Craig E. Wills, FL-236, cew@cs. Office hours: 10:00-11:00 Tuesdays, 1:00-3:00 Thursdays, any time for short questions. Electronic mail is an effective method to contact me.
Copies of all handouts, assignments, notes and old exams will be posted as
appropriate on the course Web page. The address for it is
http://www.cs.wpi.edu/~cs4513/d01/.
Unless otherwise specified, all projects will be done in the Fossil Lab
located in FL-B17. Machines in this lab, each running the Linux operating
system, are for students in this class. The web page
for the lab is available at http://fossil.wpi.edu/. It contains
links to lots of useful information about the lab and Linux.
Accounts on machines in the lab must be obtained from the course TAs. Student groups will have root access for one of the machines. Deliberate irresponsible use of this privileged access is grounds for an NR grade in the course and possible referral to the WPI Judicial system.
This is an undergraduate course in the design of advanced systems. It focuses on the issues of advanced operating systems and distributed systems, which have evolved from general-purpose multiprogramming systems covered in CS3013. The course covers file systems, distributed systems, distributed file systems, remote communication, performance evaluation and other issues related to advanced and distributed systems. The goals are 1) to acquaint students with the components of single-machine and distributed file systems, 2) to acquaint students with issues in distributed systems 3) to show students abstractions underlying design choices, tradeoffs, and their consequences, and 4) to give students ``hands on'' experience with operating and distributed systems.
Recommended background: CS3013.
Operating Systems Concepts. A. Silberschatz and P.B. Galvin Addison Wesley, 5th edition, 1998.
Reference:
Modern Operating Systems. Andrew S. Tanenbaum, Prentice Hall, 1992. Second edition published in 2001. Former text used in the course.
Distributed Systems Concepts and Design. George Coulouris, Jean Dollimore and Tim Kindberg, Addison Wesley, 2nd edition, 1994. Focuses on distributed systems issues.
Final grades will be computed as follows:
Midterm Exam: 30%;
Final Exam: 30%;
Homework, projects, quizzes, and class participation: 40%.
Grading policy for each project and homework will be provided at the time of the assignment. In general, each assignment will have a basic objective for the majority of the assignment points and an extended objective for demonstrating additional work and understanding.
Final grades will reflect the extent to which you have demonstrated understanding of the material, and completed the assigned projects. The base level grade will be a ``B'' which indicates that the basic objectives on assignments and exams have been met. A grade of ``A'' will indicate significant achievement beyond the basic objectives and a grade of ``C'' will indicate not all basic objectives were met, but work was satisfactory for credit. No incomplete grades will be assigned unless there exist exceptional, extenuating circumstances.
There will be 3-4 programming assignments Assignments will involve programming in C/C++/Java on the Fossil Lab Linux systems. There will likely be a combination of group and individual projects.
Students are assumed to be competent in a high-level programming language such as C, C++ or Java. C/C++/Java and Linux/Unix will NOT be taught as part of this course. System calls and other aspects of Linux/Unix will be introduced as the course progresses and programming projects are assigned.
There will be two in-class exams (including a final exam during the last week), plus the possibility of pop quizzes for which no advance notice will be provided. Exams will be closed book, closed notes. The majority of each exam will cover basic ideas and objectives of the class with a few questions testing additional understanding and insight.
There is a possibility of written homework assignments. Written assignments consist of problems from the book, made up problems, or readings from literature.
Each homework and programming assignment will be given a point value when it is handed out. The point value indicates the weight of the assignment relative to the other assignments. Late programs and homeworks will be be penalized 5% of total assignment value per day (with the weekend counting as one day) or partial day, and no assignments will be accepted after seven days beyond the due date. All programs and written homeworks are due at the start of class on the due date. Homeworks and programs turned in after the start of class will be counted late. Projects will be submitted as directed in class. Exceptions to these rules can be made only a priori. Finally, no assignments will be accepted after Tuesday, May 1 to allow sufficient time for grading.
The following is a tentative outline of the material that will be covered in this course. All references to chapters are from Silberschatz's and Galvin's (SG) as well as Tanenbaum's (T) books. Not all sections will be covered from each chapter and the lectures will be supplemented with material from other sources. Each week will entail four classes unless otherwise noted.