Instructor: Dr. Steven Robbins
Office: 4.01.23 SB
Phone: 458-5544
Address: srobbins@cs.utsa.edu (subject must contain CS 3733)
Course Homepage: /classes/cs3733f2009/
Office Hours: MWF 10:00 - 10:50 am
Class Times: MWF 2:00 - 2:50 pm in room 3.02.10A SB
Recitation Time: Wednesdays at 3 PM in room 3.02.10A SB

Texts:

• Operating Systems Concepts, 8th Ed by Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne
• UNIX Systems Programming (USP) by Robbins and Robbins
  

Required Material:

A composition book that will be used as a daily log solely for this course.

Prerequisites: CS 3423 (Systems Programming) and CS 3843 (Computer Organization)

Note that prerequisites will be enforced.
You must be a good C programmer and be able to debug C programs by yourself to take this course. If not, you should sign up for CS 2213, Advanced Programming

• To understand fundamental operating systems concepts.
• To become more familiar with UNIX.
• To become a better programmer.

We will be using our workstation laboratory in room 3.02.04 SB.

The emphasis of the course is on process management, but we will cover Parts 1 through 4 of Silberschatz along with the Linux and Windows case studies. Most of our specific examples will come from UNIX, and we will be covering most of chapters 1-8 and 18 of USP as well as some of the project chapters.

• 30% Midterm Exams (October 14 and November 11)
• 40% Assignments (recitation assignments, programs and problem sets)
  
• 30% Final Exam (Friday, December 11, 7:30 am)
  
• The composition book will count as part of your exam and assignment grades.

  In class exams will normally be on a Wednesday and take up both the class and recitation time slots.
  The same grade is assigned for CS 3733 and CS 3731.

Attendance:

Attendance in the lecture is required.
Students who miss more than 20% of the lectures may have their final grade reduced by one letter.
To get credit for attending a lecture you must make the appropriate enties in the daily log and participate in the class activities.
During some of the classes you will be asked to log into your linux account on the computer at your seat and execute ~srobbins/cr3733.

Notification of final grades:

If you wish to receive your final grades by email, send me an email message some time after the last class and before the final. The message should have the subject line
CS 3733 Grade Request
and the message should have a valid return address. After I have graded the final exam and determined the letter grades for the course I will reply to your email message.

Thursday, October 29, is the last day to drop this course. No make-up exams will be given except for university sanctioned excused absences. If you must miss an exam (for a good reason), it is your responsibility to contact me before the exam. Leave a message at the above number or send me email.

Unless otherwise stated, all assignments are due at the beginning of class on the due date. There will be a 10 percent penalty for assignments turned in after that time. Do not miss class to finish an assignment. Turn in what you have for partial credit. Assignments which are more than 12 hours late will not be accepted unless prior arrangements have been made.

Programs must following the programming style guidelines given.

You must keep copies of the source code for all assignments for this course at least until you receive the your final grade for the course. At any time during the semester you may be asked to demonstrate any of your programs.

Unless explicitly stated in an assignment, you may receive help from any source. Collaboration is encouraged. However, all discussions and other assistance you receive on an assignment must be documented in the Daily Log. What you turn in must be your own work. You may not just copy another person's assignment. However, you may discuss how to solve problems with others. All such collaboration must be entered in the daily log. Each entry should contain the date and the name(s) of the person(s) you talked to, as well as the extent of the collaboration. Collaborations that are not documented will be considered cheating. This type of scholastic dishonesty usually results in immediate failure in the course and can lead to additional disciplinary action.

Important: If you use computers long enough you will delete a file by mistake. When working on assignments, make copies of your course code often and store the copies in a safe place. At a minimum, you should store them on your account in a different directory. It is a good idea to use a separate directory for each assignment and a separate subdirectory for each part of the assignment. Copy everything from one part of the assignment into a new directory before starting on the next part. After you have worked several hours on a program and have it almost working, make a backup copy before doing any major modifications.