Fall 2000 CS 3733 Operating Systems Assignment 2

CS 3733 Operating Systems, Fall 2000 Assignment 2

Parts 0 and 1 Due Tuesday, February 20, 2001
Parts 2 and 3 Due Tuesday, February 27, 2001

In this assignment you will explore the topic of CPU scheduling by using the scheduling simulator described in class. You can find out more about the simulator at the web site: /nsf/ps/index.html.
A copy of the simulator user's guide can be found at /nsf/ps/ps_doc/psdoc.html.
These links are also available from the course web page.

You might want to read about the experiences students had with the simulator in a previous semester in a paper available at /nsf/pubs/process.html.

Part 0

In this part you will run the simulator remotely and create a remote log file.

Look for the link Run the simulator remotely with log placed on vip on the course web page. Use this link to run the simulator.

Click on the Open Log button. You will be prompted to enter your username. Enter the name you use to log into our Sun network.

Click Open Log again and the button should change to Close Log.

Click on Run Experiment and then Log All Table Data.

Click on Draw Graph and then the Log button on the graph. It may take a few seconds while the graph is converted into a GIF and then sent over the network.

Click on Draw Gantt Chart and choose the first one.

Adjust the size so that the entire chart is shown. You can use the Controls to change the height of the bars.

Click on the Log button on the Gantt chart.

Do the same for the second Gantt chart.

Close the log file and then click on Show Remote Log.

If all went well, the log file should pop up in a new browser window.

Print out the log file and hand it in.

Part 1

If you have not already done so, create a web page for yourself.
The address of your web page should be http://www.cs.utsa.edu/~username. Create a course web page with web address http://www.cs.utsa.edu/~username/cs3733/index.html. This should be globally accessible. Your course web page should be very simple without much graphics so that it will load quickly over a phone line.

Make a cs3733/assign2/part1, directory under your public_html directory. The permissions of the public_html, cs3733, assign2, and part1 directories should be drwxr-xr-x.

Make a directory somewhere in your account for this assignment called assign2. Do not put this under public_html. The permissions of this directory should be set so that only you have access to it. Make a subdirectory called part1. Copy all of the files from /usr/local/courses/java/psfiles/ into your part1 directory. Edit the psconfig file and change my name to yours. Make sure that your path includes /usr/local/courses/java/bin. Execute:
java -version
You should get output that looks like this:
java version "1.2.1" Classic VM (build JDK-1.2.1_004, green threads, sunwjit)
Run the simulator using runps which is a script in this directory.

Run the simulator in the same way you did for Part 0. This will create a log file in your part1 directory along with three GIF files.

Copy these files into your assign2/part1 directory under your public_html. Set the permissions so that they are all world readable. Put a link to the log file in your course web page. Make sure you (and others) can access this log file through your link. Print out the log file and turn it in.

When you have completed Parts 0 and 1 of this assignment, send me email with the subject CS 3733 Assignment 2, Parts 0 and 1 complete.

Part 2

Make a subdirectory of assign2 called part2. Again copy all of the files from /usr/local/courses/java/psfiles/ into your part2 directory. Edit the psconfig file and change my name to yours. Modify this file and create other files to create an experiment of 4 runs which compares the following algorithms on the same processes:

FCFS
SJF
SJFA 0.5
PSJF

There will be 20 processes all with the same priority. The first 10 processes all arrive at time 0 and all have duration 200, cpu bursts uniformly distributed between 50 and 150, and I/O burst 1000. The rest of the processes all arrive at time 1, have duration 20, CPU bursts uniformly distributed between 2 and 5, and IO bursts of 30.

Produce a log file with the tabular data, Gantt charts, and a graph of waiting times.

Discuss what the statistics and graphs tell you about how well the four algorithms perform with these processes. Explain why or why not SJFA was a good approximation to SJF in this example.

Describe in 100 words or less what you think the main results were and why they occurred. Put your discussion and description into the log file. Print out the html file from a browser and hand it in. Make sure it is clearly labeled as Part 2.

Part 3

Make a subdirectory of assign2 called part3. Design an experiment to compare SJF and SJF approximation (SJFA). Think about the conditions under which SJFA will be a good approximation to SJF. Choose a collection of parameters for which SJFA (with alpha = 0.5) is a good approximation to SJF and SJF performs significantly better than FCFS. You need to have at least 10 processes, each with multiple CPU bursts.

Now compare SJFA with several values of the parameter with these other two algorithms using this same collection of processes. Does the value if alpha make a difference? Write about 100 words describing your results.

Hand in a log file containing your runs. Make sure that this is clearly labeled as Part 3.