CS 503: Operating Systems

Spring 2005

Overview and Objectives	Readings	Time/Room
Instructor/Office Hours	Teaching Assistant/PSO	Prerequisites/Credit
Grading	Lab and Policies	Mailing List/Newsgroup
XINU Setup	Lab Assignments	Useful Links

What's new?

Makeup class Monday 4/18/05, 5:45--7:00 pm, BRNG 1230

There will be NO CLASS this Wed 4/6/05. The missed class will be rescheduled.

Midterm regrade requests must be submitted by 3/23/05.

Midterm exam is 3/7/05, in class.

Information on getting your XINU account posted (1/20/05); see "Labs and Policies".

Instructor's office hours updated (1/20/05).

Instructor:

David Yau, office: CS 132, e-mail: yau@cs.purdue.edu, phone: (765) 494-9027

Office Hours:

M 2:30--3:30 pm, W 3:30--4:30 pm, or by appointment

Teaching Assistants:

Sundararaman Jeyaraman (Sundar), office: REC 224, e-mail: jsr@cs.purdue.edu, phone: 496-6768, office hours: Tue,Wed 1:30-2:30 pm(will be held in CS 257); PSO: Th 3:30--5:20 pm, in CS 257.
Jahangir Hasan, office: EE 249D, e-mail: hasanj@purdue.edu, phone: 494-0627, office hours: Mon 12:00 pm - 2:00 pm (will be held in CS 257); PSO: F 3:30--5:20 pm, in CS 257.

Students may use the second hour of a PSO as an office hour (i.e., can contact the TA in CS 257 during the second hour even if they are not attending that particular PSO). Note that all the office hours will be held in CS 257.

PSOs:

Students are strongly encouraged to attend PSO sessions. (PSOs will NOT start to meet until announced in class.) If you have to remove a registration schedule conflict, officially notify Dr. Gorman.

Prerequisites:

Graduate standing in Computer Science, previous operating system class at the undergraduate level (CS 354 or equivalent), ability to read and understand a large non-trivial system written in C, ability to program extensively in C, and command a suite of system development tools.

Credit:

Grading Plan (tentative):

Programming assignments (scaled according to length) 50%

Midterm
25%

Final exam
25%

You can use WebCT to keep track of your grades.

Programming assignments (scaled according to length)	50%
Midterm	25%
Final exam	25%

Labs and Policies:

We will use the XINU operating system for the programming assignments. The XINU lab is located in the Computer Science Building room CS 257.

Getting your CS account. Students can get their CS account information on-line. Go to CS homepage, use the ITaP login and password in the upper right-hand corner. This will take you to a page where you agree to the access and usage policies, and then get your CS login and initial password. You also use the same site for doing mid-semester reviews, evaluations, etc. If you have signed up but don't have an account, please contact Candace Walters (e-mail: clw@cs.purdue.edu, phone: (765) 49-49206, CS 210).

Due Dates

All assignments are due on the dates and times specified. It is the student's responsibility to manage their time so that the assignments can be submitted before the deadline. To accomodate unseen schedule conflicts and difficulties, each student is given two flexible days for the whole semester, to submit any work late. Do not feel compelled to use them, but use them when necessary. It is the student's responsibility to keep track of the number of late days remaining for him/her this semester. There is no need to e-mail the instructor or TA in order to use your late days: simply submit your lab late. Note that submitting a lab a few minutes late counts as a full late day-- we do not count fractions; we round up to the nearest day.

Any submission that is later then the specified due date and time will be returned ungraded.

Academic Dishonesty

We wish to foster an open and collegial class environment. At the same time, we are vigorously opposed to academic dishonesty because it seriously detracts from the education of honest students. Because of this, we have the following standard policy on academic honesty, consistent with Purdue University's official policy.

It is permissible to discuss a general method of solution with other students, or to make use of reference materials in the library or online. If you do this, you will be expected to clearly disclose with whom you discussed the method of solution, or to cite the references used. Failure to do so will be considered cheating or plagiarism. The use of "method of solution" means a general discussion of technique or algorithm, such as one would reasonably expect to occur standing in front of a whiteboard, and precludes the detailed discussion of code or written assignments. Specifically, looking at another student's code on his/her computer monitor is NOT allowed.
Unless otherwise explicitly specified, all written assignments or code that is submitted is to be entirely the students own work. Using any code or copying any assignment from others is strictly prohibited without advance prior permission from the instructor. This includes the use of code others have submitted in the past.
All students work is their own. Students who do share their work with others are as responsible for academic dishonesty as the student receiving the material. Students are not to show work to other students, in the class or not. Students are responsible for the security of their work and should ensure that printed copies are not left in accessible places, and that file/directory permissions are set to be unreadable to others (e.g. use "chmod -R 700 *" from your home directory). If you need assistance protecting your work, please contact the TA or the instructor.
Students who encourage others to cheat or plagiarize, or students who are aware of plagiarism or cheating and do not report it are also participating in academically dishonest behavior.
Be aware that we will use a software tool called MOSS (http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~aiken/moss.html) to check for copying among submitted assignments. Additionally, the instructor and TA will be inspecting all submitted material to ensure honesty.

Any case of academic dishonesty will be dealt with by a severe grade penalty in the overall class grade and referral to the office of the Dean of Students.

You can find the lab REGRADE POLICY here.

Classroom Policy:

Class participation and discussions are strongly encouraged. However, please be considerate to others: avoid coming to class late, leaving early, talking to other students, etc.

Mailing Lists/Newsgroup:

Questions should be posted on the newsgroup: news:purdue.class.cs503. Urgent questions that concern the whole class can be sent to cs503@cs.purdue.edu. Please do not send to the cs503 mailing list unless you are certain that the matter concerns the whole class and needs immediate attention. The instructor and TA will use the mailing list for important announcements, so make sure to check your e-mail frequently.

Please subscribe to the mailing list using the command (type this at the prompt from a CS account): mailer add me to cs503
Do: "man mailer" for more information on the mailer utility.

Make sure that you check the newsgroup and your e-mail frequently. Do NOT post answers to the assignments or test cases, though general clarifications/hints are OK. Complaints about the assignments or the class should not be posted to the newsgroup or mailing list-- they should be emailed to the instructor/TA.

CS Ph.D. Qualifier:

This course is one of the courses for Qual I of the CS Ph.D. program. Additional questions will be given on the final exam for students wishing to take the qualifier.

Useful Links:

Back to David Yau's home page