Advanced Operating Systems (and System Security) (9 CFU)
Academic Year 2023-2024
Laurea Magistrale in Computer Engineering
University of Rome Tor Vergata
Lecturer: Francesco Quaglia
16/9/2024 - The examination scheduled on 17/9/2024 will be held in Aula A4 at 16:00
9/9/2024 - The results of the examination held on 5/9/2024 are available at this link
3/9/2024 - The examination scheduled on 5/9/2024 will be held in Aula B1 at 16:00
7/8/2024 - Autumn examinations will be held on September 5 2024 (afternoon) and on September 17 2024 (afternoon)
22/7/2024 - The results of the examination held on 17/7/2024 are available at this link
16/7/2024 - The examination scheduled on 17/7/2024 will be held in Aula C4 at 16:30
26/6/2024 - The results of the examination held on 19/6/2024 are available at this link
18/6/2024 - The examination scheduled on 19/6/2024 will be held in Aula B4 at 15:30
13/5/2024 - Summer examinations will be held on June 19 2024 (afternoon) and on July 17 2024 (afternoon)
8/3/2024 - The results of the examination held on 29/2/2024 are available at this link
28/2/2024 - The examination scheduled on 29/2/2024 will be held in Aula C6 at 16:00
30/1/2024 - The results of the examination held on 25/1/2024 are available at this link
24/1/2024 - The examination scheduled on 25/1/2024 will be held in Aula C6 at 11:00
15/1/2024 - Based on requests, the lecturer presentation of the project specification to the students has been moved again (from January 17) to January 18 at 14:30 (Room B8)
10/1/2024 - The lecturer presentation of the project specification to the students has been moved (from January 11) to January 17 at 11:30 (Room B13)
10/1/2024 - The project specification for the academic year 2023/2024 has been posted at this link
10/1/2024 - All the students of the Advanced Operating Systems course are invited to verify their interest in participating to the Cyberchallenge 2024. Please check with this link
23/11/2023 - The lecture scheduled on 27/11/2023 has been cancelled
23/11/2023 - A homework suggestion deadling with the implementation of a blocking queuing service for thread management has been posted at this link
14/11/2023 - Winter examinations will be held on January 25 2024 (morning) and on February 29 2024 (afternoon)
16/10/2023 - A homework suggestion deadling with an alternative TLS implementation has been posted at this link.
9/10/2023 - A homework suggestion deadling with the implementation of an RCU list has been posted at this link.
4/10/2023 - Thursday lecture has been moved to room B5, please check with the updated course-schedule table.
26/9/2023 - The lectures' schedule has been updated to avoid conflicts with other courses, please check with the updated course-schedule table.
22/9/2023 - This site has been made up and running.
| Monday | 11:30-13:15 | Room B13 |
| Wednesday | 11:30-13:15 | Room B13 |
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The 'Advanced Operating Systems and System Security' course aims at presenting advanced design/implementation methods and techniques for modern operating systems. It will also provide insights on actual hardware operations in modern processors (including implicit and explicit parallelism) and how these impact software design approaches.
The topics dealt with by the course are bound to case studies oriented to Linux systems and x86 compliant processors. A strong focus on system-level security aspects will be made, which will include the analysis of the correlation between hardware and software as well as advanced methods and techniques for system security. The course requires basic knowledge on the structure and functionalities of operating systems, and knowledge on C/ASM programming.
NOTE: why Linux? - why x86?
The lecture flow will be based on presenting concepts in combination with software/running examples. Both the slides and the software examples will be made available while delivering the course, clearly in advance to discussing them at any lecture. The slides as well as the software examples can be accessed and downloaded from links posted in a bottom section of this Web page.
As for the evaluation, the first part (questions and answers) accounts for 18 points, while the project accounts for 12 points. In any case both parts of the examination have thresholds for their acceptance. The thresholds are the following ones: 11 points for the first part and 7 for the project. In the event of an exceptionally well done project and/or exceptionally well replied questions, a student who cumulates 30 points can be awarded with 'laude'.
Even though the above references and links are provided, I must alert students that no unique hand-book can fully cover the presented topics (and/or the way of presenting them). Hope this will be an added value to the course, rather than a limitation. Please come to any available student reception as soon as any doubt, or the need for whathever clarification, arises.
| Topic | Slides | Sofware Examples | Latest Update |
| Hardware insights | download link | download link | 5/10/2023 |
| Kernel programming basics | download link | download link | 11/10/2023 |
| Kernel level memory management | download link | download link | 24/10/2023 |
| Cross ring data move | download link | download link | 12/11/2023 |
| Linux modules | download link | download link | 14/11/2023 |
| Kernel level task management | download link | download link | 19/11/2023 |
| Trap/interrupt architecture | download link | download link | 5/12/2023 |
| Virtual file system | download link | download link | 16/12/2023 |
| Software security | download link | download link | 20/12/2023 |