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CMSC421
Principles of Operating Systems |
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Class Laboratory
This page will be updated during the semester.
The ITE 240 Lab may be used by students enrolled in CMSC 421 for their
project work. The lab contains 24 high-end Pentium machines with 1 GB
RAM, dual-processor Pentium 4 CPUs and a CD-RW drive. The TAs will
be holding regular weekly Office Hours in the ITE 240 Lab - plan to
take full advantage of these. The office hours are available on the
course website and also posted outside the door.
Operating Hours: 8:00am-9:00pm Monday-Friday.
Lab Usage Rules
You will be able to access the lab using your UMBC student ID swipe cards.
You must observe all the rules below, regarding usage of the lab:
- Observe all the University and Departmental policies regarding the use
of the University's and the Department's computer and laboratory facilities.
- No Food or Drinks Allowed in the Lab. Absolutely! Never!
- Do not log in to multiple machines, especially when there are
students waiting for access to the lab.
- Be respectful of others working in the lab. DO NOT create disturbances
(e.g. don't be noisy, don't play audible music, etc).
- Use the laboratory ONLY for CMSC 421 related activities, NOT for
general other coursework. There are designated OIT Labs across campus
to serve this purpose.
- DO NOT ABUSE the superuser privileges from your installed
kernel.
- Observe the operating hours of the lab. You must leave the lab by
its closing time - no excuses, no exceptions!
- Report offenders of lab rules to the instructional staff.
- Report any suspicious activity to the instructional staff or the
Campus police, as appropriate.
- The lab is provided to you by the University for your benefit.
Take good care of it! Do not abuse it!
- Repeated offenses might result in shutting down the laboratory for everybody.
Failure to observe all the lab rules will result in suspending your lab access, as well as
further disciplinary actions as determined by Departmental and University policy.
Misc:
Since for some of your project assignments, you will be installing and modifying
your own version of the linux kernel, you will need to:
- Obtain a USB 2.0 External Hard Drive with capacity at least 10GB
that can be used on one of the machines in the lab and on your own
laptop/computer (FYI, the TAs are using Maxtor USB 2 external hard
drives, and so far, seem to work fine on the lab machines).
- OR
- Use your personal computer.
- Use the VMware 4 Workstation software package (commercial S/W).
- It is recommended that you
create a partition with at least 10GB on one of your existing
hard drives to install a separate
version of the Linux (distribution and kernel version number will
be specified shortly).
Make sure that you are fully comfortable with doing this since there are
real risks in losing data and applications, and
good chances of spending long frustrating hours.