Pre-class Activity 11: Disk Performance

FInd out the make and model of the hard disks you owned and used, both internal and external.  Go to the manufacturer websites and find out the specification — what is the average rotational time, seek time, and transfer time to read a block of data of your disks?   Which component is dominating the disk access time?

Week 13: Changes to Lab and Tutorial Schedules

As Monday, 7 November 2011, is a public holiday, we loose the opportunity to enjoy the lab and tutorial sessions on Monday.

There is no tutorial sessions for next week (including the Thursday sessions). Instead, the answers to the questions will be posted and discussed online.

There will be four additional lab sessions on Wednesday, 9 November, 2011.

  • 12noon – 1pm
  • 1pm – 2pm
  • 2pm – 3pm
  • 5pm – 6pm

Students from Monday’s lab group can come to any of the lab sessions.  Lab TAs will be available to help.

Lecture 11: File Systems

4 November, 2011

We focus on file systems in this week’s lecture. Will talk a little bit about disk performances as well.

Having a hardcopy of slides during lecture would be helpful. Be prepare to take notes during lecture.

Download Slides: PDF

Reading:

  • Section 4.3, 4.4
  • Section 5.4.3
  • Section 10.6.3

Related Wikipedia entries are listed below. These are for students who are keen to go beyond what is covered in CS2106. Read the articles with a critical mind since Wikipedia is editable by anyone.

Lab 8: Pipes

Here is your Lab 8.

Lab 8 is a graded exercise. You have two weeks to complete. Submit your solution to the IVLE workbin before Sunday, 13 November 2011, 10:00pm.

Note that this lab is to be completed on SunFire, to reduce the dependencies on Linux machines in the OS lab.

PCs in OS Lab Fixed

A router hung.  It is fixed now. Please try and report if there are still issues.

The deadline for Lab 7 has been extended until Tuesday, 1 November 2011, 10:00pm.

Students who did not managed to work on the lab last Thursday are welcome to attend the lab sessions on this coming Monday.  If you have time table clashes and not able to attend the class on Monday, please feel free to contact your lab TAs if you need any help with the lab.

Lecture 10: Memory Management III and Introduction to File Systems

28 October, 2011

This lecture cleans up the remaining topics on memory management and introduces system calls related to file management

Having a hardcopy of slides during lecture would be helpful. Be prepare to take notes during lecture.

Download Slides: PDF

Reading:

  • Section 3.5.3, 3.5.6, 3.5.7
  • Section 3.7 (excluding 3.7.1, 3.7.2)
  • Section 10.4.2
  • Section 4.1, 4.2

Related Wikipedia entries are listed below. These are for students who are keen to go beyond what is covered in CS2106. Read the articles with a critical mind since Wikipedia is editable by anyone.