After successful completion of the course, students are able to describe the structure and operation of computer systems, as well as the role and the functions of operating systems, judge design decisions for the management of OS resources, use mechanisms for the coordination of and the synchronization between parallel processes, and elaborate on OS security mechanisms.

Further, the graduates of the course are able to implement programs in the system programming language C in compliance with common coding standards and guidelines, which are able to realize interprocess communication and synchronization by leveraging resources offered by a UNIX system.

• introduction to operating systems (definition, history, important abstractions, OS architectures)
• processes and threads (process states, data structures and mechanisms for process management, multithreading)
• process synchronization and deadlock (mutual exclusion & condition synchronization, synchronization mechanisms and constructs, synchronization problems: producer-consumer, reader-writer, dining philosophers, deadlock, deadlock conditions, deadlock avoidance, deadlock prevention, deadlock detection
• memory management (allocation, relocation, segmentation, paging, virtual memory management, page replacement, protection and sharing)
• input-output and disk management (devices and device characteristics, I/O operations, drivers, buffering, disks, file systems, file system organization)
• networking (introduction, protocols, OS and networking)
• security and protection (threats, security measures, design for security, access control, authentification, encryoption)
• System programming in C (incl. coding standards and guidelines)
• Programming environments (GNU/Linux)
• Inter-process synchronization and communication
• Signals and signal handling

The listed topics will be introduced in the lecture, illustrative examples will be presented. Selected programming problems will have to be programmed in the lab assignments.

All relevant information concerning the organization of this course will be announced during the course introduction, on Oct. 1, 13:00 c.t.! Please make use of the live stream to avoid that the number of local participants exceeds the capacity of the lecture room. People following the live stream will be able to post questions online.

Please consider online participation in the course introduction to avoid that the number of participants exceeds the seat capacity of the lecture hall (Link to live stream). Remote participants will be able to ask questions online.

Students who have passed the course 182.711 and still need to take the former 182.709 OS lab course are asked to do the lab part of the new OS VU 191.002. Please make sure you register for the course in TUWEL in time.

Students who have completed the OS lab 182.709 and still need to take the exam for the OS lecture (182.711) please register for an oral exam at the 182.737 course page. After the exam you'll receive a report for the old OS VO course 182.711.

This exercise class is only offered during the winter term.

ECTS breakdown: 6 ECTS = 150 hours

Hours Purpose
54 Lectures (Operating Systems, Introduction to C, Unix, and assignments)
90 postprocessing of lecture and preparation for test, solving optional programming assignments
6 Exams (3 x 2h)

Please send all emails regarding organizational questions to lva-betriebssysteme@tuwien.ac.at

Students have to solve a short quiz and take two practical tests as well as a theory test. The grading is based on the test results. The theory test, as well as one of the two practical tests may be retaken.

Registration to tests/quiz in TUWEL.

Programming skills; systematic program development and evaluation.
Analysis of dependencies and interaction patterns, design of modular systems with interacting components.