Operating Systems: COMPSCI 340 & SOFTENG 370 Semester 2, City Campus

The course information in pdf format.

An operating system is the software which makes a raw computer more or less usable by people. To most people who use computers, the operating system is indistinguishable from the hardware; they never experience the machine by itself. It is the operating system's job to communicate with the people who use it, to look after their files, to do sensible things when they do silly things, and generally to look after all the jobs that must be done but which are too complicated (at the moment) to be built into the hardware.

This course tries to look at general principles of operating systems, but we do look at some low level details as well. You are expected to be a competent programmer in a language such as Java or C++. The early assignments this year will use C. For those students who have never programmed in C there will be some tutorials to quickly cover the important differences between Java and C.

• Introduction to operating systems
• Operating system history
• Processes, threads and process states
• Real-time processes
• The problems of concurrency and some of the solutions
• Communicating processes
• Deadlock
• Devices
• Memory management
• Virtual memory
• File systems
• Networked operating systems
• Distributed operating systems
• Protection and Security

The Operating Systems course is classed as a practical course. This means you have to pass both the practical component - the assignments, and the theory component - the test and exam, as well as getting an overall pass, to pass the paper.

The pass mark for the practical component is 0%. i.e. You can pass the course without doing the assignments. Of course this is a difficult thing to do as your test and exam mark then has to be around 62.5% in order to pass overall. You also miss out on any learning benefit you would have had from doing the assignments. Also the test and final exam always have significant questions taken from the work done in the assignments.

The pass mark for the theory component and the overall pass marks are approximately 50%.

• If you must leave for family emergencies etc., PLEASE talk to the lecturer, or somehow get a message to the department. Very few problems are so urgent that we cannot be told quite quickly.

• For problems affecting assignments or tests, see the lecturer, as soon as reasonably possible.

• For illness during exams (or other problems that affect exam performance) students MUST contact the University within ONE WEEK of the last affected examination, to apply for an aegrotat pass (for illness) or compassionate pass (other problems).
  THE ONE WEEK LIMIT IS STRICTLY ENFORCED.

Refer to the "Aegrotat and compassionate consideration" section of the Computer Science Undergraduate Handbook for further information. http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/webdav/site/cs/shared/handbook/2011/3-Academic%20Information.pdf

Coursework marks for assignments and tests will be available for both COMPSCI 340 and SOFTENG 370 on Cecil.

Lecture notes, assignment handouts and other documents will be available for both courses at www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/courses/compsci340s2c/.

Recordings of the lectures should be available on Cecil in the "Knowlege Map" sections of both COMPSCI 340 and SOFTENG 370.

There is a class forum for both courses at forums.cs.auckland.ac.nz/.