Page cover

CPTS 360

Systems Programming, Spring 2024


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 10:35-11:50 AM

  • Class Location: Pullman Campus, Carpenter Hall 102

  • Office Hours (EME B53): Monday, Wednesday 2:30-3:30 PM or by appointment

  • Course Staff (TA): YuQun Song (yuqun.song@wsu.edu) Trang Mai Hoang (trang.m.hoang@wsu.edu) Bruno Sanchez Parra (bruno.sanchezparra@wsu.edu)

  • TA Office Hours: Tuesday 1:00-2:00 PM, Sloan 333 (YuQun) Monday 3:30-4:30 PM, Sloan 333 (Trang) Tuesday 12:00-1:00 PM, Sloan 340 (Bruno) Thursday 2:00-3:00 PM, Sloan 333 (YuQun)

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

  1. [LKMPG] The Linux Kernel Module Programming Guide, Peter Jay Salzman, Michael Burian, Ori Pomerantz, Bob Mottram, Jim Huang. This book is helpful for Lab 3.


Schedule and Class Materials

Note: The lectures and code files are hosted on the WSU OneDrive cloud. You need WSU credentials to access the materials.

WK
Date
Topic
Slides
Remarks
1

01/09 (Tue)

N/A

Change of instructor due to unforseen reasons

1

01/11 (Thu)

N/A

Change of instructor due to unforseen reasons

2

01/16 (Tue)

No Class

MH was preoccupied with a professional event

2

01/18 (Thu)

No Class

MH was preoccupied with a professional event

3

01/23 (Tue)

Intro and C recap

3

01/25 (Thu)

Computer memory

Lecture Reference:

CSAPP 6.2, 6.3, 6.4.1-6.4.2 (before Conflict Misses)

Self-study:

CSAPP 6.1.1 (Page 581-582), 6.1.4

4

01/30 (Tue)

Computer memory (contd.)

Lecture Reference:

CSAPP 6.4.5-end, 6.5, 6.6.2, 6.6.3

Self-study:

6.4.2 (Conflict misses) Run mm.c and analyze the results

4

02/01 (Thu)

Linking

Lecture Reference:

CSAPP 7.1, 7.2

5

02/06 (Tue)

Linking (Contd.)

Lecture Reference:

CSAPP 7.5, 7.6, 7.10, 7.11, 7.13.1 Opional Reading:

CSAPP 7.7

Self-study:

CSAPP 7.4 (ELF file format) Run code examples Lab 1 released

5

02/08 (Thu)

Linking (wrap up) Process scheduling

Lecture Reference:

CSAPP 7.13.2-7.13.3, 8.2 Self-study:

CSAPP 7.14, 7.15 Run code examples

6

02/13 (Tue)

Scheduling (contd.)

Lecture Reference:

[OSTEP] 7.1-7.10

Self-study:

[OSTEP] 6.1-6.3 (excluding Fig. 6.4)

6

02/15 (Thu)

Scheduling (MLFQ)

Lecture Reference:

[OSTEP] 8 Lab 1 due

7

02/20 (Tue)

Mid-term review

Informal early feedback (link)

7

02/22 (Thu)

Mid-term Exam

Exam duration: 60 minutes

8

02/27 (Tue)

Fair scheduling Kernel programming (intro)

Lecture Reference:

[OSTEP] 9.1-9.4, 9.6-end Lab 2 released

8

02/29 (Thu)

Kernel programming

Lecture Reference: [LKMPG] 2-4, 6, 7.1, 7.2

Self-study:

Run example kernel modules

9

03/05 (Tue)

Kernel programming

Lecture Reference: [LKMPG] 7.2, 12.2, 14.2 Self-study:

Run example kernel modules

9

03/07 (Thu)

Virtual memory

Lecture Reference:

CSAPP 9.1-9.5

Self-study:

CSAPP Read 9.4 bullets Lab 2 due

10

03/12 (Tue)

No Class

Spring break Lab 3 released

10

03/14 (Thu)

No Class

Spring break

11

03/19 (Tue)

Virtual memory (contd.)

Lecture Reference:

CSAPP 9.6.1-9.6.4, 9.7.2, 9.11

11

03/21 (Thu)

Process control

Lecture Reference:

CSAPP 8.3, 8.4 (up to 8.4.4)

Self-study:

CSAPP 8.2.3-8.2.5, Program-vs-Process (8.4.6)

Run code examples

12

03/26 (Tue)

Signal I/O

Lecture Reference:

CSAPP 8.5.1-8.5.3 — Signals

CSAPP 10.1-10.9 — I/O

Self-study:

CSAPP Fig. 8.33 (signal-safe functions), 8.5.5 (Fig. 8.6—Correct signal handling)

Run code examples

12

03/28 (Thu)

I/O Network programming

Lecture Reference:

CSAPP 10.10-10.12 — I/O CSAPP 11.1-11.4 (before 11.4.1), 11.4.9 — NW

Self-study:

Run echo server/client example

Lab 3 due

13

04/02 (Tue)

No Class

MH is unavailable due to a site visit Lab 4 released

13

04/04 (Thu)

Network programming (finished)

Lecture Reference:

CSAPP 11.5, 11.6

Self-study:

Run Tiny web server

14

04/09 (Tue)

Concurrent programming

Lecture Reference:

[OSTEP] 26, 27

Self-study:

Run code examples

14

04/11 (Thu)

Concurrency issues and bugs

Lecture Reference:

[OSTEP] 30.2, 31.1, 31.2, 31.3, 31.6, 32. 2 (Only Atomicity-Violation Bugs), 32.3 (only Circular Wait & DL Avoidance via Scheduling)

Self-study:

[OSTEP] Fig. 30.14, 31.7

Run code examples Lab 4 due

15

04/16 (Tue)

Privileged programs

Lecture Reference:

Set-UID Privileged Programs

Self-study:

Run code examples

Suggested reading:

How To Write a Setuid Program

15

04/18 (Thu)

Exam review and closing

16

04/23 (Tue)

No Class

Done with classes!

16

04/25 (Thu)

Lab 4 demo

Demonstration slot for selected students only. See Canvas for the complete schedule.

17

Finals Week

Final Exam: 04/30/24 10:30 AM - 12:30 PM @ Classroom

Exam syllabus: all lectures & labs


Sample Exams


Exam Solutions


Programming Assignments

We will have four programming assignments in this course. The assignments must be completed individually.

  • Lab 1: Design a Unix filesystem tree simulator using C Tree data structures

  • Lab 2: Implement various CPU schedulers (first-come-first-serve, round-robin, shortest-job-first)

  • Lab 3: Basic kernel-level programming on Linux

  • Lab 4: Develop a web proxy that interacts with the browser and the Internet

You will need access to a Linux machine (or VM) to complete the labs. Check the following links for details about setting up virtual machines on your systems.

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

  1. 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.

  2. A repo named wsu-cpts360-term/paX-name will be automatically created for you and hosted on GitHub with the starter code.

  3. 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.

  4. Final submission:

    • Copy the URL of your GitHub repository on the corresponding assignment section on Canvas.

For any questions on setting up GitHub, please contact the TA.


Useful Resources


Got stuck? Questions about anything? Feel free to contact the instructor on Teams (preferred) or via email: monowar.hasan@wsu.edu!

Last updated