CMSC421, Spring 2006
Principles of Operating Systems

Common Syllabus for all Sections

Coordinator & Instructor

Dr. Krishna Sivalingam
Computer Science & Electrical Engineering Department
Office: ITE331
Phone: (410) 455-3961
Email: krishna at cs.umbc.edu

Individual Section Homepages

Section 0101: http://www.csee.umbc.edu/courses/undergraduate/CMSC421/spring06/krishna/
Section 0201: http://www.csee.umbc.edu/courses/undergraduate/CMSC421/spring06/frey/

Time/Location

Section:	0101	0201
Instructor:	Krishna Sivalingam	Dennis Frey
Meeting Time:	TuTh 2:30PM - 3:45PM	MW 1:00PM - 2:15PM
Meeting Place:	ITE 227	ITE 227

Teaching Assistants

Palanivel Kodeswaran (Office Hours: MW 3.30pm - 5.30pm in ITE 240); Email: palanik1@umbc.edu
Richard Carback (Office Hours: TuTh 10.00am - 11:00am and Fri 10:00am - 12:00am in ITE 240): Email: rick@media.umbc.edu

Important Dates

Please See individual section pages for the midterm/final, homework, and project due dates.

Prerequisites

CMSC 341, and (CMSC 211 and CMSC 311) or CMSC313 or (CMPE 310 and CMPE 312). If you do not meet the prerequisites, you will be asked to drop the course. In addition, students must be familiar with the C programming language.

Textbook

Required

OSC: Operating Systems Concepts (7th Edition) by Silberschatz, Galvin, and Gagne, John Wiley, 2005 ISBN 0-471-69466-5

List of Topics

Introduction and historical perspective
Process Management, inter-process communication, and Threads
Process and CPU Scheduling
Process Synchronization (semaphores and monitors), and deadlocks
Memory management, address translation, and virtual memory
File systems and Secondary Storage
Security and Protection

Course Objectives

Each student will: (a) learn the fundamental concepts of designing and implementing or extending modern Operating Systems, (b) gain deep understanding of the operations of modern Operating Systems, (c) apply software development tools and skills, and (d) practice his/her communications skills. At the end of taking this course, you can expect to have various aspects of operating systems including processes and threads, process synchronization, memory management, file systems, security and protection. This course is REQUIRED for all B.S. CMSC and B.S. CMPE students at UMBC.

Required Work

Required work consists of: (1) taking the midterms and final exams, (2) two or more homework assignments, and (3) two or more substantial programming projects. Further, you are expected to actively participate in class discussions. Academic dishonesty will be dealt with severely according to University Policy.

Ground Rules for Assignments

There will be homework and project assignments.

The assignments will be common for all sections.
Assignment details, due dates, etc will be posted at the class homepage. Students are strongly advised to check the class homepage on a regular basis. Failure to do so is not an acceptable excuse for missing an assignment or for not adhering to the assignment's instructions.
You may develop the programs for your assignments using the computers in the class lab, or any other computer available to you. However, no matter what computer you use to develop your programs, you must make sure that your programs can run successfully on the computers in the lab.
All assignments must be submitted electronically using the submit program at UMBC by the date they are due. No late assignments will be accepted, unless University Policy states otherwise.
In submitting an assignment, students must adhere to the submission instructions specified by that assignment.
The written part of each assignment must be typed using a word-processor of your choice (you may include hand-written mathematical formulas and/or diagrams as images in your documents). No matter how you prepare the written part of your assignment, it must be submitted in the Adobe PDF format. No other formats are going to be accepted.
No collaboration. Each assignment is to be done and written individually by each student. Students should not collaborate on any assignments.
Students may be asked to come in and explain their solution(s) to the instructor(s) and/or TAs. Failure to satisfactory demonstrate authorship of a solution is a violation of Academic Integrity. Any violation on an assignment will be cause to review all previous work for other violations.

Students are strongly advised to keep up with the assignments and other coursework. Homework and project assignments do demand the amount of time allocated to them.

Exams

There will be two midterm exams and a comprehensive final exam. The final exam will be joint for both the sections. All the exams will be in class and will be closed-book and closed-notes.

Make-up exams are very rare and are possible only in the extreme conditions specified by University Policy. You should make prior arrangements with the instructor if you expect to miss an exam.

Each student should have his student photo identification card or driver's license when taking an exam. Failure to produce a proper photo ID may result in getting a zero on that exam.

Communication

Students are strongly advised to check the class homepage, their section specific webpage, and the course Blackboard are on a regular basis for news, announcements, and assignments. Failure to do so is not an acceptable excuse for missing an assignment or announcement.

Students are welcome to use the course Blackboard area to discuss topic matters. However, students are advised not to solicit or post solutions to any assignment or otherwise violate Academic Integrity policy.

Class Lab

The class has a computer lab located in ITE240. You will be able to access the lab using your UMBC student ID swipe cards (after the close of the enrollment period). You must observe all the rules regarding usage of the lab. Failure to observe those rules in suspending your lab access. The TAs will be holding their office hours in the lab.

Grading

Activity	Weight
Homeworks and Quizzes	10%
3 Projects	35%
2 Midterm Exams	30%
Final Exam	25%

Your grade is based on timely work accomplished during the semester; incomplete grades will only be given for medical illness or other such dire circumstances, as allowed by University Policy. Whenever a student receives an Incomplete, that student must complete the course work and receive a regular grade before the end of the next regular semester or the Incomplete is automatically converted to an F. (This is done by UMBC, not the instructor!)

Academic Conduct Policy

UMBC POLICY:

"By enrolling in this course, each student assumes the responsibilities of an active participant in UMBC's scholarly community in which everyone's academic work and behavior are held to the highest standards of honesty. Cheating, fabrication, plagiarism, and helping others to commit these acts are all forms of academic dishonesty, and they are wrong. Academic misconduct could result in disciplinary action that may include, but is not limited to, suspension or dismissal. To read the full Student Academic Conduct Policy, consult the UMBC Student Handbook, the Faculty Handbook, or the UMBC Policies section of the UMBC Directory [or for graduate courses, the Graduate School."

The following is taken from the UMBC Student Handbook:

DEFINITIONS OF ACADEMIC MISCONDUCT

Academic misconduct may include but is not limited to the following:

Cheating: knowingly using or attempting to use unauthorized material, information, or study aids in any academic exercise.

Fabrication: Intentional and unauthorized falsification or invention of any information or citation in an academic exercise.

Facilitating Academic Dishonesty: Intentionally or knowingly helping or attempting to help another commit an act of academic dishonesty.

Plagiarism: Knowingly representing the words or ideas of another as one's own in any academic exercise, including works of art and computer-generated information/images.

PENALTY FOR ACADEMIC MISCONDUCT

If your homework of project is found to be "substantially similar" to that of another student, or if it is determined that someone else completed your homework or project for you, then at a minimum you and the other student (if applicable) will receive a grade of zero for that homework or project and 10 point deduction (one letter grade) in your semester average. Furthermore, all parties concerned will have their prior homeworks and projects re-checked for cheating. Any second incident will result in a grade of 'F' for the semester. Also, checking for cheating may occur at any time during the semester. Therefore, if you cheated on Project 1, you may be confronted about that at any time; receiving a grade for a homework or project does not mean you are "in the clear".

Any and all acts of dishonesty WILL BE reported to the University's Academic Conduct Committee for further action, which may include, but is not limited to, academic suspension or dismissal from the university.

POLICY FOR RESOLVING CASES OF ACADEMIC MISCONDUCT

Individual faculty members have the right and responsibility to deal directly with any cases of academic misconduct which arise in their courses. Instances of academic misconduct may be identified in one of two ways. If a faculty member believes a student has committed an act of academic misconduct--for example, by direct observation of student behavior, by comparing the contents of an assignment with that submitted by another student, or by reviewing notated sources or references--the faculty member, in consultation with the Chair of the Academic Conduct Committee, will assess the student's alleged misconduct and the faculty member's options. If a student believes that academic misconduct has occurred, the student will notify either the faculty member or the Chair of the Academic Conduct Committee.

It is particularly important that the Chair of the Academic Conduct Committee be consulted. The Chair can provide knowledge and insight for the faculty member. Communication of instances of academic misconduct also protects the integrity of the university by providing a means of recording infractions that may be repeated by a particular student, or which may prove endemic to a particular course or department. Consultation with the Chair of the Academic Conduct Committee provides a formal record of the infraction and resolution, protecting the student, professor, and university should any questions later arise.

The student will have the opportunity to respond to an accusation of academic misconduct.

Cell Phones and Pagers

All cell phones and pagers must be either turned off or set to vibrate.

ADA Compliance

We recognize that some of you might have disabilities that require special attention from the instruction staff. Please make us aware of them so that UMBC can make suitable arrangements.

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