount points, implementation
details. Processes: memory image, life cycle, start of day. The
shell: basic operation, commands, standard I/O, redirection, pipes,
signals. Character and block I/O. Process scheduling. [2 lectures]
- Windows NT case study. History. Design principles.
Overall architecture. HAL. Kernel: objects, processes, threads,
scheduling. Executive: object manager and object namespace, process
manager, VM manager, I/O manager. File-System. Security
System. [2 lectures]
Objectives
At the end of the course students should be able to
- describe the general structure and purpose of an operating
system;
- explain the concepts of process, address space, and file;
- compare and contrast various CPU scheduling algorithms;
- understand the differences between segmented and paged memories,
and be able to describe the advantages and disadvantages of each;
- compare and contrast polled, interrupt-driven and DMA-based
access to I/O devices.
Recommended reading
* Bacon, J. & Harris, T. (2003). Operating systems. Addison-Wesley (3rd ed.).
Silberschatz, A., Peterson, J.L. & Galvin, P.C. (2005). Operating systems concepts. Addison-Wesley (7th ed.).
Leffler, S. (1989). The design and implementation of the 4.3BSD Unix operating system. Addison-Wesley.
Solomon, D. & Russinovich, M. (2000). Inside Windows 2000. Microsoft Press (3rd ed.).