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Course Catalog:
Covers the major concept areas of operating systems for both large and small computers and the interrelationship between the operating system and computer architecture. Topics include: history, tasking, process synchronization, scheduling, memory organization, device management, file systems, security issues, distributed and real-time systems. One or more projects form a significant part of this course. Springs.
Prerequisite(s): CS 2381 and CS 4250

Course Info #

• Credits: 3
• Instructor: Nat Tuck
• Email: nathaniel.tuck@plymouth.edu
• Office: D&M 305
• Lecture: Mon, Wed, Fri at 9:05-9:55am in D&M 442
• Office Hours: See https://homework.quest/
• Final Exam: Wed May 7th @ 8:00-10:30am
• Course Site: https://homework.quest/

Student Learning Outcomes #

Successful students will:

• Be familiar with the implementation details of several components of a UNIX-style operating system.
• Be able to write code to make system calls from user code.
• Understand the process by which a system call is handled in kernel code.
• Be able to write code that will run on a multi-core system.

Texts #

Students are not required to purchase a commercial textbook for this course.

Freely available textbooks:

• OSTEP
• Beej’s Guide to C

Grading #

The number of points available in an assessment may (or may not) exceed the denominator used in the grade calculation. For example, if the final exam offers 104 points out of 100, then a perfect score would count as 26% towards the final course grade.

Letter grades

≥ 93 → A, ≥ 90 → A-,
≥ 87 → B+, ≥ 83 → B, ≥ 80 → B-,
≥ 77 → C+, ≥ 73 → C, ≥ 70 → C-,
≥ 67 → D+, ≥ 63 → D, ≥ 60 → D-,
else (< 60) → F

Homework

Approximately each week there will be a homework assignment to be completed outside of class.

Minimizing the use of external resources is recommended, and academic honesty rules will be strictly enforced.

Homework assignments will be posted on Inkfish. Check Inkfish regularly for upcoming due dates.

Homeworks submitted after the deadline loses 1% per hour late (round up).

Final Homework

We will use the final exam period in one of two ways:

• A final programming homework, to be completed from the classroom workstations.
• A presentation about the last project.

Either way the activity during the exam period will be graded as a homework assignment, possibly with greater weight than the other homework assignments.

This final homework assignment will be due at the end of the exam period; late submissions will not be accepted.

Inkfish and Script Grades

Labs and homework will be provided through an online web application called Inkfish and must be submitted through the same system. Any solutions for lab or homework assignment sent by email will not be accepted and will incur a 5% grade penalty on the associated assignment unless the code is sent as a direct reply to an email requesting it.

A portion of your grade for labs and homework assignments may be generated by an automatic grading script which runs when you submit your work. Unless there is a clear bug 🪳 in the script, the script output is that portion of your grade and will not be adjusted manually. You are being graded on getting the script to give you points. You should review the output, make corrections, and resubmit before the deadline if you are unhappy with the script results.

Script grades will be reduced if you submit work inconsistent with the text or spirit of the assignment, such as hard-coding outputs that should be calculated.

Teams

You may be assigned to work with a partner. In such cases, pair programming is required. In assigning partners, sometimes there ends up being a team of one or (under rare circumstances) three.

All team members are responsible for and get credit for any work submitted as a team. Keep in mind that pair programming means you should not be doing work for team assignments on your own.

Projects

There will be several programming projects. These are like homework, but larger, more difficult, and worth more points.

Grade Appeals

If you think you recieved an incorrect grade, send me an email describing why your grade is wrong and how you think it should be corrected.

If the grade isn’t clearly wrong, I will ask you to stop by my office hours so we can discuss the issue in more detail.

Any grade concerns must be raised within two weeks of the grade being posted.

Fair Grading Policy

All grading in this class is subject to the university Fair Grading Policy.

Excused Absences

If you are unable to submit an assignment or take an exam on time due to circumstances that were unforseen and reasonably unavoidable contact the professor to discuss making up the assignment. If you know you will miss something and are reasonable able to contact the professor to discuss alternatives beforehand you must do so. See the Excused Absence Policy for further details.

Late Registration

If you register late for the course please contact the professor to discuss completing any missed assignments as soon as possible.

Course Evaluations

Course evaluations can be a valuable tool to determine how the semester went. They’re more useful with a higher response rate. You should do your course evaluations.

Class Annoucements

Class annoucements will be posted on Canvas and/or sent to your university email address. Make sure to check both regularly.

Resources #

Tutoring #

There is evening tutoring in the lab classroom. See the course website for more details. The PASS Office also offers individual tutoring.

Accomodations #

Plymouth State University is committed to providing students with documented disabilities equal access to all university programs and facilities. If you think you have a disability requiring accommodations, you should contact Campus Accessibility Services (CAS), located in Speare (535-3300) to determine whether you are eligible for such accommodations. Academic accommodations will only be considered for students who have registered with CAS. If you have authorized CAS to electronically deliver a Letter of Accommodations for this course, please communicate with your instructor to review your accommodations.

Academic Integrity #

Please carefully read and be familiar with the unversity Academic Integrity Policy. Especially don’t do any of the things in the list of examples of academic integrity violations. Make sure to review the penalties for repeated offenses.

The primary subject of this class is writing small computer programs. In order to learn that skill, you need to practice it by completing the programming assignments by writing code yourself (or with your team on team assignments).

The following things are obvious cheating:

• Submitting code that wasn’t written by you (or your team).
  • Two exceptions: Starter code supplied with the assignment; small examples in the lecture notes, textbook, or official documention.
• Sharing your soluton code with other students (except teammates).
• Looking at other solutions to this or similar problems.
• Accessing unauthorized resources during a supervised assignemnt.

The default penalty for cheating on any assignment is zero grade on that assignment.

Partner assignment are expected to be done working together. You have at least some responsibility for any work submitted for your team.

You may not post solutions for assignments in this class publicly.

Tentative Schedule #

• † No class on Monday, Jan 20 (MLK Day)
• ‡ No class on Wednesday, Feb 12 (Ski Day)