Advanced Operating Systems

ACS Advanced Operating Systems teaches OS internals, experimental methodology, and systems-research topics through a hands-on, lab-based course using the FreeBSD operating system, the Raspberry Pi 4 board, and JupyterLab.

Course Slack

If you need to reach the instructors, or to chat with other students in the course, please join the Advanced Operating Systems course Slack:

• https://advopsys.slack.com

Course handouts

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

• Syllabus
• Schedule
• Readings
• DTrace Quick Start
• Lab Exercises
• Lab Setup
• Hardware Performance Counters

Lecture slides

Lecture slides will be posted here as the module proceeds.

Lecture 1 - Advanced Operating Systems: Through tracing, analysis, and experimentation (in person)

• Lecture 1, Part 1: What is an Operating System?
• Lecture 1, Part 2: The Course
• Lecture 1, Part 3: Kernel dynamics

Lecture 2 - Kernels and Tracing (in person)

• Lecture 2, Part 1: DTrace
• Lecture 2, Part 2: The probe effect
• Lecture 2, Part 3: Our lab environment

Lecture 3 - The Process Model (1) (in person)

• Lecture 3, Part 1: The Process Model
• Lecture 3, Part 2: Processes in Practice

Lecture 4 - The Process Model (2) (in person)

• Lecture 4, Part 1: Traps and System Calls
• Lecture 4, Part 2: Traps and Syscalls in Practice
• Lecture 4, Part 3: More on VM

Lecture 5 - The Network Stack (1) (in person)

• Lecture 5, Part 1: Network Stacks
• Lecture 5, Part 2: Network Stack Implementation
• Lecture 5, Part 3: Network Stack Research Taster

Lecture 6 - The Network Stack (2) (in person)

• Lecture 6, Part 1: TCP
• Lecture 6, Part 2: TCP Implementation
• Lecture 6, Part 3: Wrapping Up

Lab lecturelet slides (online)

Lab lecturelet slides will be posted here as the module proceeds.

• Lecturelet 1: Lab 1 – Getting started with kernel tracing
• Lecturelet 2: Lab 2 – IPC
• Lecturelet 2: Lab 3 – TCP

Lab handouts

Lab handouts will be posted here as the module proceeds.

Practice Exercise - Kernel Tracing

• Advanced Operating Systems: Lab 1 – Getting Started with Kernel Tracing (updated)

Lab 2 - IPC

• Advanced Operating Systems: Lab 2 - IPC - General Information
• Advanced Operating Systems: Lab 2 - IPC - Assignment

Lab 3 - TCP

• Advanced Operating Systems: Lab 3 - TCP - General Information
• Advanced Operating Systems: Lab 3 - TCP - Assignment

Useful reference material

• FreeBSD operating system
• Raspberry Pi 4 - Broadcom 2711 (BCM2711)

Lab 2

• ARM® Cortex®-A72 MPCore Processor - see section 11.8
• Arm Architecture Reference Manual Armv8, for Armv8-A architecture profile - see sections D7.10 and Appendix K3