Description:

In this course that is a follow-up of the Unix-like operating systems course students deepen their knowledge in areas of OS kernels, process and thread implementations, race conditions, critical regions, thread scheduling, shared resource allocation and deadlocks, management of virtual memory and data storages, file systems, OS monitoring. They are able to design and implement simple multithreaded applications. General principles are illustrated on operating systems Solaris, Linux, or MS Windows.

Contents:

1. Introduction, OS architecture and functionalities, taxonomy of computing systems.
2. Processes and threads. Thread scheduling, context switching, thread states. Race conditions.
3. Thread synchronization - critical regions, busy waiting, mutexes, semaphores, conditional variables, synchronization producer-consumer problem, barriers.
4. Classical synchronization tasks and their solutions.
5. Allocation of shared resources - deadlocks, Coffman's conditions, strategies for deadlock solving.
6. Process/thread implementation. Thread scheduling.
7. Main memory management - virtual memory, memory allocation using dynamic partitioning.
8. Main memory management - virtual memory implemented using paging and segmentation.
9. Main memory management - page replacement algorithms.
10. Data storages - disks, RAID systems, connections to the host computer.
11. File systems - implementations of classical file systems.
12. File systems - implementation in the OS kernel, modern file systems and their advanced functions.
13. Tools for monitoring of OSs.

Seminar contents:

1. Programs with multiple threads.
2. Thread synchronisation I. (mutex, condition variables).
3. Thread synchronisation II. (semaphores, barriers).
4. Processes (fork(), exec(),...).
5. Deadlock, physical and virtual memory.
6. Page replacement algorithms.

Recommended literature:

1. Tanenbaum A. S. : Modern Operating Systems (4th Edition). Pearson, 2016. ISBN 978-0133591620.
2. Silberschatz A., Gagne G., Galvin P.B. : Operating System Concepts (10th Edition). Wiley, 2018. ISBN 978-1119456339.
3. Anderson T., Dahlin M. : Operating Systems: Principles and Practice (2nd Edition). Recursive Books, 2014. ISBN 978-0985673529.
4. Stallings W. : Operating Systems: Internals and Design Principles (9th Edition). Pearson, 2017. ISBN 978-0134670959.
5. Arpaci-Dusseau R.H., Arpaci-Dusseau A.C. : Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2018. ISBN 978-1985086593.

Keywords:

Operating system, processes, threads, synchronisation mechanisms, synchronisation tasks, deadlock, thread scheduling, main memory management, paging, data storages, file systems.

Abbreviations used:

Semester:

• W ... winter semester (usually October - February)
• S ... spring semester (usually March - June)
• W,S ... both semesters

Mode of completion of the course:

• A ... Assessment (no grade is given to this course but credits are awarded. You will receive only P (Passed) of F (Failed) and number of credits)
• GA ... Graded Assessment (a grade is awarded for this course)
• EX ... Examination (a grade is awarded for this course)
• A, EX ... Examination (the award of Assessment is a precondition for taking the Examination in the given subject, a grade is awarded for this course)

Weekly load (hours per week):

• P ... lecture
• C ... seminar
• L ... laboratory
• R ... proseminar
• S ... seminar