Welcome to the CSE306 (Operating Systems) home page for Fall 2009. This page will be the main source of course information throughout the semester.
Please check this page regularly for new messages. The newest messages will always appear first.
The exam was graded on a 150-point scale. The highest score achieved was 126. The lowest nonzero score was 21. The statistics are as follows:
Homework 4 was graded on a thirty-point scale. The statistics are as follows:
Here are homework grade statistics so far: Homework 3 was graded on an eighteen-point scale. The statistics are as follows:
Here are homework grade statistics so far: Homework 2 was graded on a sixteen-point scale. The statistics are as follows:
Homework 1 was graded on a fifteen-point scale. The statistics are as follows:
Homework 0 was graded on a two-point scale. The statistics are as follows:
After taking stock of the situation regarding homework, due dates, and Thanksgiving vacation, I have decided to decrease the number of homework assignments by one. See here for the updated schedule.
The official due date for HW2 is October 27, however I will accept submissions through November 1. November 1 is the last day that I will accept HW2 submissions. I will probably leave the out and due dates for HW3 as on the posted schedule, so if you can get HW2 done by the original due date it is probably better for you. Don't let it slide -- HW2 is the homework that stalls people in this class the most often.
I put my version of a solution for the HW1 traffic simulation here.
Someone asked me if there could be an online discussion forum
for course. Although in the past I have used a newsgroup for
this purpose, the last few times I tried it not many people
took advantage of it. But I'll try again. I have set up a
newsgroup for the course at:
news://bsd7.cs.sunysb.edu/cse306.
I was able to read and post using XEmacs from home.
On my laptop (Microsoft Vista) from home, I was able to connect
to the server using Windows Mail and I could see the article
subject lines, but I wasn't able to download them. I don't know
if this is a firewall problem I am having here at home or whether
it is a Windows problem. Please let me know your results.
At least one person is looking for a partner. If you would like to be put in contact with someone looking for a partner, please email me and let me know.
The October 8 due date for HW1 has come a little sooner after my completing the synchronization material in lectures than I like to have happen. Because of this, and because of email I have received from some people indicating that they are having some trouble, I will accept HW1 submissions up until October 11, 12:01AM.
I noticed while playing around with NACHOS in Eclipse that the code does not display properly under the default Eclipse editor settings. NACHOS is formatted with a mixture of tabs and spaces, with the tab stops set every 8 character positions. The default settings for Eclipse place the tab stops every 4 character positions.
In order to view the NACHOS code with the indentation that was intended, what you can do is the following. Go to the Preferences dialog and select Java>Code Style>Formatters. Use that dialog to create a new profile; for example "Nachos Java Style". Select that profile and click on "Edit". Up at the top you will see a box for "tab size". Set it to 8. Click "OK". If you don't want to use that convention for all your projects, then if you click on "Enable Project Specific Settings" there is a way to select the profile just for the NACHOS project.
OK, here's the deal. The special email to reach me now has the following form:
VWXYZ@starkeffect.com
where you have to replace "VWXYZ" by the
last five digits of your USB ID number.
If any spam reaches me through one of these addresses,
the person who has that ID number will receive a special
booby prize.
On September 10 I attempted a demo of how to import sources from a remotely-located CVS repository into an Eclipse project. The demo got stalled at one point when I didn't allow Eclipse to save a host key. I retried this demo in private and I would like to like to make a couple of notes about it:
The folder where Eclipse wanted to save the host key was in fact an "ssh" subfolder of my Windows Vista profile folder. So it was OK to allow it to create the "known_hosts" file. I didn't allow it in class because I don't like to allow files and folders to be created in random places unless I understand where those places are.
It was probably also necessary to load the SSH private key
to be used into Eclipse. This can be done under the
Window>Preferences>Team>CVS
screen and then clicking on the SSH2 link,
selecting the Key Management tab, and then
clicking Load Existing Key.
You can't use "localhost" as the server name unless you are running an SSH server on your PC. There is little point in doing this, since if the repository is already located on your PC you could simply specify a local path to it and bypass SSH altogether. The only reason I used "localhost" in class is because I lacked real network connectivity in the classroom.
On Thursday, September 10 at 13:29 EDT I changed the special address as described below. I went to class, announced the address change, and by 16:18 EDT I had spam mail from "WinGate" to the new address.
I checked my web server logs, and there were no off-campus accesses to the course home page during that period. So the new address could not have been collected by a Web spider. It must have been that somebody already put the new address in their address book on their PC and it immediately got transferred by spyware to the spammers.
Once again, I urge you quite strongly to check your PC if you entered the new address between 13:29 EDT and 16:18 EDT today (approximately the time of class -- 1/2 hour before to 1/2 hour afterward). Unless the responsible party figures it out and lets me know I have no choice but to delete the special whitelisted address, since I do not want to maintain a whitelisted address for spammers to use.
The "special" email address I set up has already been compromised, after only a few days. If you have used that address or put it into an address book on your computer, please check your computer for viruses and/or spyware. The spam I got was from "WinGate", in case that rings a bell with anyone.
I have changed the special address by adding the character "a" just before the "at sign". Please make a note of this.
Some people asked in class yesterday (Sep. 8) about getting the
cross-compiler to work on 64-bit x86 Linux systems.
It is possible that the 32-bit version will work if appropriate
libraries and possibly ld-linux.so.1 are installed
in /lib, however I do not have root access to such
a system to verify this. What I did do, however, is to build
new cross-compiler binaries on such a system. The build system
identified as follows:
Due to vast amounts of spam mail, I am forced to use a fairly aggressive spam filter on my email. Because student email often comes from places like Gmail, as does a lot of spam email, students have sometimes had problems reaching me. What worked last semester is for me to have a special whitelisted mail alias specifically for this course, this semester. The email address for this semester is:
cse306f09@starkeffect.com
This address was changed on September 10, see above.
This address was deleteed on September 10 at 16:45PM, see above for the reason.
If you have problems reaching me, use the address above. Hopefully it will last the whole semester, but if a virus on somebody's PC gives this address to a spam bot, I will have to change it.
If you are taking the course, please visit the Personalized Course Information Area, register a user ID there, and fill out the Academic Dishonesty Form.
I will be using this system to manage assignment handin and distribute grades.