Tuesday, December 21, 2010

OS 1st Class of 2011

On January 7, 2011, we will proceed to Chapter 4, "File Systems." We will try to cover first three sections, "Files", "Directories" and "File System Implementation." These sections are your reading assignments.

We will only have three weeks left in this semester. One of the class may be rescheduled due to a business trip of the instructor. Update will be posted here as well as in the class, which is coming tomorrow night at 2359.

Do not forget the submission deadline of Exercise 10 and the report for Dr. Pedroso's special lecture.

Finally, happy holidays.

Friday, December 17, 2010

Report for Today's Lecture

  1. Name your report as tsp.pdf.
  2. Use /home/course/os10f6/Ex/tsp-submission (/home/course/os10f6/Ex/tsp-test for submission test)
  3. Deadline is the same as Exercise 10 (2259 of Dec 22)

Today's Exercise

Due to Dr. Pedroso's talk, today's exercise problems have an extended deadline. Because of this, you will work outside class hours and there may be a situation where corrections or clarifications are needed on the problems. Please pay attention to this board and email as such update will be either posted here or sent to you by email.

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Tentative Final Exam Schedule

According to the tentative final exam schedule from the Student Affairs Division (internal access only), the final exam for the Oprating Systems class will take place on the 4th period of January 27 (Th).

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Dr Pedroso's Lecture

All the students in the Operating Systems course are required to attend Dr Pedroso's lecture and work on the problems he will present. Students satisfying these requirement, together with asking a question to him (this can be either about the lecture, University of Porto, or Portugal) will receive extra credits (bonus points) toward his/her course grade.

Monday, December 13, 2010

Plans for this week OS class

This week, we will finish the rests of Chapter 3. To do so, we may need to extend the lecture, running into some of the 4th period.

In the 5th period, we will have a special speaker Dr João Pedro Pedroso. The title of this talk is "An introduction to the Traveling Salesman Problem" and abstract is as follows.

Abstract: One of the most widely studied problems in discrete optimization is the Traveling Salesman Problem. In this talk we will make an introduction to this problem and to strategies that can be used for solving it. We will also present some variants, focusing on applications in subjects related to computer science.

Friday, December 10, 2010

OS Exercise 9 posted

oday's exercise problems are posted at the Exercise Page.

Thursday, December 9, 2010

Preparation and Review

Some (if not all) students consider that the time for working on the exercise problems is not enough. This may be true and may not be true. Before coming to the class on Friday, do you prepare for the lecture by reading (and finding the points you don't understand) the textbook ?

Also, have you reviewed what you have learned in the lecture of the last week ? The exercise problems are mostly based on the materials taught last week. If you haven't reviewed them, it takes you some time to remember what you studied, (and waste time). When you have remembered what you did a week ago, the time is up.

Another point, some of the students seem to have spent 'easy time' in programming courses last year. If you think so, you definitely need to study the basics of programming again using the course materials used last year.

When you have submitted incomplete exercise, you have to work to completion FOR YOURSELF (meaning, even though it doesn't give you any points for the exercise). Some students are not doing so and that looks to be the reason why they still do not understand how to use sscanf().

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Course Prerequisite Charts

Here are sample prerequisite course charts from other schools. Please take a look and find where operating systems courses are placed.

Friday, December 3, 2010

OS next week

Next week, we will cover Section 3.4 "Page Replacement Algorithms" and proceed toward the end of Chapter 3 as far as time allows. These sections are your reading assignments.

OS Exercise 8 posted

Today's exercise problems are posted at the Exercise Page.