In the slides and videos section below, I will post slides and pre-recorded discussion section videos before 6PM on the day before the live discussion section. In a discussion section video, I will primarily present information regrading up-coming programming assignments. I will also post live discussion section videos there.

A live discussion section is conducted by a TA.

• Fri 10:00am - 11:10am in

During a live discussion section, the TA will give a recap of what's in the pre-recorded discussion video and answer questions about the pre-recorded video and programming assignments. If you have a particular topic that you would like the TA to discuss in the discussion section (including stuff like something covered in lectures that you would like the TA to explain further), you should send e-mail to the TA before 6PM on Thursday. The TA will try his/her best to cover such requests.

To download all the PDF files below in one command (so you can study for exams), do the following inside a terminal in Ubuntu 16.04:

    wget -r -l 1 --user=USERID --password=PASSWORD http://merlot.usc.edu/cs402-m23/discussions.html

where USERID and PASSWORD are the user ID and password used to access protected content from our class web site. But please note that the lecture slides can change at any time without notice. Therefore, it's a good idea to re-run the above command often to synchroniza your copy with the server!

Please see Lecture Slides & Videos.

The following are tentative and final slides (in PDF format) for this semester.

• Week 1 (PDF) (May 19, 2023) - gdb, warmup #1
• Week 2 (PDF) (May 26, 2023) - warmup #1 (part 2)
• Week 3 (PDF) (Jun 2, 2023) - warmup #2
• Week 4 (Jun 9, 2023) - warmup #2 (part 1 PDF), introduction to kernel assignments (part 2 PDF) (part 3 PDF)

  Code in slides for warmup #2:

  • defs.h
  • fork-wait.c
  • cat.c
  • redirect.c
  • thr-term.c
  • busywait.c
  • join.c
  • deadlock.c
  • trylock.c
  • whoopee.c
  • status-update.c
  • sigblock.c
  • sigwait.c
  • direct.c
  • cancel.c
  • three-threads.c

• Week 5 (PDF) (Jun 16, 2023) - kernel 1, kmain.c

  Code in slides:

  • kmain.c

• Week 6 (PDF) (Jun 23, 2023) - more on kernel 1

  Code in slides:

  • faber_test.c

• Week 7 (Jun 30, 2023)
  • (part 1 PDF) - kernel 2
  • (part 2 TXT) - kernel 2 polymorphism, vfs.c, vnode.c, file.c, vfs_syscall.c, vn_mmobj_ops.c, ramfs.c, vfstest.c, faber_fs_test

  Code (kernel):

  • vfs.c
  • vnode.c
  • file.c
  • vfs_syscall.c
  • vn_mmobj_ops.c
  • ramfs.c (also look for any "_ops_t" in "kernel/include/fs/*.h", "kernel/fs/*.c" and "kernel/fs/ramfs/*.c")
  • vfstest.c
  • faber_fs_test.c

• Week 8 (Jul 7, 2023)
  • (part 1 PDF) - introduction to kernel 3, the elf32 loader
  • (part 2 PDF) - more on kernel 3, address space implementation (vmarea, mmobj, pframe, page table)

  Code (kernel):

  • elf32.c - the elf32 loader
  • exec.c
  • access.c
  • vn_mmobj_ops.c - code for the mmobj inside a vnode
  • syscall.c (in the kernel)

  
  Code (user):

  • syscall.c (in the libc user space library)

  
  Kernel 3 FAQ:

  • meaning of pagenum

• Week 9 (TXT) (Jul 14, 2023) - objdump, page fault handling, hello

  Code (kernel):

  • pagefault.c
  • syscall.c (in the kernel)
  • vn_mmobj_ops.c - code for the mmobj inside a vnode

  
  Code (user):

  • hello.c
  • syscall.c (in the libc user space library)

  
  Kernel 3 FAQ:

  • handle the first page fault
  • meaning of pagenum
  • page faults

  
  Useful Linux commands:

      objdump --disassemble --section=".text" user/usr/bin/hello.exec
      objdump --disassemble --section=".text" -S user/usr/bin/hello.exec
      objdump --headers user/usr/bin/hello.exec
      xxd -g 1 user/usr/bin/hello.exec

  Useful GDB commands:

      add-symbol-file user/usr/bin/hello.exec 0x08048094
      b __libc_static_entry
      b main
      b *0x12345678
      layout asm
      layout next
      si
      info registers
      kernel info vmmap_mapping_info curproc->p_vmmap

• Week 10 (TXT) (Jul 21, 2023) - fork(), user space shell

  Code (user):

  • fork-and-wait.c
  • /sbin/init.c

  
  Kernel 3 FAQ:

  • do_fork()
  • "/sbin/init" not working

  Remaining user space programs:

  Code (user):

  • memtest.c
  • eatmem.c
  • forkbomb.c

  
  Kernel 3 FAQ:

  • dynamic region and do_brk()
  • make forkbomb run forever

• Week 11 (Jul 28, 2023) - (no discussion section this week)

Week #	Date	Topics	Comments
1	5/19	gdb, warmup #1 intro
2	5/26	C, Unix
3	6/2	warmup #2 intro	(warmup #1 due on Tuesday)
4	6/9	multithreading, Unix signals
5	6/16	intro to kernel assignments	(warmup #2 due on Tuesday)
6	6/23	kernel #1
7	6/30	intro to kernel 2	(kernel 1 due on Tuesday)
8	7/7	kernel 2 tests
9	7/14	intro to kernel 3	(kernel 2 due on Tuesday)
10	7/21	objdump, debugging user space processes
11	7/28	(no discussion section this week)	(kernel 3 due on Thursday)