COMS W4118 Operating Systems I

Spring 2026 Course Overview

• M 7:00pm-9:30pm, 451 Computer Science Building

• Two synchronous and in-person exams for all sections:
  • Exam 1: 03/09/26 Mon 7:00pm ( ~ 70mins )
  • Exam 2: 05/11/26 Mon 7:00pm ( ~120mins )

  All students in all sections MUST take the exams at those times. There are no make-up or alternate exams. If you cannot make any of those exams, please take the course next semester.

• Instructor: Hubertus Franke
• Office hours: Mon 6:00pm - 6:45pm : Mudd 1334 ( Adjunct Office )
  
• REQUIRED READING: ACADEMIC HONESTY POLICIES
• 4118 Dev Guides

HW Due Dates

All homeworks are due on Sunday at 11:59 PM. There will be no extensions.

Date	Assignment
Su 2/1	HW0 due
Su 2/8	HW1 due
Su 2/22	HW2 due
Th 3/5	HW3 due
TBD	HW4 due
TBD	HW5 due
TBD	HW6 due
TBD	HW7 due

Overview of Course Schedule

Date	Topic
1/26	Course overview / Introduction to OS

Course Schedule

Note: We might/will have multiple presentations per class to break it up into smaller topic related sets. Presentations materials will go life the night before class.

1/26 - Course overview and logistics

Note: class moved remote by the university, please join ZOOM here: zoom-recording-0126

• Lecture:
  • L01-overview

• Assignments:

  1. Check that you have access to Ed

  2. Read the following two documents:
     • Honesty Policy
     • Academic Honesty Policies - Credit to Professor Jae Woo Lee for this

  3. HW0 (individual assignment) – due Sun 2/1, 11:59pm

     Send an email:

     • To: students-coms4118@googlegroups.com
     • Subject: “[coms4118-s26] hw0-UNI” – without quotes, sole space before hw0, UNI replaced with your actual UNI in lowercase
     • Your name, major & school program, year
       • E.g. John Doe, Electrical and Computer Engineering, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, class of 2026
     • Your pledge – see the pledge
     • CS classes taken and/or other programming background
     • Optionally anything else you want to let me know
     • Optionally attach a picture of you, but please reduce image file size to about 100KB
  4. Start forming your group of three people (the first few assignments will be individual)

1/26 - Introduction to OS/Unix

• Lecture:
  • L02-introduction
  • Code
• Reading:
  • APUE: chapter 1, 2.3, 2.4
  • OSTEP: chapter 2
  • LKD: chapter 1

HW1: linux-list

• Individual assignment, due 02/08
  • linux-list

2/02

Linux Overview

• Lecture:
  • L03-Linux
  • Code

UNIX signals

• Lecture:
  • L04-unix-signals
  • Code
• Reading:
  • APUE 9.4 - 9.6: skim, just to get a sense of process group, session, and controlling terminal
  • APUE 9.7: skim pages 299-301, skip rest – just to get a sense of jobs running in foreground and background
  • APUE 10.1 - 10.6 (skim signal descriptions in 10.2)
  • APUE 10.8 - 10.9
  • APUE 10.10: you can skip pages 340-341 & 343 (but interesting read if you know setjmp() / longjmp() or willing to find out)
  • APUE 10.11 - 10.13
  • APUE 10.14: skip page pages 352-353

UNIX File I/O

• Lecture:
  • L04-unix-io
  • Code
• Reading:
  • APUE: 3.1-3.13
  • APUE: 8.1-8.10
  • APUE chapter 5 (skim)

2/09

Interprocess communication in UNIX

• Lecture:
  • L05-unix-ipc
  • Code
• Reading:
  • APUE 15.2, 15.5
  • APUE 15.10
    • APUE 15.8 (just pgs 565-566): semaphore semantics
  • APUE 7.6 - 7.7
  • APUE 7.8: a little bit off-topic, so optional
  • APUE 14.8: read page 525-527, skim the rest
  • APUE 15.9: page 576-578

POSIX threads

• Lecture:
  • L05-threads
  • Source code
• Reading:
  • APUE 11.1 - 11.4
  • APUE 11.5: read page 388-393; skip the rest of 11.5
  • APUE 11.6: read up to (and including) 11.6.6

Nonblocking I/O and I/O multiplexing

• Reading:
  • APUE 14.2
  • APUE 14.4.0 (i.e., page 500-501)
  • APUE 14.4.1
  • epoll
• Lecture:
  • L06-advanced-io

UNIX domain sockets

• Reading:
  • APUE 17.1
  • APUE 17.2: pages 631-633 are optional, but recommended
  • APUE 17.2.1
  • APUE 17.3: pages 637-641 are optional, but recommended
  • APUE 17.4: read 642-643, skip the rest
• Lecture:
  • L06-dom-sock
  • Source code

HW2: shell

• Individual assignment, due Sunday 2/22
  • shell

2/16

Linux System Calls

• Reading:
  • OSTEP chapter 4 (previously assigned)
  • OSTEP chapter 6 (previously assigned)
  • LKD chapter 2
  • LKD chapter 3: skim pages 37-40
  • LKD chapter 5
• Lecture:
  • L07-syscalls
  • Source code

Run queues and wait queues

• Reading
  • Process states (previously assigned)
    • OSTEP 4.4
    • LKD pages 27-28
  • Scheduling basics & wait queues
    • LKD pages 57-61
• Lecture
  • L08-run-wait-queues

2/23

Interrupts & Spin Locks

• Reading:
  • Interrupts: LKD chapter 7
  • Kernel locks: LKD chapter 10: pages 183 (from Spin Locks) - 202
  • Preemption: LKD pages 62 - 64 (before Real-Time Scheduling Policies)
• Lecture:
  • L9-interrupts-spinlocks

Synchronization

• Reading:
  • OSTEP chapter 28 (sections 28.9, 28.10, 28.11, and 28.15 are optional)
  • Optionally, OSTEP chapter 30
  • OSTEP chapter 31
  • Optionally, read java.lang.Object API doc about wait(), notify(), notifyAll() if you haven’t already
• Lecture:
  • L10-sync-1
  • L10-sync-2

HW3: tabletop

• Individual assignment, due Thursday 3/5
  • tabletop