CIS-4020 (Operating Systems) Home Page

This is the home page for Peter Chapin's CIS-4020 course notes for the Fall 2024 semester. Here you will find class handouts, slides used during the lectures, homework assignments, and links to other references of interest.

The lectures will be via Zoom.

The course syllabus gives an overview of the course and its content, lists course resources, and describes the grading policy and related issues.
The texts are in a curated playlist in the O'Reilly Collection. Use your VSC credentials to access it.
The homework submission area and grade book are on Canvas. All other course resources are here.
I have prepared a document that gives hints about how to work effectively with a Linux terminal.
DevBox and HackBox. These are Linux virtual machines running Ubuntu 24.04 that support this course. Download links are below. The virtual machines below are known to work with VirtualBox 7.0.20 and its associated extension pack. They are likely to work fine with other versions of VirtualBox close to that.

File	Size	MD5
`DevBox-2024-08-14.ova`	6,700,829,184	`DevBox-2024-08-14.md5`
`HackBox-2024-08-14.ova`	4,103,818,240	`HackBox-2024-08-14.md5`

Topics

The lectures for this course will be taught via Zoom. The labs are face-to-face.

2024-08-26. Introduction to the class. Overview of DevBox & HackBox. Described the distinction between monolithic kernels and microkernels.
2024-08-28. Described more details about networking in DevBox & HackBox. Demonstrated cscope and gave a whirlwind tour of the Linux kernel source.
2024-09-04. Discussed system calls, the /proc file system, and the strace command.
2024-09-09. Discussed Lab #3 on counting system calls. Demonstrated the skeleton module.
2024-09-11. Reviewed selected C features of interest to OS developers.
2024-09-16. Discussed processes. Talked about the importance of multiprogramming.
2024-09-18. Reviewed processes. Introduced locking.

Slides

Introduction
C Programming Language with an emphasis on features related to kernel programming.
Processes
Locking

Samples

The "Hello, World" program in assembly language demonstrating the use of raw system calls: x86_64 Linux, arm64 Linux, arm64 macOS.

Homework

Homework #01. (Due: 2024-09-06) System Calls
Homework #02. (Due: 2024-09-27) The Sequence File API

Labs

The lab set is summarized in the lab summary document, along with links to specific lab handouts and supporting code samples.

Resources/Articles

The following are links to relevant resources for this class.

The DevBox and HackBox document describes how to set up and use the virtual machines required for this class. (LaTeX source of the DevBox and HackBox document)
Compiling Linux describes the procedure for compiling the Linux kernel in detail. This document is for your information only. The kernel has been pre-compiled on the virtual machines we will be using in the lab. (LaTeX source of the Compiling Linux document
We will be studying Linux kernel 6.9.3. You can download a copy of this kernel from http://www.kernel.org. However, it has been pre-installed on the virtual machines we will be using in the lab.
I have prepared a document with links to kernel development resources.
I wrote a C tutorial that you might find useful as a refresher for various aspects of the C programming language.
My home page contains other resources of potential interest.

LaTeX Resources

For this class, you will be required to use the LaTeX typesetting system to prepare your lab reports. I encourage you to consider using LaTeX for your other formal writing needs even in other classes. This section includes references to materials you can use to help learn the system.

Lab Report Template. This is a LaTeX document with appropriate sections for CIS-4020 lab reports. To create your own report, copy this document and fill in the sections as needed.
The Not So Short Introduction to LaTeX2e gives a good overview of LaTeX for beginning and intermediate users.
Using LaTeX at VTC. This archive contains a document describing how to install LaTeX and giving examples of how to format various constructs of interest to the documents you will prepare for this class.
This mini-lecture on using LaTeX describes the demonstration document in the sample archive and how to use VSCode for LaTeX development.
The MiKTeX website. From here you can download the MiKTeX installer for Windows. If you use Linux you can almost certainly install LaTeX from your distribution's package manager (look for the "texlive" and/or "latex" packages).