Operating Systems (SO)

In this subject, students learn the services and utilities offered by operating systems, as well as about the management of the resources they offer. This encompasses the following concepts: command line interpreter, system calls, security, protection, system libraries, dynamic libraries, processing, multiprocessing, shared time, concurrence, mutual exclusion, threads, process scheduling, input/output, device descriptors, file systems, device managers, communication between processes (pipes, signals, semaphores), sockets, shared memory, virtual memory, paging, swap areas. Thus, students must be familiar with the basic characteristics of the implementations of these concepts in both Linux and Windows.

Knowledges

1. Learn the services provided by an OS from user, programmer, and system administrator viewpoints.
2. Learn how to use the various systems for interacting with the OS (commands, scripts, libraries, system calls, etc.) and their implementation.
3. Learn how to describe the requisites of a file system and the services it should offer. Learn the various implementation methods in current systems (partitions, FAT, inodes, NTFS, RAID).
4. Learn the input/output operations that an OS should provide to programmers. Ability to describe device concepts and needs, and management and implementation of devices (partly dependent and partly independent, device descriptors, etc.).
5. Learn the concepts of processing, multi-processing, shared time, concurrence, and threads. Learn the problems that can arise from the use of processes and threads, and ways of solving them. Learn to manage processes and threads. Learn how to describe implementation of these concepts on current systems.
6. Learn about synchronisation and communication mechanisms between processes/threads (such as pipes, named pipes, shared memory, traffic lights, etc.) and how to use them.
7. Learn how to describe and manage events and exceptions. Implementations.
8. Learn how to describe the most basic concepts regarding operating systems and computer networks. Learn how to use sockets. Link OS and network concepts.
9. Learn the memory management mechanisms used by current operating systems in order to describe the concepts underlying paging, virtual memory, memory swapping, etc.
10. Learn how to describe the basic security and protection problems. Learn the mechanisms for implementing security and protection in current systems.
11. Learn the basic notions regarding OS performance and optimisation techniques.

Abilities

Competences

This course comprises 6 hours of class per week. Theory will comprise four hours a week, and the remaining two hours will be devoted to problems/laboratory. The problem/lab classes will be held in the lab classrooms so that students can use computer terminals in carrying out the work. The teacher will set out practical concepts during these classes, mapping the theoretical concepts covered earlier to the operating systems on which students will work. Exercises will be carried out on both the whiteboard and on the terminals. There will be no associated practical session. Instead, exercises will be solved in the lab.



The first few weeks of theory will set forth the user/programmer"s points of view, which will then be explored in the lab sessions. After this initial stage, the theory will explain ideas for implementation, forming the basis of the PSO course.

The course grade is based on the following two grades as follows:







- grade for theoretical contents (70% weight)



- the grade for lab work/practical assignments (30% weight)







Students must obtain a grade of at least 3.5 for the lab work. The maximum grade is 4.







The grade for practical work will be based on the highest of: the continuous assessment grade for the practical sessions; the grade for the test held in the last lab session.







The grade for knowledge of theoretical content will be based on the tests given during the course, or on the final exam. 2 - 4 tests (the number to be decided) on theory will be given during the course. Students who pass the theory part of the course may choose not to take the final exam.

• William Stallings Sistemas operativos : principios de diseño e interioridades, Prentice Hall, 2001.
• Brian W. Kernighan, Rob Pike El Entorno de programación UNIX, Prentice-Hall, 1987.
• Brian W. Kernighan, Rob Pike La Práctica de la programación, Pearson Educación, 2000.

• Abraham Silberschatz, Peter Baer Galvin, Greg Gagne Operating system concepts, John Wiley & sons, 2005.
• W. Richard Stevens, Stephen A. Rago Advanced programming in the UNIX environment, Addison-Wesley, 2005.

Concurrence (desirable)
Data structures
Notions of input/output
Virtual memory
Correspondence between "C" and assembler
Linux / C environment