CS_3560

Intro to systems programming

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CHAPTER 1: C Programming

Key differences with C++ Command-line Compiling Basic I/O: Input, Output Dynamic Memory Allocation

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CHAPTER 2: USERS, FILES, AND THE MANUAL

System Calls and Functions:

• open, read, write, creat, lseek, close
• perror

Commands

• man, who, cp

Ideas and Skills

• The role and use of on-line documentation
• The Unix file interface: open, read, write, lseek, close
• Reading, creating, and writing files
• File descriptors
• Buffering: user level and kernel level
• Kernel mode, user mode, and the cost of system calls
• How Unix represents time, how to format Unix time
• Using the utmp file to find list of current users
• Detecting and reporting errors in system calls

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CHAPTER 3: DIRECTORIES AND FILE PROPERTIES

System Calls and Functions:

• opendir, readdir, closedir, seekdir
• stat
• chmod, chown, utime
• rename

Commands

• ls

Ideas and Skills

• A directory is a list of files
• How to read a directory
• Types of files and how to determine their type
• Properties of files and how to determine properties of a file
• Bit sets and bit masks
• User and group ID numbers and the passwd database

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CHAPTER 4: FOCUS ON FILE SYSTEMS

System Calls and Functions

• mkdir, rmdir, chdir
• link, unlink, rename symlink

Commands

• pwd

Ideas and Skills

• User's view of the Unix file system tree
• Internal structure of Unix file system: inodes and data blocks
• How directories are connected
• Hard links, symbolic links: ideas and system calls

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CHAPTER 5: Connection Control, Studying stty

Ideas and Skills

• Similarities between files and devices
• Differences between files and devices
• Attributes of Connections
• Race Conditions and atomic operations
• Controlling device drivers
• Streams

System Calls and Functions

• fcntl
• ioctl
• tcsetattr
• tcgetattr

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CHAPTER 6 - Programming for Humans: Terminal Control and Signals

Ideas and Skills

• Software tools vs. user programs
• Reading and changing settings of the terminal driver
• Modes of the terminal driver
• Nonblocking input
• Timeouts on user input
• Introduction to signals: How Ctrl-C works

System Calls

• fcntl
• signal

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CHAPTER 8 - Processes and Programs: Studying sh

Ideas and Skills

• What a Unix shell does
• The Unix model of a process
• How to run a program
• How to create a process
• How parent and child processes communicate

System Calls, Functions, Commands

• fork
• exec
• wait
• exit
• sh
• ps

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CHAPTER 10 - I/O Redirection and Pipes

Ideas and Skills

• I/O Redirection: What and why?
• Definitions of standard input, output, and error.
• Redirecting standard I/O to files.
• Using for to redirect I/O for other programs.
• Pipes
• Using fork with pipes.

System Calls and Functions

• dup, dup2
• pipe