OVERVIEW

The course provides an introduction to the structure and organization on modern operating systems.

AIMS AND CONTENT

LEARNING OUTCOMES

Students will be able to identify and describe the main functionalities of modern operating systems.

AIMS AND LEARNING OUTCOMES

The course provides students with the fundamental notions about the structure of operating systems. The course also provides students with the technical and methodological tools to understand, critically analyze and describe the characteristics, functions and interactions of the main components of modern operating systems. At the end of the course, students will also be able to use the command line interface of the Linux operating system and write simple programs (scripts) for the automation of operating system management activities.

PREREQUISITES

Ability to write and analyse programs, including familiarity with the C programming language

Knowledge of the components and structure of Computers

TEACHING METHODS

Teaching will be carried out with traditional lectures as well as with the development of problems and practical exercises.
Students will be given access to hands-out (slides) and texts of past assessments.

SYLLABUS/CONTENT

1. Introduction to the structure of operating systems. Basic concepts, monolithic and microkernel structure.
2. Process and thread management. Process creation and management. Threads and their implementation.
3. Inter-Process Communication (signal, pipe, socket, shared memory, ...). Mutual exclusion and synchronization. Dekker's algorithm, Peterson's algorithm. Hardware support for mutual exclusion. The Producer and Consumer Problem. The traffic lights. The monitors. Message Passing. The Readers and Consumers Problem.
4. Deadlock and Starvation. Approaches to deadlock management: Detection, Prevention and Avoidance. Resource allocation graphs. The Dining Philosophers Problem.
5. Memory management. Physical memory and virtual memory. Paged management and its implementation problems. Segmented management.
6. Uniprocessor scheduling. Long, medium and short term scheduling. Scheduling algorithms: FCFC, Round Robin, SPN, SRT, HRRN, Feedback.
7. Input-output Management. CPU-device-memory interaction. DMA architecture. Disk scheduling.
8. The file system. Structure and attributes of files and directories. File system implementation and optimization methods.
9. Access Control. Access control models, policies and mechanisms. Access Control in Linux (ACL in Unix)

RECOMMENDED READING/BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Teaching material (slides and exercises) are available on AulaWeb.
• Operating Systems: Internals and Design Principles. 8th edition di W. Stallings, Pearson

TEACHERS AND EXAM BOARD

Exam Board

ALESSIO MERLO (President)

ENRICO RUSSO

LUCA VERDERAME (President Substitute)

LESSONS

Class schedule

OPERATING SYSTEMS

EXAMS

EXAM DESCRIPTION

Written exam based on open–ended questions.

ASSESSMENT METHODS

The written test will assess

• The understanding of the operation and interdependence of the main features offered by a modern operating system,
• the ability to critically evaluate the characteristics of the various solutions to classical operating system problems (e.g. memory management, scheduling, process synchronization),
• the ability to solve problems related to the design and use of operating systems.

Students with certification of Specific Learning Disabilities (SLD), disabilities, or other special educational needs must contact the instructor at the beginning of the course to agree on teaching and examination methods that, while respecting the course objectives, take into account individual learning styles and provide appropriate compensatory tools. It is reminded that the request for compensatory/dispensatory measures for exams must be sent to the course instructor, the School representative, and the “Settore servizi per l'inclusione degli studenti con disabilità e con DSA” office (dsa@unige.it<mailto:dsa@unige.it>) at least 10 working days before the test, as per the guidelines available at the link: https://unige.it/disabilita-dsa

Exam schedule