Course details

Operating Systems

IOS Acad. year 2011/2012 Summer semester 5 credits

Current academic year

The concept of an operating system (OS) as a part of software of a computer system. Architectures of operating systems, a classification of operating systems. An overview of the contemporary operating systems. The kernel of UNIX, its structure, graphical and textual interfaces, command languages. Process management, context switching, scheduling, interprocess communication. Memory management, paging, virtual memory. Synchronization of processes, semaphores and other synchronization means, deadlock, starvation.

Guarantor

Vojnar Tomáš, prof. Ing., Ph.D. (DITS)

Language of instruction

Czech, English

Completion

Credit+Examination

Time span

  • 39 hrs lectures
  • 13 hrs projects

Department

Department of Intelligent Systems (UITS)

Subject specific learning outcomes and competences

Students are acquainted with the basic principles of operating systems (with emphasis on the UNIX operating system) and they understand the influence of operating systems upon the operation of complex computing systems. Students are able to exploit scripts for solving various tasks in a UNIX-based environment.

Learning objectives

The goal is to acquaint students with the principles of operating systems in general and with the basic concepts of the UNIX operating system.

Recommended prerequisites

Prerequisite knowledge and skills

A basic knowledge of programming in C.

Syllabus of lectures

  1. Introduction. Evolution of computers and operating systems (OS). Requirements on OS, classification of OS, standards. The basic terminology and the general structure of OS.
  2. The UNIX operating system. The history and the most important development branches. The basic principles and structure of UNIX. The structure of the UNIX kernel, its interface and the different forms of communication with the kernel.
  3. UNIX shell. Basic commands, programs, scripts. Special symbols. Input/output redirection, pipes, background processes, sub-shell. Variables, control structures.
  4. A basic introduction to programming in UNIX. Languages, compilers, principles of linking programs, dynamically linked libraries. Principles of the X-Window graphical user interface.
  5. Standard utilities of UNIX.
  6. File systems. The physical and logical structure of disks. Types of files, i-nodes, storing files on a disk.
  7. Access rights to files in UNIX, users and groups, the suid and sgid attributes, the typical structure of directories in a UNIX system.
  8. Input and output. The corresponding kernel services. Data structures and algorithms used by the input/output subsystem of the kernel.
  9. Management of processes. Loading the system, the init process. Fork, exec, exit, and wait calls. States of processes, scheduling.
  10. Memory management. Address spaces, address translation, memory pages.
  11. Virtual memory.
  12. Mutual exclusion, semaphores and other synchronization means.
  13. Typical synchronization tasks, deadlocks, starvation.

Progress assessment

The minimal total score of 15 points gained out of the home assignements.

Controlled instruction

  • Solving two individual home assignments, a combined final exam.
  • The minimal number of points which must be obtained from the final exam is 32. Otherwise, no points will be assigned to a student.
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