Course pages 2014–15

Advanced Operating Systems

Course materials for L41: Advanced Operating Systems

L41: Advanced Operating Systems teaches OS internals, experimental methodology, and systems-research topics through a hands-on, lab-based course based on the FreeBSD operating system and BeagleBone Black embedded ARM board.

Course handouts

These course handouts provide more detailed information about the module and laboratory environment.

• L41 - Syllabus (PDF)
• L41 - Readings (PDF)
• L41 - DTrace Quick Start (PDF)
• L41 - Lab Reports (PDF)
• L41 - Lab Setup (PDF)

Lecture slides

Lecture slides will go online shortly after each lecture.

• L41 - Lecture 1: Advanced Operating Systems: Tracing, Analysis, and Experimentation (PDF)
• L41 - Lecture 2: Kernels and Tracing (PDF)
• L41 - Lecture 3: The Process Model (1) (PDF)
• L41 - Lecture 4: The Process Model (2) (PDF)
• L41 - Lecture 5: The Network Stack (1) (PDF)
• L41 - Lecture 6: The Network Stack (2) (PDF)

Lecturelet slides

These short lecturelets were (will be) delivered at the start of each lab session to help guide your lab work.

• L41 - Lecturelet 1: I/O
• L41 - Lecturelet 2: Kernel implications of IPC
• L41 - Lecturelet 3: Microarchitectural implications of IPC (PDF)
• L41 - Lecturelet 4: The TCP state machine (PDF)
• L41 - Lecturelet 5: TCP latency and bandwidth (PDF)

Lab handouts

These handouts describe each lab, both optional exploratory questions and the experimental questions that must be addressed in your Lab Report.

1. L41 - Lab 1: I/O (PDF)
2. L41 - Lab 2: Kernel implications of IPC (PDF)
3. L41 - Lab 3: Microarchitectural implications of IPC (PDF)
4. L41 - Lab 4: The TCP state machine (PDF)
5. L41 - Lab 5: TCP latency and bandwidth (PDF)

Lab bundles

These tarballs contain source code associated with each lab. You can also retrieve these files directly via CL NFS.

1. L41 - Lab 1 Tarball - lab1.tgz (TGZ)
2. L41 - Lab 2 Tarball - lab2.tgz (TGZ)
3. L41 - Lab 3 Tarball - lab3.tgz (TGZ)
4. L41 - Labs 4 and 5 Tarball - lab4.tgz (TGZ)

Lab Report template

This Lab Report template must be used for all submissions. Please see the Lab Report handout on the Materials page for more details.

• L41 - Lab Report template

Lab Analysis Notes

These notes provide retrospective information on data collection and analysis for L41's lab assignments.

• L41 - Lab 1: I/O - Analysis Notes

Useful reference material

• FreeBSD operating system
• BeagleBone Black
• ARM Cortex A8 r3p2 performance-counter documentation