cs110 Lecture 01 Course Introduction
cs110 Lecture 01 Course Introduction
2
Lecture 01: Welcome to CS110: Principles of Computer Systems
Let's take a look a the first three of these and jump right in
Principles of System Design: CS110 touches on seven big principles
Abstraction
Modularity and Layering
Naming and Name Resolution
3
Lecture 01: Welcome to CS110: Principles of Computer Systems
Let's take a look a the first three of these and jump right in
Principles of System Design: CS110 touches on seven big principles
Abstraction
What kinds of things does an operating system designer
Modularity and Layering
need to think about to design a file system?
Naming and Name Resolution
How are the files stored? Assuming that it is in non-
Abstraction separates behavior from implementation. volatile memory (e.g., a hard drive, or SSD), what is
the actual low-level form of the file storage. Keep in
cgregg@myth55:/usr/class/archive/cs/cs110/cs110.1202$ ls -1
[Link] mind that the files must be located when required!
cgi-bin
final-tests
What is the relationship between a file's name
include location and its data location? This can be very
lecture-examples
lib different!
local Are small files stored differently than large files?
[Link]
private_data How are files deleted so that the space doesn't go to
repos
samples
waste?
staff Can two filenames point to the same file?
tools
WWW Does file data share the same space on the disk as
metadata? (think: Heap Allocator...)
These are just some of the questions that must be answered. But, no matter how they are answered, the
behavior of the system to the user should remain constant. There are many different varieties of Unix file
systems, but this should be transparent to the user through the use of abstraction.
4
Lecture 01: Welcome to CS110: Principles of Computer Systems
Let's take a look a the first three of these and jump right in
Principles of System Design: CS110 touches on seven big principles
Abstraction
Modularity and Layering
Naming and Name Resolution
5
Lecture 01: Welcome to CS110: Principles of Computer Systems
Let's take a look a the first three of these and jump right in
Principles of System Design: CS110 touches on seven big principles
Abstraction
Modularity and Layering
Naming and Name Resolution
6
Lecture 01: Welcome to CS110: Principles of Computer Systems: Instructors
Chris Gregg (cgregg@[Link])
Electrical Engineering undergrad Johns Hopkins, Master's of Education, Harvard, Ph.D. in Computer
Engineering, University of Virginia
Lecturer in CS, teaching CS 106B/X, CS 107/107E, CS 110, CS208E, CS 298.
At Stanford since 2016, at Tufts prior, and high school teaching prior to that.
I love the CS 110 material!
It is challenging, yet interesting, and it is a new window into systems that you haven't yet seen in the CS
curriculum. I guarantee that you will write programs of the sort you have not written before.
I love to tinker
Stop by my office (Gates 201) some time to see my musical typewriter project.
I'm always happy to chat about Arduino / Raspberry Pi / iOS apps you are working on
7
Lecture 01: Welcome to CS110: Principles of Computer Systems: Instructors
Nick Troccoli (troccoli@[Link])
Computer Science undergrad and grad at Stanford
Lecturer in CS, teaching CS106, 107, 110
Looking forward to meeting all of you!
8
Lecture 01: Welcome to CS110: Principles of Computer Systems
Staff and Students
227 students as of January 6, 2020
Each of you should know C and C++ reasonably well so that you can...
write moderately complex programs
read and understand portions of large code bases
trace memory diagrams
Each of you should be fluent with Unix, gcc, valgrind, and make to the extent they're covered in CS107 or its
equivalent.
graduate student CAs
Feross, Andrew, Caroline, Aleksander, Kristine, Shrey, Robert, Wilhem, Eric, Clara
The CAs will hold office hours, lead lab sections, and grade your work
9
Lecture 01: Welcome to CS110: Principles of Computer Systems
Course Web Site: [Link]
Check the website for information about upcoming lectures, assignment handouts, discussion sections, and links
to lecture slides like the one you're working through right now
Online Student Support
Peer-collaborative forum I: Piazza (for the questions that require staff response)
Office Hours
Chris's office hours are Tuesdays from 9:00 until 11:00am, or by appointment, in Gates 201
Nick's office hours: Mon. 3-5PM and Thurs. 1-3PM, in Gates 193
CA's will provide a full matrix of office hours, soon to be determined
Office hours are not for debugging your assignments, and the CA's have been instructed to not look at code. Ever
(though this is relaxed a bit for the first assignment, only)
Contacting the instructors
Please use this email to contact both Chris and Nick for course-related information: cs110-win20-
instructors@[Link]
10
Lecture 01: Welcome to CS110: Principles of Computer Systems
Two Textbooks
First textbook is other half of CS107 textbook
"Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective", by Bryant and O'Hallaron
Stanford Bookstore stocks custom version of just the four chapters needed for CS110
Second textbook is more about systems-in-the-large, less about implementation details
"Principles of Computer System Design: An Introduction", by Jerome H. Saltzer and M. Frans Kaashoek
Provided free-of-charge online, chapter by chapter. Not stocked at Stanford Bookstore by design. You can
buy a copy of it from Amazon if you want.
11
Lecture 01: Welcome to CS110: Principles of Computer Systems
Lecture Examples
Lectures will be driven by slides and coding examples, and all coding examples can be copied/cloned into local
space so you can play and confirm they work properly
Code examples will be developed and tested on the myth machines, which is where you'll complete all of your
CS110 assignments
The accumulation of all lecture examples will be housed in a git repository at /usr/class/cs110/lecture
examples, which you can initially git clone, and then subsequently git pull to get the newer examples as
we check them in
12
Lecture 01: Welcome to CS110: Principles of Computer Systems
Lecture Slides
We'll try to make the slides as comprehensive as possible, but working with the code yourself is going to teach
you more.
They are not a substitute for attending lecture
We go off script quite a bit and discuss high-level concepts, and you're responsible for anything that comes
up in lecture
Exams include short answer questions in addition to coding questions, so all aspects of the course are tested
13
Lecture 01: Welcome to CS110: Principles of Computer Systems
14
Course Syllabus
Overview of Linux Filesystems
Linux and C libraries for file manipulation: stat, struct stat, open, close, read, write, readdir,
struct dirent, file descriptors, regular files, directories, soft and hard links, programmatic manipulation of
them, implementation of ls, cp, find, and other core Unix utilities you probably never realized were plain old C
programs
Naming, abstraction and layering concepts in systems as a means for managing complexity, blocks, inodes, inode
pointer structure, inode as abstraction over blocks, direct blocks, indirect blocks, doubly indirect blocks, design
and implementation of a file system
Multiprocessing and Exceptional Control Flow
Introduction to multiprocessing, fork, waitpid, execvp, process ids, interprocess communication, context
switches, user versus kernel mode, system calls and how their calling convention differs from those of normal
functions
Protected address spaces, virtual memory, virtual to physical address mapping, scheduling
Concurrency versus parallelism, multiple cores versus multiple processors, concurrency issues with
multiprocessing, signal masks
15
Course Syllabus
Threading and Concurrency
Sequential programming, desire to emulate the real world within a single process using parallel threads, free-of-
charge exploitation of multiple cores (two per myth machine, 12-16 per wheat machine, 16 per oat machine),
pros and cons of threading versus forking
C++ threads, thread construction using function pointers, blocks, functors, join, detach, race conditions,
mutex, IA32 implementation of lock and unlock, spinlock, busy waiting, preemptive versus cooperative
multithreading, yield, sleep_for
Condition variables, condition_variable_any, rendezvous and thread communication, wait,
notify_one, notify_all, deadlock, thread starvation
Semaphore concept and semaphore implementation, generalized counters, pros and cons of semaphore
versus exposed condition_variable_any, thread pools, cost of threads versus processes
Active threads, blocked threads, ready threads, high-level implementation details of a thread manager, mutex,
and condition_variable_any
Pure C alternatives via pthreads, pros and cons of pthreads versus C++'s thread package
16
Course Syllabus
Networking and Distributed Systems
Client-server model, peer-to-peer model, telnet, protocols, request, response, stateless versus keep-alive
connections, latency and throughput issues, gethostbyname, gethostbyaddr, IPv4 versus IPv6, struct
sockaddr hierarchy of records, network-byte order
Ports, sockets, socket descriptors, socket, connect, bind, accept, read, read, simple echo server, time
server, concurrency issues, spawning threads to isolate and manage single conversations
C++ layer over raw C I/O file descriptors, introduction to sockbuf and sockstream C++ classes (via socket++
open source project)
HTTP 1.0 and 1.1, header fields, GET, HEAD, POST, response codes, caching
MapReduce programming model, implementation strategies using multiple threads and multiprocessing
Nonblocking I/O, where normally slow system calls like accept, read, and write return immediately instead of
blocking
select, epoll, and libev libraries all provide nonblocking I/O alternatives to maximize CPU time using a
single thread of execution within a single process
17
Course Expectations
Programming Assignments
60% of final grade, with eight assignments
Some assignments are single file, others are significant code bases to which you'll contribute. You should
always become familiar with the header files and the assignment handout before you start writing a single line of
code.
Late policy is different than it is for many other CS classes
Every late day potentially costs you (read below why it's potentially)
If you submit on time, you can get 100% of the points.
If you can't meet the deadline, you can still submit up to 24 hours later, but your overall score is capped at
90%
If you need more than 24 additional hours to submit, you can submit up to 48 hours later, but overall
score is capped at 60%
No assignments are ever accepted more than 48 hours after the deadline
Exception: first assignment must be submitted on time, no late days allowed
Requests for extensions are routinely denied, save for extenuating circumstances (e.g. family emergency,
illness requiring medical intervention, and so forth)
18
Course Expectations
Discussion Sections
In addition to our MW lectures, you'll also sign up for an 80-minute section to meet each week
We introduced the CS110 discussion section for the first time almost two years ago, and the general consensus
is that they've substantially improved the course
If you have a laptop, bring it to discussion section. Section will be a mix of theoretical work, coding exercises, and
advanced software engineering etudes using gdb and valgrind
Discussion section signups will go live later this week
5% of final grade, provided you attend all of them
Everyone's discussion section grade is 100%
Every time you miss a discussion section, your discussion section grade counts a little less, and your final
exam score counts a little more
Exact policy details are spelled out in the Course Information handout
Discussion Section signup will start at noon on Sunday, January 12th at Noon. Go to
[Link] to sign up.
19
Course Expectations
Midterm
The midterm date will be February 14th, in class.
We will use the laptop-based program BlueBook to take the exams. You may have used BlueBook in CS 106A/B or
CS 107, but if not, it is an in-house program that allows you to type your answers for questions. It has a similar
feel to taking a paper exam (e.g., no code compiling, etc.). If you do not have a laptop to use for the exam, please
email Chris and we can set you up with one to use.
15% of final grade, material drawn from first five or so weeks of lecture, mix of implementation and short answer
questions
Closed-book, closed-notes, closed-electronics, one double-sided cheat sheet that you can prepare ahead of time
You must pass the midterm in order to pass the class
Passing score will be revealed on midterm solution set, which will be posted well before the withdrawal
deadline
Multiple practice midterms will be provided
If you have a competing class and would prefer to take the midterm another time, we will try to accommodate
this, provided you email Chris or Nick ahead of time and explain why you need to take the exam at an alternate
time
If you have testing accommodations, please email Chris or Nick as soon as possible.
20
Course Expectations
Final Exam
Three-hour final is Wednesday, March 18th at 3:30pm - 6:30pm, also using BlueBook.
20% of final grade, cumulative, mix of implementation and short answer questions
Counts even more with each discussion section absence
Closed-book, closed-notes, closed-electronics, two double-sided cheat sheets that you can prepare ahead of
time
You must pass the final in order to pass the class
Multiple practice finals will be provided
We may be able to accommodate an earlier exam on the 18th for students with conflicts, but we will not be able
to offer the exam on another day, nor remotely. Please make sure you can attend the final on that day.
Email Chris and Nick directly if you need to take the final exam during an alternate time slot on Wednesday
because of a competing final
21
Honor Code
Please take the honor code seriously, because the CS Department does
Everything you submit for a grade is expected to be original work
Provide detailed citations of all sources and collaborations
The following are clear no-no's
Looking at another student's code
Showing another student your code
Discussing assignments in such detail that you duplicate a portion of someone else's code in your own
program
Uploading your code to a public repository (e.g. github) so others can find it
If you'd like to upload your code to a private repository, you can do so on github or some other hosting
service that provides free-of-charge private hosting
22
Introduction to UNIX Filesystems
You should already be familiar with the Linux filesystem as a user. The filesystem uses a tree-based model to store
files and directories of files. You can get details of a file in a particular directory with the ls command
cgregg@myth58:~/cs110/spring-2019/lecture-examples/filesystems$ ls
[Link] contains.c copy.c list.c Makefile search.c t.c [Link]
You can get a more detailed listing with the ls al command:
ls -al
total 23
drwx------ 2 cgregg operator 2048 Mar 29 12:33 .
drwx------ 10 cgregg operator 2048 Mar 29 12:33 ..
-rw------- 1 cgregg operator 27 Mar 29 12:33 [Link]
-rw------- 1 cgregg operator 2633 Mar 29 12:33 contains.c
-rw------- 1 cgregg operator 1882 Mar 29 12:33 copy.c
-rw------- 1 cgregg operator 5795 Mar 29 12:33 list.c
-rw------- 1 cgregg operator 628 Mar 29 12:33 Makefile
-rw------- 1 cgregg operator 2302 Mar 29 12:33 search.c
-rw------- 1 cgregg operator 1321 Mar 29 12:33 t.c
-rw------- 1 cgregg operator 6 Mar 29 12:33 [Link]
With this listing, there are two files listed as directories (d), "." and "..". These stand for:
"." is the current directory
".." is the parent directory
The "rwx" designates the permissions for a file or directory, with "r" for read permission, "w" for
write permission, and "x" for execute permission (for runnable files).
23
Introduction to UNIX Filesystems
$ ls -l list
-rwxr-xr-x 1 cgregg operator 19824 Mar 29 12:47 list
There are actually three parts to the permissions line, each with the three permission types available:
rwx rx rx
In this case, the owner has read, write, and execute
permissions, the group has only read and execute
owner permissions, and the user also has only read and execute
permissions.
group
other
Because each individual set of permissions can be either r, w, or x, there are three bits of information per permission
field. We can therefore, use base 8 to designate a particular permission set. Let's see how this would work for the
above example:
permissions: rwx rx rx
bits (base 2): 111 101 101
base 8: 7 5 5
So, the permissions for the file would be, 755
24
Introduction to UNIX Filesystems
In C, a file can be created using the open system call, and you can set the permissions at that time, as well. We will
discuss the idea of system calls soon, but for now, simply think of them as a function that can do system-y stuff. The
open command has the following signatures (and this works in C, even though C does not support function
overloading! How, you ask? See here.):
int open(const char *pathname, int flags);
int open(const char *pathname, int flags, mode_t mode);
There are many flags (see man 2 open for a list of them), and they can be bitwise or'd together. You must include
one of the following flags:
O_RDONLY -- read only
O_WRONLY-- write only
O_RDWR-- read and write
We will generally only care about the following other flags when creating a file:
O_CREAT -- If the file does not exist, it will be created.
O_EXCL -- Ensure that this call creates the file, and fail if the file exists already
25
Introduction to UNIX Filesystems
int open(const char *pathname, int flags);
int open(const char *pathname, int flags, mode_t mode);
When creating a file, the third argument, mode, is used, to attempt to set the permissions.
The reason it is "attempt" is because there is a default permissions mask, called umask (see here for some excellent
information about umask), that limits the permissions. umask has a similar octal value to the permissions, although
if a bit is set in the umask, then trying to set that bit with the mode parameter will not be allowed. The umask can be
set with the following system call: mode_t umask(mode_t mask); // see "man 2 umask" for details
The return value is the old mask (the one that was already set).
If you want to simply check the umask value, you must call the function twice. E.g.:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/stat.h>
int main() {
mode_t old_mask = umask(0); // set to 0, but get old mask as return value
umask(old_mask); // restore to original
printf("umask is set to %03o\n",old_mask);
return 0;
}
This output means that the only permissions that can be set are for the user (rwx). The group and other
permissions can not be set because all three bits of their respective permissions are set in umask.
26
Introduction to UNIX Filesystems
Today's lecture examples reside within /usr/class/cs110/lectureexamples/filesystems.
The /usr/class/cs110/lectureexamples directory is a git repository that will be updated with
additional examples as the quarter progresses.
To get started, type git clone /usr/class/cs110/lectureexamples cs110lectureexamples
at the command prompt to create a local copy of the master.
Each time I mention there are new examples (or whenever you think to), descend into your local copy and type
git pull. Doing so will update your local copy to match whatever the master has become.
27
Introduction to UNIX Filesystems
You can override umask if you need to set the permissions a particular way.
The following program creates a file and sets its permissions:
#include <fcntl.h> // for open
#include <unistd.h> // for read, write, close
#include <stdio.h>
#include <sys/types.h> // for umask
#include <sys/stat.h> // for umask
#include <errno.h>
$ make open_ex
cc open_ex.c -o open_ex
$ ./open_ex
$ ls -l my_file
-rw-r--r-- 1 cgregg operator 0 Mar 31 13:29 my_file
28
UNIX Filesystem APIs
We have already discussed two file system API calls: open and umask. We are going to look at other low-level
operations that allow programmers to interaction with the file system. We will focus here on the direct system calls, but
when writing production code (i.e., for a job), you will often use indirect methods, such as FILE *, ifstreams, and
ofstreams.
Requests to open a file, read from a file, extend the heap, etc., all eventually go through system calls, which are the only
functions that can be trusted to interact with the system on your behalf. The operating system kernel actually runs the
code for a system call, completely isolating the system-level interaction from your (potentially harmful) program.
29
Implementing copy to emulate cp
int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
int fdin = open(argv[1], O_RDONLY);
int fdout = open(argv[2], O_WRONLY | O_CREAT | O_EXCL, 0644);
char buffer[1024];
while (true) {
ssize_t bytesRead = read(fdin, buffer, sizeof(buffer));
if (bytesRead == 0) break;
size_t bytesWritten = 0;
while (bytesWritten < bytesRead) {
bytesWritten += write(fdout, buffer + bytesWritten, bytesRead - bytesWritten);
}
}
close(fdin);
close(fdout);
return 0;
}
fd is a file descriptor (as seen in the return value of open), and is just an integer.
buf is just a char * array (though technically a void * array).
count is the number of bytes to read or write.
The return value is a ssize_t, which is the same magnitude as a size_t, but with the ability to have
negative values. Normal return values are the number of bytes read or written. A return value of
1 indicates an error, and errno is set appropriately.
The return value is not always the same as count, but only the number of bytes successfully read or written.
30
Implementing copy to emulate cp
int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
int fdin = open(argv[1], O_RDONLY);
int fdout = open(argv[2], O_WRONLY | O_CREAT | O_EXCL, 0644);
char buffer[1024];
while (true) {
ssize_t bytesRead = read(fdin, buffer, sizeof(buffer));
if (bytesRead == 0) break;
size_t bytesWritten = 0;
while (bytesWritten < bytesRead) {
bytesWritten += write(fdout, buffer + bytesWritten, bytesRead - bytesWritten);
}
}
close(fdin);
close(fdout)
return 0;
}
The read system call will block until the requested number of bytes have been read. If the return value is 0, there are no
more bytes to read (e.g., the file has reached the end, or been closed).
If write returns a value less than count, it means that the system couldn't write all the bytes at once. This is why the
while loop is necessary, and the reason for keeping track of bytesWritten and bytesRead.
You should close files when you are done using them, although they will get closed by the OS when your program ends.
We will use valgrind to check if your files are being closed.
31
Pros and cons of file descriptors over FILE pointers and C++ iostream
iostreamss
The file descriptor abstraction provides direct, low level access to a stream of data without the fuss of data structures or
objects. It certainly can't be slower, and depending on what you're doing, it may even be faster.
FILE pointers and C++ iostreams work well when you know you're interacting with standard output, standard input,
and local files.
They are less useful when the stream of bytes is associated with a network connection.
FILE pointers and C++ iostreams assume they can rewind and move the file pointer back and forth freely, but
that's not the case with file descriptors associated with network connections.
File descriptors, however, work with read and write and little else used in this course.
C FILE pointers and C++ streams, on the other hand, provide automatic buffering and more elaborate formatting
options.
32
Implementing t to emulate tee
Overview of tee
The tee program that ships with Linux copies everything from standard input to standard output, making zero or
more extra copies in the named files supplied as user program arguments. For example, if the file contains 27 bytes—
the 26 letters of the English alphabet followed by a newline character—then the following would print the alphabet
to standard output and to three files named [Link], [Link], and [Link].
$ cat [Link] | ./tee [Link] [Link] [Link]
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
$ cat [Link] Source:
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
$ cat [Link] [Link]
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz [Link]/wiki/File:[Link]
$ diff [Link] [Link]
$ diff [Link] [Link]
$
If the file [Link] contains the five vowels and the newline character, and tee is invoked as follows, [Link]
would be rewritten to contain only the English vowels.
$ cat [Link] | ./tee [Link]
aeiou
$ cat [Link]
aeiou
Full implementation of our own t executable, with error checking, is right here.
Implementation replicates much of what [Link], but it illustrates how you can use low-level I/O to
manage many sessions with multiple files. The implementation inlined across the next two slides omit error
checking.
33
Implementing t to emulate tee
Features:
Note that argc incidentally provides
int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
a count on the number of descriptors int fds[argc];
fds[0] = STDOUT_FILENO;
that write to. That's why we declare for (size_t i = 1; i < argc; i++)
an integer array (or rather, a file fds[i] = open(argv[i], O_WRONLY | O_CREAT | O_TRUNC, 0644);