1. Course Information Dr. Eggen COP 6711 Advanced Operating Systems
Adopted from FSU’s Adv OS course – Andy Wang

2. Contact Information
Dr. Eggen
Office: 15/3223 Matthews Building
Office hours:
TR 1-3:45 PM, after class, also by appointments
Class website:

3. Objectives Learn classic and current OS literature
Gain experience in doing OS research
Develop projects that lead to publishable results

4. Prerequisites COP 4610 (operating systems)
Knowledge of the UNIX environment
Proficiency in C

5. Course Materials Lecture notes and papers No required textbooks
Posted on the class website
No required textbooks

6. Recommended Textbooks
Tanenbaum and Van Steen, Distributed Systems Principles and Paradigms
Singhal and Shivaratri, Advanced Concepts in Operating Systems

7. Background Textbooks Tanenbaum, Modern Operating Systems
Silberschatz, Galvin, Gagne, Operating System Concepts
Nutt, Operating Systems: A Modern Perspective
Stallings, Operating Systems

8. Kernel-Hacking Aids Nutt, Kernel Projects for Linux
Kernighan, Ritchie, The C Programming Language
Maxwell, Linux Core Kernel Commentary
Corbet, Rubini, and Kroah-Hartman, Linux Device Drivers

9. Grading Paper summaries and critiques 16% Project updates 8%
Project/Project reports 25%
Peer evaluation of projects 3%
Quizzes %
Exam %
Final %

10. Side Note: Research Cycle
Having an idea
2 months later
Submit a grant proposal to NSF
6 months later
Funded
3 months later
Prototype built
Submit to WIP
6 months later
Evaluation done
WIP published
3 months later
Submit to a conference
Paper published

11. Critiques One due each week 11 summaries In class, for each paper
Please include your name, homework number, submission date, paper title, publication venue
11 summaries

12. Critiques Need to contain the following sections Summary
Problems/existing & new approaches/results
Intriguing aspects of the paper
Observations/trends/assumptions/techniques
How can the research be improved?
Techniques/experiments/handling of corner cases and assumptions

13. Project You need to develop a project in teams of two or three
It should take about at least 100 to 120 hours
Goal:
Publishable results

14. Some Example Projects
Feasibility of using sound cues for debugging operating systems
Feasibility study of applying economic models for distributed resource management
Feasibility study of life-long storage of sensory inputs

15. Some Example Projects (cont)
Modify Linux kernel
Change scheduling algorithm
Change resource management
Write new device handler
Obtain and program a raspberry pi ~ $40

16. Types of Papers Survey papers Position papers Simulation papers
Measurement papers
System papers

17. Weekly Project Reports
Per person
Demonstrate steady progress
Papers read
Obstacles encountered
New ideas
Software pieces built
Experiments

18. Project Proposal Due on the 5th week Group presentation
All team members are required to participate
2-page written proposal
Motivation
The state-of-the-art
Methodology
Expected results
Show stoppers
Plan B
Timeline

19. Project Proposal Include: 5-10 references
Division of labor amongst teams

20. Project Presentation During the last two weeks of the course?
12 to 15-page (max) written paper due by the last lecture (double column, single-space, 10-pt font)
Critiques on other projects, not including yours

21. Exams In-class and closed-book, unless specified otherwise
Essays and short answers
Open research questions

22. Entrance Knowledge Make sure that you have the necessary background
COP4610

23. Overall Expectations Not like an undergraduate course
Need to take your own initiative
Lots of time spent on reading, writing, and working on your project
Need to limit your course load

24. A Few Words on Plagiarism
Please don’t plagiarize; that means
No cutting and pasting
No Wiki references
No paraphrasing, moving prepositional phrases around, replacing verbs, etc.
Dire consequences; potential loss of
Grade, assistantship, on-campus jobs, student VISA, dormitory