CPTS 360
Systems Programming, Fall 2025
Overview
This course aims to equip students with the skills to craft system software, utilize system capabilities, and construct small-to-medium scale software systems. Throughout this course, students will (a) develop and execute C programs, (b) comprehend the fundamental methods of creating applications through libraries and interfacing with services, (c) understand memory layout, program, and process representations, and (d) implement Unix/Linux abstractions for memory management, processes, process control, inter-process communication, scheduling, file systems, and networks.
Instructor: Monowar Hasan
Email: monowar.hasan@wsu.edu
Class time: Tuesday, Thursday 9:10-10:25 AM
Class Location: Pullman Campus, Carpenter Hall 102
Office Hours (EME B53): Tuesday, Thursday 11:00 AM-Noon or by appointment
Course Staff (TA):
Akalya Sridharan (akalya.sridharan@wsu.edu)
Saiman Dahal (saiman.dahal@wsu.edu)
YuQun Song (yuqun.song@wsu.edu)
TA Office Hours:
Akalya: TBD
Saiman: TBD
Song: Wednesday 2:00-4:00 PM (Solan 343).
Important: To better prepare yourself for office hours and posting Teams interactions, read carefully the excellent guides from Gabriel Parmer:
Acknowledgment
This course uses materials from Randal E. Bryant, David R. O'Hallaron, Remzi Arpaci-Dusseau, Andrea Arpaci-Dusseau, Kung-Chi Wang, Bob Lewis, Youjip Won, Tianyin Xu, Mathias Payer, Sanidhya Kashyap, Peter Reiher, and Hugh Lauer.
Course Syllabus
The course syllabus is available here.
Textbook
[CSAPP] Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective, 3rd edition, by Randal E. Bryant and David R. O'Hallaron.
[LKMPG] The Linux Kernel Module Programming Guide, Peter Jay Salzman, Michael Burian, Ori Pomerantz, Bob Mottram, Jim Huang. This book is helpful for PA 3.
Course Schedule
Note: The lectures and code files are hosted on the WSU OneDrive cloud. You need WSU credentials to access the materials.
08/19 (Tue)
Course logistics & overview
08/21 (Thu)
C recap
08/26 (Tue)
Computer memory
08/28 (Thu)
Computer memory (contd.)
09/02 (Tue)
Cache practice problem solution
PA 0 released
09/04 (Thu)
Linking
09/09 (Tue)
Linking
09/11 (Thu)
Library Interpositioning
PA 0 due
09/16 (Tue)
Scheduling
PA 1 released
09/18 (Thu)
No Class
MH is traveling for a meeting
09/23 (Tue)
Scheduling
09/30 (Tue)
Mid-term review
10/02 (Thu)
Exam 1
Exam duration: 60 minutes
10/07 (Tue)
Scheduling (contd.)
PA 2 released
10/09 (Thu)
Kernel programming
10/14 (Tue)
Kernel programming
MH is traveling for a meeting
10/16 (Thu)
Virtual memory
10/21 (Tue)
Virtual memory
10/23 (Thu)
Memory-related bugs
PA 2 due
10/28 (Tue)
Process control
PA 3 released
10/30 (Thu)
Signal
11/04 (Tue)
I/O and Network programming
11/06 (Thu)
Network programming
PA 3 due
11/11 (Tue)
No Class
Veterans Day PA 4 released
11/13 (Thu)
Concurrency
11/18 (Tue)
Concurrency issues and bugs
11/20 (Thu)
Recap & closing
Done with classes!
11/25 (Tue)
No Class
Thanksgiving break
11/27 (Thu)
No Class
Thanksgiving break
12/02 (Tue)
No Class (exam preparation)
PA 4 due
12/04 (Thu)
No Class (exam preparation)
Finals Week
Exam 2 (in-class)
Exam 2 12/9/25 8:00-10:00 AM The date/time is chosen based on the final exam master schedule
Programming Assignments
We will have five programming assignments in this course. The assignments must be completed individually.
PA 0: C skill rehash: Design a Unix filesystem tree simulator using C Tree data structures
PA 1: Simulating a cache memory system
PA 2: Implement various CPU schedulers (first-come-first-serve, round-robin, shortest-job-first)
PA 3: Basic kernel-level programming on Linux
PA 4: Develop a web proxy that interacts with the browser and the Internet
We strongly recommend using a Linux machine (or VM) to complete the labs, as we will use a Linux environment to grade your submissions. Some labs (e.g., PA 3) will not work without a Linux environment. Check the following links for details about setting up virtual machines on your systems.
Apple Silicon Mac (from scratch, prebuild-images)
Note: for Windows systems, WSL is not recommended. You must install a standalone VM image.
Programming Assignment Submission
We will use GitHub Classroom to deliver programming assignments. This way, you can better manage your assignments using a widely-used version control system, Git.
For information on version control and how to use Git, see:
To learn more about GitHub workflow, see GitHub Quickstart.
Are you using GitHub on your machine for the first time?
If you are using GitHub for the first time on your development machine, you need to authenticate your account — one way to do this is by using GitHub CLI. Install GitHub CLI using the instructions given here. Then run the following command and follow the prompts to authenticate your system: gh auth login.
Submission Workflow
For each lab, you will find a GitHub Classroom link on Canvas. Once you click the link and log into your GitHub account, find your name in the student list and click it to accept the assignment. Please double-check your name and email address before accepting the assignment. If you accidentally choose another student's name, please contact the instructor.
A repo named
wsu-cpts360-term/paX-namewill be automatically created for you and hosted on GitHub with the starter code.You can then "clone" your repository onto your development machine. You will complete assignments on your development computer and then "push" your work to the GitHub-hosted remote repository for us to grade.
Final submission:
Copy the URL of your GitHub repository on the corresponding assignment section on Canvas.
If you have any questions about setting up GitHub, please contact the TA.
Useful Resources
GDB Tutorial 1, Tutorial 2
GitHub Classroom: Tutorial 1, Tutorial 2