Book notes

Our text, Operating Systems Principles, is a prerelease version of a forthcoming textbook written by Jerry Saltzer (Wikipedia) and Frans Kaashoek. Copies are available from Course Reader Material at 1137 Westwood Blvd. near Lindbrook.

This page collects some notes on how we're using the textbook in class.

You may of course read the whole thing, or you may follow this plan:

• A. Three fundamental abstractions
  • may skip Sidebar 2-2 and RAID section
• B. Naming in computer systems
  • B.1 (The naming model) and B.3 (Path names..and recursive name resolution) are worth reading
  • otherwise skim this section
• C. Organizing systems with names and layers
  • read this section
• Appendix 2-A Unix file system layering and naming
  • no need to read this now, but if you want to, it will be educative: a compressed treatment of stuff we'll deal with later

Early in the course, you need read only enough of this chapter to understand the idea of clients and services. These ideas can be treated abstractly (which is how we will use them initially), or concretely, in terms of elements of a network protocol. We'll get to the network protocol ideas later.