COSC 361 -- Operating Systems -- Fall 2025

Class Time: 1:50 - 2:40am MWF
Classroom: MKB 524

Instructor: Micah Beck

Office: Min Kao 433
Office Hours: By appointment
Email: mbeck@utk.edu

TA: Andy Zeng

TA Office Hours: 2:00 - 5:00pm
TA email: azeng2@vols.utk.edu

Textbooks

• (Required) Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces (OSTEP)
  Authors: Remzi H. Arpaci-Dusseau and Andrea C. Arpaci-Dusseau
  Edition: 1.0
  This book is available for free at http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/OSTEP/

• (Optional) zyBooks: Operating Systems
  
  • Click any zyBooks assignment link in your learning management system
    (Do not go to the zyBooks website and create a new account)
  • Subscribe

    OSTEP Reading Assignments
    (see Canvas for optional zyBooks assignments)

    Date	Assignment
    8/21	OSTEP Ch. 2
    8/25	An Essay on Simplicity
    9/5	OSTEP Ch. 4
    9/8	AI in classrooms (optional) An apparently serious suggestion (optional) OSTEP Chs. 5 and 6
    9/12	OSTEP Ch. 7
    9/17	OSTEP Ch. 5.6 What is "root" on Linux?
    2/21	OSTEP Ch. 9
    2/26	Unix Signals
    10/1	OSTEP Chs. 13 and 14
    10/3	OSTEP Chs. 15 and 16
    10/8	OSTEP Ch. 18
    10/10	OSTEP CH. 19 and 20

    Homework Assignments & Projects: see Canvas

    The project consists of an installation step and three programming parts:
    • Students should follow the installation instructions found here (from a class at NYU): https://gcallah.github.io/OperatingSystems/xv6Install.html to install the xv6 simulator toolchain on your laptop.
    • The first project will be the Lottery Scheduling project from the Operating Systems in Three Easy Pieces site:
      https://github.com/remzi-arpacidusseau/ostep-projects/tree/master/scheduling-xv6-lottery
    • The second project will be the Virtual Memory project from the Operating Systems in Three Easy Pieces site:
      https://github.com/remzi-arpacidusseau/ostep-projects/blob/master/vm-xv6-intro
    • The third project will be the Kernel Threads project from the Operating Systems in Three Easy Pieces site:
      https://github.com/remzi-arpacidusseau/ostep-projects/blob/master/concurrency-xv6-threads

    Annotated Course Syllabus (Under revision!)

    • Processes [2 (code)]
    • Virtualization [4] [5 (code)]
      • What are the reasons for using libraries?
      • What is a protected resource?
      • What is a manager?
      • How is virtualization used to manage resources?
    • Multitasking [6]
      • What is a process? How does it differ from a task or a thread?
      • What are the elements of process context?
      • How is the process/task control block used in operating systems?
      • What are the steps in kernel/user and user/user context switches?
      • How are runnable processes managed, and how is the next to run chosen?
      • How are processes created?
    • Scheduling [7] [8] [9 (code)] [10]
      • What is the CPU-I/O burst cycle?
      • What is the function of a CPU scheduler? When are scheduling decisions made?
      • What are the usual criteria used in making scheduling decisions?
      • What are the criteria used in making preemptive scheduling decisions?
      • What is the ideal or optimal scheduler? Why can't it be implemented?
      • What is the definition and important attributes of these CPU scheduling algorithms: FCFS, SJF, priority, RR and multilevel?
    • Memory [13] (code)] [14]
    • Virtual Memory [15 [16] [17]
      • What are the definitions and uses for swapping, paging and segmentation?
    • Paging [18] [19] [20]
      • Describe a straightforward hardware implementation of paging.
      • What is a Translation Look Aside Buffer, and why is it important in paging?
      • How does a multi-level page table work? A hashed page table? An inverted page page table?
      • How is page management hardware used to support demand paging? copy-on-write?
      • Define and explain one strength and one weakness of random, FIFO, optimal, LRU and LRU approximation page replacement algorithms.
      • Explain one explain one LRU algorithm and the second chance LRU approximation algorithms, and compare their use of resources.
      • What are the causes of thrashing and what can be done to avoid it?
      • Explain three advantages of memory-mapped files.
    • Threads [26 (code)] [27 (code)]
      • What are the major reasons for programming with threads?
      • What is the difference between a thread and a (heavyweight) process?
      • What are the different modes of support that an OS kernel may provide for threads?
      • What are the strengths of preemptive vs. non-preemptive threads?
      • How are threads used in the programming of multicore architectures?
    • Mutual Exclusion [28 (code)] [29]
      • Why is mutual exclusion important in preemptive and parallel systems?
      • What are the requirements for a solution to the critical section problem?
    • Concurrency [30 (code)] [31 (code)] [32]
      • What are Semaphores and Monitors and how are they used for process synchronization?
      • What are Deadlock and Priority Inversion?
      • Explain the Bounded Buffer and Dining Philosophers problems and their solutions.
    • Storage [36] [37]
    • File Systems [39] [40] [41]
      • How is the inode used to implement sequential files?
      • Why does the use of a memory cache raise the possibility of inconsistent file system structures on disk in the case of a system crash?
      • What is read-ahead and why is it central to file system read performance?
      • Why are Unix directories a performance bottleneck while storing large numbers of larges?
    
    

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    Course Requirements and Grading

    • There will be two midterm exams and a final exam.
    • There will be optional programmng projects.
    • Homework will be assigned on a regular basis.

    The final course grade will be calculated as

    10%(H) + 25%(P) + 12.5%(M1) + 12.5%(M2) + 40%(F)
    
    where
    • H = MIN(MAX(homework grade, zyBooks participation), F)
    • P = MAX(project grade, F)
    • M1 = AVG(midterm 1 grade, MAX(midterm1 grade,F))
    • M2 = AVG(midterm 2 grade, MAX(midterm2 grade,F))
    • F = final exam grade

    For example, a student who scores 65 on midterm 1, 90 on midterm 2, 85 on the projects, 84 on the final, and 75 on the homework will have an overall score of

    10%(MIN(75,85)) + 25%(MAX(84,85)) + 12.5%(AVG(65, 84)) + 12.5%(AVG(84, 90)) + 40%(84) = 83.7

    The intention ofthis grading scheme is that students have more than one way to show their mastery of the course material: on the midterm, in the projects, and on the cummulative final. Of the 90% of the course grade that is awarded on the basis of exams and projects 77.5% is available to every student at the time they take the final.

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    NOTE: The "total grade" calculated and automatically displayed on Canvas does not correspond to the above formula and does not represent your total grade that you will be assigned in this course. If you have any questions about the above formula you should contact Dr. Beck directly.

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