Lab 6: Comments

Part 1 of Lab 6 (MLFQ implementation) has been graded and the grades are available through IVLE gradebook. Hong Dai Thanh graded this lab, and he has the following comments for you.

Grading Scheme

  • mlfq_create_job: 2 marks
  • mlfq_next_job: 2 marks
  • mlfq_ready_job: 3 marks
  • mlfq_preempt_job: 3 marks

First of all, I would like to comment on the coding practice. I observed a lot of submissions that don’t initialize job->priority in mlfq_create_job, hard code number instead of using the given macro, using a “waterfall” of if statements, using features that are compiler-dependent, etc. Since this is not a software engineering module, I don’t penalize for those errors. However, you should be aware that writing program in that way will make the code very hard to modify when the specification changes.

Most of the submissions implements mlfq_create_job correctly. There are quite a number of submissions that don’t initialize job->priority. Technically, this is a programming error, since malloc doesn’t guarantee the memory allocated will be initialized to 0. However, I don’t penalize for this error.

Most of the submissions also implements mlfq_next_job correctly. If mlfq_next_job does not work correctly (e.g. only check the queue of the highest priority) then no mark will be given.

For mlfq_ready_job and mlfq_preempt_job, I observed many different implementations. The most straight-forward implementation will record the current priority in job->priority and update the job->time_left, job->max_time_quantum and enqueue the job accordingly. Some implementations do not use job->priority, and use a loop to compare the current max time quantum with the list of time quantum to derive the current priority level. Some implementations calculate the time quantum instead of taking it from the array mlfq.time_quantum (this is a bad programming practice). I give all those implementations full mark, as long as they are correct within the specification given.
Earlier I made a post about resetting the time left of the job when it moves up a level. AS an exercise, you can try doing it and compare the result. Since this is not mentioned in the lab sheet, I don’t penalize if you don’t reset the time left.

I will take off 1 mark for each error in this part. If you use a property without updating it, I will consider it an error. If you make the same error twice in two functions, it will be counted twice.

Max time quantum not updated: -1 each function
Job not properly enqueued: -1 each function
Off-by-one for mlfq_preempt_job: -0.5

The implementation of job_generator has a very low chance of generating a set of data in which a process gets demoted to the lowest priority level and stays there. Therefore, the program usually has a very high chance of producing the correct input even though it has an off-by-one error in mlfq_preempt_job.

I still see some cases of format violation. One or two cases submit a .tar file but is actually a .zip or .rar file renamed to .tar. Marks are deducted accordingly.

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