COMP3301/7308
Operating Systems Architecture
Semester 2, 2011
This course assumes an elementary understanding of operating systems concepts and a strong background in C programming.
The course is based on understanding operating system concepts mainly using the Linux operating system for examples.
Important contacts
Lecturer: John Williams
Tutors: Sam Kingston, Thomas King
IMPORTANT - to ensure a timely response, please include the course code (COMP3301 or COMP7308) in the SUBJECT line of all emails.
Newsgroup: uq.itee.comp3301
News and Website updates
- 21st November 2011 - Assignment 3 marks released, as well as T9 and final Tutorial mark. Please check ASAP and email Sam if there is any issues, as these results have to be finalised.
- 17th November 2011 - Assignment 2 marks released. Please email Sam if there are any issues with the marks or you would like detailed feedback.
- Older updates have been archived.
Is this course for you?
This course is intended to provide in-depth study and understanding of operating system implementation. It will prepare you for research in operating systems and distributed computing, implementation of novel operating systems or existing operating systems on novel devices, and development of device drivers.
The course is compulsory for the Computer Systems and Networks major in BInfTech.
You should not take this course if you have weak programming skills. A good test of whether this course is for you is if you did COMP2303 or similar, and did well in the C programming component.
All of the assignments will require extensive C programming skills, if you haven't programmed in C, or are not willing to put in significant extra effort to learn C in detail, I would discourage you from enrolling in the class.
You should consider taking this course if you want to develop an insight into how things work.
Timetable
We will have a 3 hour block on Fridays from 2-5pm. This will consist of lectures and tutorial material, but the tutorial material will normally be in the first hour.
There are 3 scheduled lab sessions - please sign-on for one of these, I'll open sign-on around July 14th.
Textbook, Websites, Software
Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne, Operating System Concepts (8th Edition), John Wiley and Sons
Teaching activities will follow this textbook quite closely.
For assignments, you will be running Linux (Ubuntu Server 10.04) on VMplayer. A "clean" Linux VM Image will be available soon via the Resources page. This will be the standard reference point for all programming assignments, so take some time to download it and get familiar with running it under VMPlayer.
Dr
John Williams
School of Info. Tech. and Elec.
The
Phone:
+61-7-3365-2185
Fax: +61-7-3365-4999
E-mail: jwilliams@itee.uq.edu.au
CRICOS Provider No: 00025B