ICS 612: Operating Systems

This page is http://www2.ics.hawaii.edu/~esb/2004fall.ics612/index.html

This page is subject to change without notice -- please reload it in your browser if an item that might affect you may have changed.

Instructor: Edo Biagioni, esb@hawaii.edu. See here for office hours.

This class meets MW 1:30-2:45 in Kuykendall 304.


Goals

In this course, students will:

Organization

This course has projects, exams, and presentations.

All students are required to join the course mailing list.

Grades are assigned based on your performance on:

Grading will use the (nearly) standard cutoffs of 97% (A+), 93% (A), 90% (A-), 87% (B+), 80% (B), 80% (B-), 77% (C+), 70% (C), 70% (C-), 67% (D+), 63% (D), 60% (D-). Depending on the performance of the class as a whole, I may or may not grade more generously (i.e. grade on a curve), but students should assume that I will not.

Projects must be turned in on time, and will only be accepted late for very good reasons. You must do well on the projects to do well in this class. Exams may be taken early, if requested at least one week before the scheduled time.

In this course, it is fine for students to collaborate on finding solutions for projects, but whatever you turn in must have been written by you and, for coding, must be your code. You may only collaborate with other students who are taking ICS 612 this semester -- collaborating with anybody else will definitely be considered cheating. Some of the homework and project solutions may be found on the web -- you are welcome to consult and use such material, but if you do so:

Most project may be done individually or in groups, unless otherwise specified for the project. Projects will require a computer on which to install Minix. This may be a system you already own, perhaps that you are willing to dual-boot, or may be a system borrowed for the purpose (by way of the instructor) from the Hawaii Open Source Education Foundation or other sources. There is only a limited number of such loaner systems.

The textbook is "Operating Systems -- Design and Implementation", by Andrew Tanenbaum and Albert Woodhull (2nd edition, 1997). The textbook is available from the UH bookstore and online sellers. The textbook has a home page.


Cheating Policy: any cheating will result in a grade of 0 for the assignment or exam the first time it is detected, and a grade of F for the course for any subsequent instance. There is to be no collaboration whatsoever on exams: you may study together, but anything you turn in on an exam must be entirely your own intellectual contribution. Since this is a graduate course, you are expected to be proactive and professional, and you will be held to high standards. If you have any questions, please contact the instructor.


I am always grateful when students can suggest improvements or corrections to any notes, even stuff that has already been covered. I normally acknowledge authors of major new material, and do not acknowledge people who suggest minor improvements, and in any case will respect anyone's desire to remain anonymous.

This is the first time I am teaching this course, so I am particularly open to suggestions of special topics that are of interest to the students. If the syllabus fails to show some topic that you were hoping would be covered, please let me know as soon as possible.


Schedule

This schedule is subject to change.

Presentation notes are in HTML. I usually post notes no later than the day before the lecture.


The final exam covers the entire course. The final exam for this course is on Monday, December 13th at 2:15pm-4:15pm in Kuykendall 304. The final may be taken early upon request.