Announcements

• Textbook: Linux Kernel Development (2nd Edition) by Robert Love.
• Computer Access :-)
• Modus Operandi: Essays, Discussion and Hacking.
• For a syallabus, or near equivalent, see last year's offering of the course.
• The grader is Anoop, and his email is anoop.anoop at gmail.
• Need help? IM me! Grader and I are offering IM address. Get time in class or email me.

Class notes

• Introduction
  • A definition.
  • Unix history.
  • MS-DOS, Windows, VMS and NT.
  • Xerox Star, Mac OS, Mach and OS X.
  • History of other operating systems.
  • Windowing systems.
• Kernels
  • Linux Kernel
  • Linux system calls
  • Windows NT
  • Trapping to kernel, basic memory layout, stacks.
  • Building the Linux Kernel.
  • Linux Syscall
• Processes
  • Kernel abstractions.
    • struct task_struct
    • struct thread_struct
    • struct thread_info
  • Scheduling, context switch.
    • schedule()
    • context_switch()
  • Synchronization
    • Mutual exclusion
    • Peterson's algorithm
    • test and set, spin locks
    • semaphores, mutex, monitors.
    • deadlock
  • Interrupts and exceptions
• Memory
  • Linking and loading
  • Virtual memory
  • Segmenting
  • Demand paging and working sets.
  • Swap space
  • Implementations
    • i386 paging details
    • Mel Gorman
    • Linux Memory Management
    • Itanium architecture, Eranian and Mosberger.
    • x86-64 architecture, Andi Kleen
  • Memory management
    • VAT, virtual address allocations.
    • Buddy System
    • Slab
    • heap storage, e.g. malloc
• File systems
  • Properties and varieties
  • Disk technology, structure and partitions
  • FAT: a simple file system
  • UFS: unix file system
  • NTFS: NT file systems
  • Journaling file systems
  • Log-strctured file systems
  • Assigned to students:
    • Network file systems: NFS
    • CIFS and SMB
    • Logical volume management
    • RAID
    • Global File Systems
    • Storage area Networks
  • FUSE and file system services
• Security, Privacy and Protection
  • General Remarks,
    • Subject, Objects, Groups
    • ACLS and Capabilites.
  • Protection Butler Lampson.
  • Unix Protection Demystifing Suid Wagner, et al.
  • The Melissa Virus, and others
  • Stack smashing, see also Smashing The Stack For Fun And Profit, Aleph One.
• Software engineering and the development processes

Reading

• Read Chapter 1 through 3.
• Read Chapters 4, 5, 8, 9. Posted Sept 14.
• Read Chapters 10 and 11. Posted Oct 1.

Assignments

• Read the Ritchie/Thomson paper and the Lampson paper and write an essay on either The Bigger The Better, or Small Is Beautiful. Be prepared to discuss in class. Due: Friday, Aug 31.
  • The UNIX Time-sharing System, Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thomson (1974). (citeseer)
  • Hints for Computer System Design, Butler Lampson (1983) (citeseer)
• Read about the NT Kernel. Write a two page paper comparing the Linux and NT kernels. Due: Moday, Sep 10.
• Read Chapter 3. Add the notnice system call to the linux kernel. Due: Monday, Sep 17.
• Write a short paper on the history of virtual memory. When was it first used? Who invented it? When did Unix, DOS, Windows, Windows NT, and the Apple operating systems use it? Distinguish between swapping and paging, if there is a distinction. Due: Monday, 15 Oct.
• Write a program that dissects the page tables. Due: 5 Nov.
  more>>>
• Class presentation of file system topic. Due: 7 and 9 November.
• Design a FAT file system and implement it in Linux using FUSE. Hint: fastfat.c Due as final exam.
• Design a protection mechanism that allows subjects to grant to other subjects access permissions on objects. The mechanism targets web-apps, that is, be based on http GET and POST, and client cookies.

References

• Operating Systems (wikipedia)
• In the Beginning ... by Neal Stephenson.
• The Unix-Haters Handbook
• Windows NT and VMS: The Rest of the Story by Mark Russinovich.
• Stallman at NYU.
• Optional reading: Operating System Concepts, Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne. Note: I have seen the Java vesion of this book on half dot com for just a few dollars.
• Optional reading: Understanding the Linux Kernel, Bovet and Cesati.
• Understanding Virtual Memory at Red Hat.
• Linux MM Wiki
• Rik van Riel interview at KernelTrap
• Improvements from Linux 2.4 to 2.6, at IBM Developerworks.
• EXT3, Journaling Filesystem by Dr. S. Tweedie
• ext3 Journaling File Sytems (ppt) Chadd Williams
• Linux NTFS
• Journaling the Linux ext2fs Filesystem, Stephen Tweedie
• How NTFS Works Microsoft Technet.
• Implementing CIFS by Christopher Hertel
• CIFS by Paul Leach and Dan Perry at MSDN.
• Common Internet File Systems Technical Reference from Storage Networking Industry Association.
• Understanding NFS Michael Lucas at O'Reilly books.