Pre-Class Materials for February 10 and 12, 2015

There is a lot of material we need to cover this week, so I broke it up into several different sections, trying to keep each one short (and trying to make sure we don't get any end-of-slide dropouts). If you think that a particular section is review for you, go to the web work. If you feel you know the answers to the questions, then you can skip the video and make a quick pass over the PDF.

If there is no working web work link, that means that the materials are not yet ready.

There is a lot of material, so I've annotated each item. An annotation of "2/10" means that you want to see this before class on Tuesday. An annotation of "section" means that you want to have gone through this material before you attend section. An annotation of "2/12" means that you'll want to have gone through this before Thursday's class.

1. 2/10 Fork/Exec (18:30) -- If you have used the fork, exec, wait, and waitpid system calls, then you can probably skip this video. If you've never used them, you'll want to listen to it. Video (18:30) (PDF) (Web Work).
2. Processes, Threads, and Address Spaces
   • 2/10 Definitions -- this is a brief overview of what processes, threads and address spaces are. Even if you're familiar with the terms, I recommend going through the video as it addresses some of the critical issues that you'll need to address in Assignment 2. Video (9:06) (PDF) (Web Work).
   • Section Process States and Transitions -- this explains the states in which a process can be and how it transitions between them. Video (4:55) (PDF) (Web Work).
   • Section Process Components -- when you create a process out of a program, what does that mean? And what are the various parts of a process that the operating system needs to manage? Video (16:45) (PDF) (Web Work).
   • Here are links to the BSD and Linux proc and task structure include files. You should look in your OS/161 distribution to find the corresponding structures in OS/161.
     • BSD proc.h
     • Linux sched.h
3. 2/12 Architecture -- This is a short overview of concepts such as uniprogramming, multiprocessing, multicore, etc. Video (8:05) (PDF) (Web Work).
4. 2/12 Linking (16:56) -- This is an overview of the linking process -- how the linker constructs an executable from a collection of object files. If you saw this in CS61, you can probably skip the video. Video (17) (PDF) (Web Work)