CSM 202: Operating Systems Course Outline

Revision Questions - 15/1/97

Revision Questions - 1/5/97

Past Papers

Lecture 1: Introduction

- What's an Operating System?
- Single-User/Multi-User/Multi-Processing/Multi-Programming: What are they?
- Some examples of different operating environments

Lecture 2: Designing a Paper Operating System

- Functions and Characteristics of a General Purpose OS
- The Virtual Machine

Lecture 3, 4: The Kernel of the Operating System

- Typical services offered by the kernel
- Process Representation
- Interrupts and Interrupt Handling
- Interprocess Communication

Lecture 5: Input and Output

- I/O Devices
- Issues
- Device Independence
- Buffering & Spooling

Lecture 6, 7: Resource Allocation

- Issues
- Mechanisms and Policies
- Deadlock

Lecture 8, 9: Process Scheduling

- Why is scheduling important?
- Different levels of scheduling
- Objectives and Criteria
- Common Scheduling Algorithms

Lecture 10,11,12: Memory Management

- Virtual Memory
- Paged Systems
- Segmentation Systems
- Combined Paging/Segmentation Systems
- Memory Allocation Policies
- The Working Set Model

Lecture 13, 14: The Filing System

- Functions of a Filing System
- Storage Space Organisation
- Sharing & Security Issues
- File System Integrity

Lecture 15: Protection & Reliability

- Motiviation
- Mechanisms
- Faults and Errors

Lecture 16: Case Study: UNIX

Lecture 17: Introduction to Distributed Operating Systems

- General Issues
- Hardware for Distributed Systems
- Software for Distributed Systems
- Design Issues

Lecture 18: Communication in Distributed Operating Systems

- Issues
- Platforms for Interprocess Communication

Open Systems Interconnection
Asynchronous Transfer Mode
Client-Server Model
Remote Procedure Calls
Group Communication

Lecture 19: Synchronisation in Distributed Operating Systems

- Issues
- Clock Synchorisation
- Mutual Exclusion
- Choosing a Leader
- Transaction Processing
- Handling Deadlock

Lecture 20: Processes and Processors in Distributed Operating Systems

- Processor Organisation
- Processor Allocation
- Scheduling

Lecture 21: Distributed File Systems

- Design
- Implementation
- Sun's Network File System

Lecture 22: Distributed Systems Case Study: Amoeba

Lecture 23: Object Oriented Operating Systems NB: This lecture will not be given this year

Other lectures which will be given if time permits

Case Study: WindowsNT