I'm fixing to take cs414 over the summer, im curious to know what i should expect out of the class, and whats every ones experience with the class in general. In general did you actually mess around with the unix/linux kernel any if at all?
not exactly - you will program a few modules for OSP though (Operating Systems Project) that can be a handful at times - most are simple but hard to follow - some are just a PITA.
It's a decent class to take - with the right professor, it's actually quite interesting.
Hi there.
No, you won't work with any real kernels. Messing with something like a Linux or BSD kernel would be very difficult, because it has some code written in asm and lots of code written for specific architectures. Plus, a kernel that large without understanding the basics would just confuse you... the only book that even gets close to covering the 4.4BSD kernel is almost 600 pages (and it doesn't even cover OS theory.. it's just meant as a companion book to a real OS course book).
However, you do get to work with a simulated kernel. I personally didn't like OSP (that kernel), but I think it does teach you the concepts pretty well. You also get, at least when I took the course, to mess with a lot of the kernel system calls from a user standpoint. Believe it or not, but even doing this type of work can teach you a lot about the kernel if you have an OS theory book there helping you (like you will... Modern Operating Systems by Tanenbaum to be exact).