1. CSE 522S Advanced Operating Systems Course Introduction
Chris Gill
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Washington University, St. Louis MO
Thanks to David Ferry, who initially developed and taught the first version of this material in the spring semester of 2016, and to the students who took the course with me that fall, whose suggestions have been leveraged to improve it

2. Three Goals for Students
Build intuition about OS operation and design principles
Additional mechanisms: signals, pipes/fifos, sockets, shared memory, etc.
Enrich skills for monitoring the runtime operation of an OS
New features of monitoring tools, e.g., event queries for kernelshark
The scientific method (hypothesis, prediction, experiment, analysis, repeat)
Gain further experience enforcing/evaluating OS behavior
E.g., real-time behavior
E.g., forensics for memory, file system, processes/threads, timing
As in CSE 422, the studios will help you gain experience and expertise to use in the lab assignments
CSE 522S – Advanced Operating Systems

3. CSE 522S – Advanced Operating Systems
Course Environment
As in CSE 422, our OS of choice is the Linux kernel
Open source, widely deployed
Practical for both research and applied use
Helps to develop a broadly applicable skill set
This course is designed around the Raspberry Pi 3
Avoids modifying the kernel on machines others may need to use
Can quickly re-deploy a new version of the kernel if the one running locks up
“Personal computing” at its best 
Reasonably fast, provides interesting multi-core behavior, affordable
Each Raspberry Pi 3 has 1.2GHz 64-bit quad-core ARMv8 for < $100 (CanaKit)
Useful, and used elsewhere in WUSTL CSE research and education
The Raspberry Pi family is based on the ARM processor architecture
The OS has lots of processor-dependent code (in separate directories)
Will occasionally mention x86 differences, where relevant
CSE 522S – Advanced Operating Systems

4. CSE 522S – Advanced Operating Systems
Class Readings
Course textbooks (lots of good advice to help you succeed):
Linux System Programming, 2nd Ed., by Robert Love, 2013
Linux Kernel Development, 3rd Ed., by Robert Love, 2010 (also a text book for CSE 422)
Google is your friend
Linux is widely documented (but documentation often is not current)
Lots of other resources exist for Linux mechanisms and features
We will also provide links to key resources on the course web site
CSE 522S – Advanced Operating Systems

5. CSE 522S – Advanced Operating Systems
Words of Advice
Kernel hacking requires a lot of patience and thought
Spend time thinking before debugging, designing, writing, compiling, etc.
Use the DD (Debuggen von Denken) debugger (Thomas Gleixner suggested)
Anticipate PEBCAK (problem exists between chair and keyboard) errors
Don’t underestimate the power of pencil and paper before you start typing
Work efficiently but persistently
Huge established codebase to digest – break it down into manageable bites
Our goal is for the time spent “hands-on” to be similar to our intro courses
Start early, fail (succeed) quickly, iterate rapidly, progress steadily over time
A few initial tips (to avoid problems we’ve seen already)
Always plug in the (micro-USB) power connection last (after all other cables)
Make sure keyboard etc. is configured correctly when system first boots up
CSE 522S – Advanced Operating Systems