CMPSCI 677: Distributed Operating Systems Syllabus

Spring 2008 Course Information

Instructor: Prashant Shenoy
Office: Room 336, Computer Science Bldg
Office Hours: Thursdays 12:30-1:30 pm, Room 336, or by appointment
Phone: (413) 577 0850
Fax: (413) 545 1249
Email: shenoy [at] cs.umass.edu

Contents: This course provides an in-depth examination of the principles of distributed systems in general, and distributed operating systems in particular. Covered topics include processes and threads, concurrent programming, distributed interprocess communication, distributed process scheduling, virtualization, distributed file systems, security in distributed systems, distributed middleware and applications such as the web and peer-to-peer systems. Some coverage of operating system principles for multiprocessors will also be included. A brief overview of advanced topics such as multimedia operating systems, real-time operating systems and mobile computing will be provided, time permitting.

Teaching assistant: Chang Wang
Email: chwang [at] cs.umass.edu
Office hours: Tue 2:30-4:30, Room 266, cube 10; Phone: 413 545 1596

Prerequisites: Students should be able to easily program in a high-level language such as C, have had a course on data structures, be familiar with elements of computer architecture and have had previous exposure to the operating system concepts of processes, virtual memory, and scheduling. A previous course on uniprocessor operating systems (e.g., CMPSCI 377) will be helpful but not required.

Course Materials:

1. Recommended Texts:

   • Distributed Systems: Principles and Paradigms 2^nd edition
     Andrew Tannenbaum and Maarten van Steen, Prentice Hall, 2007
     This is the text book for the course.
   • Distributed Systems, 2^nd edition
     Sape Mullender, Addison Wesley, 1993
     This is a supplementary text.

2. Assigned readings from papers, magazines, manuals, and the WWW; most of this material will be made available online on the course web page; some material may be placed on reserve in the Physical Sciences library and made avilable to off campus students.

3. Course home page: All course materials (handouts, lecture notes, homeworks, assignments and solutions) will be posted on the course home page at http://lass.cs.umass.edu/~shenoy/courses/677
   As the semester goes along, the site will fill up with lots of useful other information, pointers to other sites, etc. Please make sure you check out and use this site frequently.
   Off-campus students: Since all materials are available online, additonal hard copies of class lectures will not sent to you.

4. Mailing list: A broadcast class email address, cs677 @ cs.umass.edu, has been created. If you send mail to this address, it will be broadcast to the 40 or so students in the class, so please use it wisely and carefully. I will use it to broadcast information of interest to everyone. You might want to use it to broadcast a question, or give a pointer to material that you think will be of general interest. See documentation about how to add/delete yourself from the class broadcast email list.
   

Coursework

• Assigned readings: weekly
• Class participation/discussions:5% of the final grade (does not apply to off-campus students)
• Homeworks: 4-5 homeworks, 20% of the final grade
• Programming assignments: 3-4 programming assignments, 35% of the final grade.
• Exams:One midterm and one final, 40% of the final grade