Course Information
Operating Systems is a Graduate course in the
Department of
Systems and Computer Science, taught by
Dr. Ronald
Leach at Howard University in Washington, DC.
Text: Leach, Advanced Topics in UNIX, John Wiley, New York, 1994.
This course will teach the tradeoffs in operating system design in terms of concurrent
programming, with a primary emphasis on UNIX. UNIX has (at least) nine methods of
interprocess communication available for processes on the same machine and several
more if
processes are on different computers on a network.
Course Objectives:
- Increase understanding of operating system design issues and implementation.
- Understand concurrent programming.
- Understand UNIX interprocess communication.
- Understand the basics of UNIX network programming.
- Develop a tool to visualize concurrent programming.
Development of the tool will be a major project done by the entire class. It will include
development of new libraries to use with the system calls relevant to the UNIX
interprocess
communication and network programming. It will include graphical output
on a UNIX-based
computer. The project will include source code, internal and external
documentation, user guide
and a laboratory report.