CSCI 4320 (Principles of Operating Systems):
Review for Exam 1
Format of the exam
The exam will be in class October 5. You will have 75 minutes.
You may use your textbook and any notes or papers you care to bring,
but you may not use other books, a calculator or computer,
or each other's papers.
Lecture topics to review
You are responsible for all material presented during lecture,
but the following is a list of topics I consider most important.
- What an operating system is and why we want one.
- History/evolution of operating systems.
- Functions we would like an operating system to provide.
- Operating system structure and characteristics.
- Abstract "processes" as a way of modeling "things happening
at the same time".
- Coordinating the actions of processes using semaphores.
- Concurrent algorithms (mutual exclusion, bounded buffer, etc.).
- What functionality we need (and/or can expect)
from hardware in order to write a reasonable operating system.
- Designing an "only on paper" operating system, step 1:
representation of processes,
first-level interrupt handler, dispatcher,
implementation of semaphores.
- Coordinating the actions of processes using shared variables.
Reading to review
You should have read (or at least skimmed) all of chapters 1, 2, 3, 4,
and 6; the following is a list of sections to read more carefully /
review.
- Chapter 1 (1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, 1.9).
- Chapter 2 (2.1, 2.5, 2.6, 2.7).
- Chapter 3 (3.1.1, 3.2, 3.5, 3.9).
- Chapter 4 (4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, 4.5, 4.7).
- Chapter 6 (6.1, 6.2, 6.3, 6.4, 6.5, 6.10).