600.211: Unix Systems Programming

Fall Semester 2005: September 8, 2005 - December 12, 2005

Contents

• Basics
• Coordinates
• Schedule
• Resources
• Assessment

Basics

Catalog Description: This course covers a variety of topics in UNIX programming, including process control, signal handling, daemon processes, and interprocess communication. Participants must be familiar with using the UNIX environment and be fluent in the C programming language.

Prerequisite(s): 600.120: Intermediate Programming. For this semester only the old prerequisite 600.109: Introduction to Programming in C/C++ (with 600.111: Practical C highly recommended) will be accepted as well. However, the course includes significant programming projects, and without prior development experience you'll probably get lost in a maze of low-level code.

Academic Honesty: It is your responsibility to adhere to the Department Integrity Code and other applicable university regulations. Feel free to email us your questions or concerns.

Coordinates

Discussion List: cs211-discuss@bloat.org (open discussion, but subscribe here first)
Staff List: cs211-staff@bloat.org (to contact all of us, but only staff can subscribe)
Submit Assignment: cs211-submit@bloat.org (we grade your last submission before the deadline)

Instructor: Peter Fröhlich
Office Hours: Thursday & Friday, 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Location: 326 New Engineering Building

Lecture: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Location: 202 Shaffer Hall

Teaching Assistant: Ashley Fernandes
Office Hours: Monday, Tuesday, 11:00 am - 2:00 pm
Location: 225 New Engineering Building

Schedule

Week 1: Introduction and Overview (9/12-9/18)

Lecture:

• Monday: Welcome and Overview
• Tuesday: A Tour of Unix
• Wednesday: A Very Brief Review of C

Reading:

• Required: Stevens, Chapters 1 and 2
• Optional: Summit, C Programming (or any other C tutorial)

Deadlines:

• Monday: Grab Assignment 1 and get started.
• Tuesday: Introduce yourself on the course mailing list. (Graded)
• Sunday: Turn in your solution to Assignment 1.

Week 2: Files and Directories (9/19-9/25)

Lecture:

• Monday: Makefiles, Simple system calls for files (Ashley)
• Tuesday: More system calls for files
• Wednesday: First lab session, implementing cat

Reading:

• Required: Stevens 3 and 4

Deadlines:

• Monday: Grab Assignment 2 and get started.

Week 3: Files and Directories (9/26-10/2)

Lecture:

• Monday: More system calls for files and permissions and stuff
• Tuesday: Some more calls, introduction to Subversion
• Wednesday: Second lab session, implementing ls

Reading:

• Required: Stevens 5 and 6

Deadlines:

• Sunday: Turn in your solution to Assignment 2.

Week 4: Processes (10/3-10/9)

Lecture:

• Monday: Introduction to processes and process environment
• Tuesday: More process details
• Wednesday: Third lab session, playing around with fork.

Reading:

• Required: Stevens 7 and 8

Deadlines:

• Monday: Grab Assignment 3 and get started.
• Wednesday: Take and defend a position regarding "Fork: Good call, bad call?" on the discussion list; discuss. (Graded)

Week 5: Processes, Signals, Pipes (10/10-10/16)

Lecture:

• Monday: More process stuff (groups, sessions), Introduction to signals
• Tuesday: More signals stuff, Introduction to pipes
• Wednesday: Fourth lab session, hacking shell pipes by hand.

Reading:

• Required: Stevens 8, 9, and 10

Deadlines:

• Sunday: Turn in your solution to Assignment 3.

Week 6: Interprocess Communication (10/17-10/23)

Lecture:

• Monday: Holiday
• Tuesday: [Midterm 1] [Solution]
• Wednesday: Fifth lab session, chat system using named pipes.

Reading:

• Required: Stevens 15

Deadlines:

• None! :-)

Week 7: Threads and Networking (10/24-10/30)

Lecture:

• Monday: Introduction to Threads (Stevens 11, aborted in favor of sockets)
• Tuesday: Introduction to Sockets (Stevens 16), I/O Multiplexing (Stevens 14.5)
• Wednesday: Sixth lab session, chat system using sockets.

Reading:

• Required: Stevens 16
• Optional: Whatever you can get your hands on regarding web servers?

Deadlines:

• Tuesday: Grab Assignment 4 and get started.
• Friday: Email us the URL for your team's draft website. (Graded)

Week 8: Networking and Threads (10/31-11/6)

Lecture:

• Monday: Getting sockets straight, especially addressing (which is a mess).
• Tuesday: More on threads (continued from last week).
• Wednesday: Seventh lab session, playing around with threads.

Reading:

• Required: Stevens 11, 16

Deadlines:

• Sunday: Turn in your solution to Assignment 4.

Week 9: Threads and Daemons (11/7-11/13)

Lecture:

• Monday: Project Review Session I
• Tuesday: Thread Synchronization, Thread Control, Miscellaneous
• Wednesday: Daemon Processes

Reading:

• Required: Stevens 11, 12, 13?

Deadlines:

• Tuesday: Grab Assignment 5 and get started.

Week 10: Advanced I/O (11/14-11/20)

Lecture:

• Monday: No lecture, ABET interviews. :-)
• Tuesday: No lecture, ABET locked away my text book. :-/
• Wednesday: Non-blocking I/O, Record Locking

Reading:

• Required: Stevens 14

Deadlines:

• Sunday: Turn in your solution to Assignment 5.

Week 11: Advanced I/O (11/21-11/27)

Lecture:

• Monday: Asynchronous I/O, Memory-Mapped I/O
• Tuesday: [Midterm 2] [Solution]
• Wednesday: Nobody in class because of Thanksgiving. Happy Turkey! :-)

Reading:

• Required: Stevens 14

Deadlines:

• Monday: Grab Assignment 6 and get started.

Week 12: Advanced IPC and Terminals (11/28-12/4)

Lecture:

• Monday: Advanced IPC Mechanisms (STREAMS-based pipes, Unix domain sockets)
• Tuesday: Detour: Algebraic Specification of Abstract Data Types
• Wednesday: Introduction to Terminal I/O

Reading:

• Required: Stevens 17 and 18

Week 13: Terminals (12/5-12/11)

Lecture:

• Monday: Compilers in 45 Minutes (Ad :-)
• Tuesday: Introduction to Curses (Glenn)
• Wednesday: Eighth lab session, playing around with curses and threads.

Reading:

• Required: Stevens 18 and 19

Deadlines:

• Sunday: Grab Assignment 7 and get started.

Week 13+1: Review and Outlook (12/12)

Lecture:

• Monday: Review and Outlook, Q&A for Final Exam

Reading:

• Required: Stevens 1 to 21

Deadlines:

• Monday: Turn in your solutions to Assignment 6 and Assignment 7.

Resources

Books

First the recommended text for the course, a recently updated and very comprehensive classic. I'll make frequent reference to chapters in this one as we go along.

• W. Richard Stevens, Stephen A. Rago: Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment, Second Edition, Addison-Wesley, 2005. [Buy]
  • W. Richard Stevens: Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment, Addison-Wesley, 1992. [Buy]

Next two additional Unix books: The first is a direct competitor to the recommended text above, the second provides lots of interesting background on Unix and its philosophy.

• Marc J. Rochkind: Advanced UNIX Programming, Addison-Wesley, 2004. [Buy]
• Eric S. Raymond: The Art of UNIX Programming, Addison-Wesley, 2003. [Buy]

Then two books on the C programming language: The first is the recommended reference for this course, but it's not ideal as an introduction. The second is the "official" reference from the designers of the language.

• Samuel P. Harbison, Guy L. Steele Jr.: C: A Reference Manual, 5th edition, Prentice Hall, 2003. [Buy]
  • Samuel P. Harbison, Guy L. Steele Jr.: C: A Reference Manual, 4th edition, Prentice Hall, 1994. [Buy]
• Brian W. Kernighan, Dennis M. Ritchie: The C Programming Language, 2nd edition, Prentice Hall, 1988. [Buy]

Next some additional books on C. The first is a helpful "advanced" text, written in a particularly entertaining style; the interviewing tips are priceless as well. The second addresses software development strategies and provides (somewhat) higher-level abstractions for C. The third covers a variety of errors that C programmers tend to make again and again.

• Peter van der Linden: Expert C Programming: Deep C Secrets, Prentice Hall, 1994. [Buy]
• David R. Hanson: C Interfaces and Implementations: Techniques for Creating Reusable Software, Addison-Wesley, 1997. [Buy]
• Andrew Koenig: C Traps and Pitfalls, Addison-Wesley, 1989. [Buy]

Finally two more general books on programming and software development, both highly recommended (not just for this course).

• Andrew Hunt, David Thomas: The Pragmatic Programmer, Addison-Wesley, 1999. [Buy]
• Brian W. Kernighan, Rob Pike: The Practice of Programming, Addison-Wesley, 1999. [Buy]
• Jon Bentley: Programming Pearls, Addison-Wesley, 2000. [Buy]
  • Cost Models
  • Code Tuning

This list is hardly exhaustive. Feel free to email me suggestions if you find a good book on any of the topics we deal with in the course. :-)

Previous Offerings

• Dwight Wilson: 600.211: Unix Systems Programming, Fall 2004
• Dwight Wilson: 600.211: Unix Systems Programming, Fall 1998

Related Courses

• Tanu Malik: 600.111: Practical C, Spring 2003
• Cristina Nita-Rotaru: 600.111: Practical C, Summer 2002

Standards

• The Open Group: Single UNIX Specification (SUS), 2004.
• Dinkumware: Dinkum C99 Library Reference Manual, 2002.

Miscellaneous

• Steve Summit: C Programming, 1999.
• Jim Gettys: The Two-Edged Sword, 1998.
• Andrew Koenig: C Traps and Pitfalls (PDF, short paper).
• Steven Pemberton: Enquire (tool)
• Steven Pemberton: Dhrystone (benchmark)
• Rob Pike: Notes on Programming in C, 1989.
• Henry Spencer: The Ten Commandments for C Programmers.
• Eric S. Raymond: How to Become a Hacker, 2005.

Tools

• diff
• gdb
• indent
• make
• gprof
• SCons
• Subversion
• Valgrind (thanks to Jonathan)

Assessment

Assignments (8): 50%, Midterms (2): 20%, Final (1): 20%, Miscellaneous (unknown number): 10%.

Class Picture

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Copyright © 2005 Peter H. Fröhlich. All rights reserved.