Page from Computer Systems and Programming (2019 - 2020)

Teacher: *Giorgio Richelli - giorgio.richelli@uniroma1.it

Timetable

Monday h.14:00/16:00 - Aula 303 (CU002, 3rd floor)

Friday h.8:00/11:00 - Aula 2L (RM018)

Office Hours

By previous appointment, before or after the lessons

NEWS

For reasons not under my control, the location for the exam session of Feb. 7th was not available. The students who had registered for this date, are kindly requested to contact me via email (if still interested, of course).

Project for AA2019/2020 --> Project2019.pdf

Midterms:

• Monday Nov. 4th: C Language (quizzes). The questions (with answers): AllQuestions , and the results: Score
• Friday Nov 22nd: Filesystem API, Process Management, Processes. --> Text and Score
  
• Friday Dec. 6th: Signals, IPC (pipes, semaphores, shared memory ..). Here you have text, results and a sample implementation (not guaranteed to be bug free!)
• Friday Dec. 20th: Sockets, global recap. The text and relative score

Here are the proposed grades. As indicated in the document, those students who have sustained the entire set of midterms can accept and verbalize the grade or register for the oral test. Those who have only 3 midterms (box in yellow), must pass the oral examination. In any case, remember to register for one of the sessions.

Please contact me (email) for any question/clarification.

Code Samples & Slides

Monday Dec 16th: More on Sockets and code samples, Raw Sockets and the sniffer sample.

Friday Dec. 13rd: Sockets

Monday Dec. 02nd: SYS5 IPC (Semaphores, Shared Memory, Message Queues) --> SYSV IPC

Friday Nov. 15th: Signals, Pipes, Named Pipes: IPC1

Monday Nov. 11th: Processes --> Here

Friday Nov. 8th: The filesystem API: Here

Monday Oct. 28th: Examples --> 28Ottobre.txt

Friday Oct. 25th: Examples --> 25Ottobre.txt

Monday Oct. 21st: Code examples --> 21Ottobre.txt

Friday Oct. 18th: Code examples: --> file.txt

Mon. Oct. 14th: Complex function prototype and code snippets on switch, loops, etc. --> Examples.txt

Prerequisites

The course is mainly focused on system programming for Unix (Linux) systems.

The objective is to make students able to understand, write and modify, programs interfacing with the Linux operating system and its kernel source code.

So, it is assumed that attendees are able to write programs (using some language) and have a basic kwowledge of the main components of a modern operating system, such as Linux.

Each student should have access to a Linux system (a VM is ok), including the compiler, development tools (make, debugger, etc) and man pages.

Working on other devices, such as Mac or Windows laptop, while possible, it is not recommended due to suble differences in the compiler suite and OS interface.

Exams

The evaluation will be carried out, during the course, through tests quizzes on C and with short programs developed by the students in the classroom.

At the end of the course, the students will be able to accept the result obtained with these tests and verbalize, perhaps after an oral discussion.

As an alternative, or if the result of the tests is not considered acceptable, a complete individual project, written in C, should be developed on topics pertaining the arguments seen during the course.

Thus, there are two options:

• Pass the midterms (plus, perhaps, an oral discussion)
• Complete the project (as described in the dedicated section). The project (sources and documentation) must be sent by email a few days (5-7) before the date of the exam.

Project

The project is an individual work item, which must include appropriate documentation (Use cases, functional and non functional requirements, etc).

Each academic year will have a different project.

This is the project for AA2019/2020 --> Project2019.pdf

Here is the description of the project for past year (AA2018/2019) --> Project2018.pdf

Test Midterm

During the course, there will be a number (three or perhaps four) tests, in order to check the knowledge acquired during the lessons.

The score obtained for the tests will be part of the final evaluation and could completely substitute the project (see the above section).

Program

These are the topics that are planned to be described during the course.Of course mileage may vary, depending on time available, etc.

• Programming environment: compiler, make & makefiles, gdb debugger
• Recap of the C programming language: variables, costants, operators, expressions, control instructions, functions, pointers, arrays, structures & unions, preprocessor directives
• Operating system basics (Linux): processes, filesystem, inter-process communication primitives (signals, pipes, semaphores, shared memory)
• Thread programming: pthread management, mutual exclusion, synchronization
• Network programming: sockets, raw sockets, sniffers
• Software vulnerabilities: buffer overflows, arc injection, file infection

Textbooks

• Daniel P. Bovet, Marco Cesati: Understanding the Linux Kernel
• Brian Kernighan, Dennis Ritchie: The C Programming Language (2nd Ed.)

Slides & sources (C) used during the past year (AA 2018-2019)

C course --> here (Look for COP 2220)

Tools (make, gdb, prof, ..) tools.pdf

Slides and souces used during the lessons

Examples:

System call:

• files: filexamples.tgz
• processes: procexamples.tgz
• signals: sigexample.tgz
• pipe&fifo: pipeexample.tgz
• SYSV IPC (semaphores, shared memory, sockets .. ) : sysvexample.tgz

• File1.c
• File2.c
• File3.c

Binary Search Tree: Tree.c

Reading a file into a dynamic array and sort it: bubbleSort.c

-- Giorgio Richelli - 2020-09-01