The teaching is organized as follows:

Learning objectives

The course aims to introduce the principles of operating systems, regarding the software architecture of an operating system, the management and synchronization of processes and the management of the computing system resources. At the end of the course, students must demonstrate that they have:
- Knowledge and understanding related to the internal organization, functioning and services of an operating system. In particular, they will have understood: the main functions of an operating system in relation to users and application programs, the strategies used by the operating system to manage the resources of a computer, and the techniques used to implement the components of an operating system.
- Ability to apply the acquired knowledge to: develop applications with awareness of how the operating system manages processes, develop applications that use the primitives made available by the operating system, and develop and modify components of an operating system.
- Ability to autonomously evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of different design choices in the context of the services offered by an operating system.
- Ability to carry out a group laboratory project and to present the relative results, motivating the choices with appropriate language.
- Ability to develop the skills necessary to continue studying operating systems, addressing advanced issues related to distributed, real-time and embedded systems.

Program

Theory
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* Introduction: Structure and functions of an operating system.
* Process management: Memory image and process states. Context switching. Operations on processes. Cooperation and communication between processes.
* Scheduling: Long-term, medium-term and short-term scheduling. CPU scheduling with and without preemption.
* Synchronization between processes: Data consistency. Critical sections. Synchronization schemes and constructs.
* Deadlock: Conditions for triggering a deadlock. Techniques for prevention, detection and recovery.
* Main memory management: Logical and physical addressing, and address binding. Memory allocation techniques. Virtual memory management.
* Secondary memory management: Storage devices. File system.
Lab:
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* System calls for process and thread management
* System calls for inter-process communication
* System calls for inter-process synchronization
* System calls for memory sharing between processes

Learning assessment procedures

The exam consists of two tests: a theory test and a laboratory test. There are no midterm tests. The exam is the same for both attending and non-attending students.
Theory
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The theory exam consists of a two-hour written test, typically containing four questions, including two open questions and two exercises.
Laboratory
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The laboratory exam consists of solving programming exercises on the computer according to the specifications provided by the instructor. The student will be required to discuss and comment on the design choices made during a subsequent oral examination.