Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment

CS631 - APUE

Course Outline

In this course, students will learn to develop complex system-level software in the C programming language while gaining an intimate understanding of the UNIX operating system (and all OS that belong to this family, such as Linux, the BSDs, and even Mac OS X) and its programming environment.

Topics covered will include the user/kernel interface, fundamental concepts of UNIX, user authentication, basic and advanced I/O, fileystems, signals, process relationships, and interprocess communication. Fundamental concepts of software development and maintenance on UNIX systems (development and debugging tools such as "make" and "gdb") will also be covered.

While there are no prerequisite courses, students are expected to have a good working knowledge of the C programming language and to be able to competently use a UNIX system with a command-line shell interface. This class overlaps significantly with CS392 ``Systems Programming'' -- you cannot take CS631 if you have taken CS392.

You will be writing a lot of code in this class. You may also find the need to read a lot of code not written by you as well as the manual pages accompanying the sources. For the complete sources of the NetBSD operating system, take a look here.

Time, Date & Place:

Mondays, 18:15 - 20:45, Edwin A. Stevens Hall 222

Resources:

Textbooks:

The textbook used in this class is:

The first edition is also acceptable, even though we will be teaching from the second edition.

The following books are recommended purely for your own personal reference. They're not used in the class as a text, but are related and very useful books to have:

  • ``The C Programming Language'' -- important: make sure you get the 2nd Edition covering ANSI C.
    by Brian W. Kernighan and Dennis M. Ritchie.
    Prentice Hall, Inc., 1988.
    ISBN 0-13-110362-8 (paperback), 0-13-110370-9 (hardback).
  • ``The Practice of Programming''
    by Brian W. Kernighan and Rob Pike.
    Addison-Wesley, Inc., 1999.
    ISBN 0-201-61586-X.
Online vendors such as Amazon.com, bn.com, bookpool.com etc. usually sell these books for cheaper than the Stevens bookstore.

Instructor:

Jan Schaumann [jschauma@stevens.edu]

Systems Used

All software development will be done on the linux-lab.cs.stevens-tech.edu systems. It is your responsibility to get an account on these systems.

All grading will be done on these systems. While you may choose to develop on your own personal host, you should make sure that your code compiles and runs flawlessly on these systems.

Grading:

There will most likely be:
  • 5 homework assignment, worth 20 points each
  • 1 midterm project, worth 100 points
  • 1 final project, worth 200 points
  • 1 final exam, worth 100 points
  • no curve
Letter grades will be given as follows:
  • 450 - 500 points => A
  • 400 - 449 points => B
  • 350 - 399 points => C
  • 0 - 349 points => F
Within each letter grade, there are +/- grades given at the discretion of the instructor. (Exception: there is no A+)

Plagiarism, Cheating and other ways to get an F

This really should not be necessary, but just to preempt any complains that I did not make myself clear:
Students are responsible for their own work. It is unethical (and in some cases illegal) to present as one's work the ideas, words or representations of another without the proper indication of the source. Therefore, it is the student's responsibility to give credit for any quotation, idea or data (such as statistical data or source code) borrowed from an outside source.

Failure to do so constitutes plagiarism, may imply copyright infringement and license violations and is viewed as cheating in this class.

Homework Assignments:

Midterm Project:

Implement the "ls(1)" command as decribed in the manual page provided to you. See the full midterm project description for details.

Final Project:

Implement the "sws(1)" command as decribed in the manual page provided to you. See the full final project description for details.

Final Exam:

This year we have a take-home final exam. Please find it here.

Syllabus:

Date Topic Reading Material Notes
2012-08-29 Introduction, UNIX history, UNIX Programming Basics Stevens: Chapters 1, 2 Lecture slides
 
simple-cat.c
simple-ls.c
simple-shell.c
simple-shell2.c

HW#1
2012-09-03 Labor Day Holiday
2012-09-10 File I/O, File Sharing Stevens: Chapter 3 Lecture Slides
 
hole.c
lseek.c
openmax.c
sync-cat.c
HW2: tcp(1),tcpm(1)
2012-09-17 Files and Directories Stevens: Chapter 4 Lecture Slides
 
access.c
chmod.c
size.c
still-simple-ls.c
umask.c
Midterm Project Assignment
2012-09-24 Filesystems, System Data Files, Time & Date Stevens: Chapter 4, 6 Lecture Slides
 
wait-unlink.c
cd.c
2012-10-01 Process Environment, Process Control Stevens: Chapters 7, 8 Lecture Slides
 
entry.c
exit-handlers.c
forkflush.c
hw.c
setjmp1.c
setjmp2.c
setjmp3.c
2012-10-09 Process Groups, Sessions, Signals Stevens: Chapter 10 Note: Tuesday class!
Lecture Slides
FreeBSD Process Management (from "The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System")
 
eintr.c
pending.c
reentrant.c
sigusr.c
2012-10-15 Interprocess Communication Stevens: Chapter 14 Lecture Slides

BSD IPC Tutorial
BSD IPC

pipe1.c
pipe2.c
popen.c
semdemo.c
shmdemo.c
memory-layout.c
msgsend.c
msgrecv.c
socketpair.c
udgramread.c
udgramsend.c
dgramread.c
dgramsend.c
streamread.c
streamwrite.c
strchkread.c
2012-10-22 Advanced I/O: Nonblocking I/O, Polling, and Record Locking Stevens: Chapter 14 Lecture Slides

nonblock.c
flock.c

Final Project Assignment
HW#3
2012-10-29 Class cancelled due to hurricane Sandy
2012-11-05 Class cancelled
2012-11-12 Dæmon Processes, Shared Libraries Stevens: Chapter 13  Lecture Slides

dlopenex.c
evil.c
ldtest1.2.c
ldtest1.c
ldtest2.c
main.c
setget.c

HW#4
2012-11-19 UNIX tools: make(1), revision control, diff(1), patch(1), gdb(1) CVS Documentation Debugging with GDB
Guide to Faster, Less Frustrating Debugging
gdb Tutorial
Git		 Lecture Slides

compile chain examples
make examples
gdb examples

2012-11-26 Encryption in a Nutshell
Final Project Discussion / Code Review		   Lecture Slides
HW#5
2012-12-03 Code Review / Porting bozohottpd Lecture Slides
2012-12-10 Code Reading lighttpd
mini_httpd
nginx
 Lecture Slides