Again, the physical constraints of a disk have a great impact on the design of a file system. This part of the course shows how the principles discussed for process scheduling and memory management apply to file systems. A whole series of new problems arise when one considers distributed operating systems. I will stress co-ordination problems which are at the heart of distributed systems. I will use access control as an example to illustrate common problems in this area.
Synchronisation is an important part of any operating system.
This is not part of this course because it is covered in detail in Dr Axford's course on Real-time systems programming. Also I will omit material about networks which is a separate course in the third year. Exercise Sheet 2 . Exercise Sheet 3 .