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Policies and Administration
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Goals of the Course
- To cover the traditional topics: What is an Operating System
and what is it supposed to do for us? How does it accomplish these functions?
How are such systems implemented and structured? Topics include concepts
of protected kernels, processes and threads, concurrency and synchronizations,
file systems, and virtual memory.
- To help you develop new skills: Concurrent programming. Inheriting
large, complex software systems and adding value (as in the "real world").
Developing an intuition for system design tradeoffs. A major component
of the course is a series of projects using the notorious Nachos instructional
operating system.
- To give you occasional glimpses into current Operating Systems
research, motivated by hardware trends, web applications, and mobile
computing.
- Who should take this course? All undergraduate CS majors should
take this course at some point. You should have completed the basic
introductory sequence, and also CPS 104. Familiarity with C, C++, and
basic Unix program development tools (e.g., gmake ) is assumed.
- Workload. This is a demanding course. There are six required
Nachos programming assignments, with one due approximately every two
weeks. To make things a bit easier, you will work through the Nachos
projects in teams of three or four students. As in previous offerings
of CPS 110, you will present your projects in demo sessions with the
instructor or the TAs. These projects will be fun and valuable if you
form teams quickly, start early on the projects, and
make your Nachos work a priority this semester. In addition
to the Nachos assignments, there will be problem sets, an in-class midterm
exam, and an in-class final exam.
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Textbooks and Other Resources
- Modern Operating Systems, 2nd edition, by Andrew Tanenbaum
- All course materials, lecture slides, and announcements will be accessible
via the course web site at http://www.cs.duke.edu/education/courses/cps110/fall01/.
You will visit this web site often, as we will rarely hand out printed
materials in class. Grades are also distributed through the course web:
please see the TA for a password.
- There is also a course newsgroup duke.cs.cps110 . We prefer that
you post questions to the newsgroup rather than e-mailing us. We read
the newsgroup regularly, and so should you: it is embarrassing to ask
a question or waste time struggling with a problem that has already
been discussed in the newsgroup. If you know the answer to a posted
question, please post a response. Let's make this class into a community
for learning.
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Grading
- As your instructor, I see my role as that of coming up with exciting
and valuable learning activities for you to do and I consider establishing
a grade in the course by evaluating the results of those valuable learning
activities as just a side-effect. Still, I bet you are interested in
how these activities factor into your grade, so here is the breakdown
(approximate -- your mileage may vary):
- Nachos Programming Projects (50%). Hands-on experience that will
develop skills and give you an in-depth appreciation for some of
the details and concrete design issues.
- Exams - one midterm (20%) and final (25%).
- Problem Sets: The discussion sessions will involve the solution
of problems based on the textbook readings. You are strongly encouraged
to work on the assigned problem set prior to the meeting of the
discussion session to make it more meaningful and interactive. This
will allow the discussions to talk about alternative solution techniques
and to go beyond the scope of the assigned problems. The purpose
of the readings and homework is to fill in the breadth that the
specific Nachos projects can not address. These problems will also
give you a very valuable preview into the content and style of the
exams. The problem sets are ungraded, but many of the exam questions
will be drawn either directly from the problem sets or be very similar.
In addition, your involvement in discussions will factor into the
next bullet item.
- Course participation and other subjective factors (5%). I would
like this to be an interactive class, so I expect you to ask questions
and offer ideas freely.
I grade on a curve to compensate for any possible problems with
the projects and exams.
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Policies
- The Reasonable Person Principle
- This principle (which applies throughout this course) simply states
that a reasonable request made in a reasonable fashion shall be reasonably
handled by reasonable persons. The TAs and instructor are reasonable
people, and we expect that everyone else involved in this class is as
well. Asking to be a special case to turn stuff in late is not
a reasonable request, barring extreme circumstances.
Collaboration vs. Cheating
- Collaboration is a very good thing. Students are encouraged to work
together and some programming projects will require a team effort with
everyone expected to contribute.
- On the other hand, cheating is considered a very serious offense.
Please don't do it! Concern about cheating creates an unpleasant environment
for everyone.
- So how do you draw the line between collaboration and cheating? Here's
a reasonable set of groundrules. Failure to understand and follow these
rules will constitute cheating, and will be dealt with as per university
guidelines.
- The Gilligan's Island Rule: This rule says that you
are free to meet with fellow students(s), study for exams together,
and discuss assignments with them. Writing on a board or shared
piece of paper is acceptable during the meeting; however, you should
not take any written (electronic or otherwise) record away from
the meeting that could later be used for what is supposed to be
an individual effort. After the meeting, engage in a half hour of
mind-numbing activity (like watching an episode of Gilligan's
Island), before starting to work on the assignment. This will
assure that you are able to reconstruct what you learned from the
meeting, by yourself, using your own brain. Similarly, each student
in a group should be able to explain and justify their group's approach
to the Nachos projects. This means understanding the pieces other
group members have written well enough to explain it (again, after
an episode of Gilligan's Island) without relying on them
to do it.
- The Freedom of Information Rule: To assure that all
collaboration is on the level, you must always give the name(s)
of your collaborators or sources (e.g. the web) on your assignment.
Failure to adequately acknowledge your contributors is at best a
lapse of professional etiquette, and at worst it is plagiarism.
Plagiarism is a form of cheating.
- The No-Sponge Rule: In intra-team collaboration where
the group, as a whole, produces a single "product", each member
of the team must actively contribute. Members of the group have
the responsibility (1) to not tolerate anyone who is putting forth
no effort (being a sponge) and (2) to not let anyone who is making
a good faith effort "fall through a crack" (to help weaker team
members come up to speed so they can contribute). We want
to know about dysfunctional group situations as early as
possible. To encourage everyone to participate fully, we make sure
that every student is given an opportunity to demo the Nachos projects
for their group.
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