General Information
Who should take 6.1810 // Communication // Grading // Labs // Text books // Homework // Collaboration // Class meetings // Staff // TA office hours
Who should take 6.1810
6.1810 is intended for undergraduates who enjoyed 6.1910 (6.004) and want to learn about design and implementation of operating systems, and their use as a foundation for systems programming.
Communication
We will distribute assignments on the course web site, and make all announcements through piazza. The course web site has the schedule for the term on the schedule page.
Grading policy
Grades in 6.1810 will be based on:
- The labs (50%). The score for an individual lab is the output of make grade. All labs are weighted equally.
- The two exams (30%).
- Check-off meetings (15%). During the check-off meetings we will ask you a few questions about your lab solution. We expect to hold 5 check-off meetings per student for randomly-selected labs. The check-off meetings will be graded on scale of 0 to 5.
- Home-work questions (5%).
You must submit all labs in order to pass the class.
There are two exams, one during the term and one in finals week. We expect students to take the exams in person at the scheduled time. The midterm exam is during a regular class meeting time and the final exam is in finals week. A conflicting class is not a valid reason to miss the midterm, so please do not register for a class whose meetings might conflict with 6.1810.
Labs
To turn in each lab, run make zipball in your lab directory and upload the resulting lab.zip file to Gradescope. The submission deadline is 11:59:59pm on the day that the lab is due. You can turn in as many times as you like before the deadline. The Gradescope autograder uses make grade to assign a grade to your submission.
You have a total of 72 late hours for the semester. Each hour late in excess of 72 hours will penalize your total lab grade by 1%, up to a maximum of 50%. Late hours are allocated greedily, so they are allocated to earlier labs before later labs. Due to institute regulations, late hours may not be used for the last lab (due on Dec 6).
We suggest that you save your late hours for unexpected emergencies. For predictable situations (athletic events, deadlines in other classes, job interviews, etc.) we expect you to manage your time so as to finish assignments by the due date. If you have exhausted your late hours but nevertheless encounter an emergency that causes you to need an extension, we ask that you talk to S3 and ask them to send us a letter supporting your request.
Lecture questions/Homeworks
The lecture questions/homeworks are intended to make you think about the lecture topic. They are due before the start of lecture (i.e., 1pm) on the specified due dates. You can miss a few lecture questions/homeworks over the semester without any penalty.
Textbooks
6.1810 relies on the following books:
- xv6: A simple, Unix-like teaching operating system by R. Cox, F. Kaashoek, and R. Morris.
- The C programming language (second edition) by Kernighan and Ritchie. Prentice Hall, Inc., 1988. ISBN 0-13-110362-8, 1998.
Collaboration
You are welcome to discuss the labs (and homeworks) with other students, but all of your written work and code must be your own and must carefully acknowledge all contributions of ideas by others, whether from classmates or from sources you have read. Please don't look at lab or homework code from any source, human or otherwise. Please feel free to ask and answer questions on Piazza, about labs, homework, readings, and lectures.
Do not post your lab or homework solutions on publicly accessible web sites (such as GitHub) or file spaces (such as your Athena Public directory).
Class meetings
Lectures will be held on Monday and Wednesday from 1:00pm to 2:30pm. You are expected to attend in person.
Staff
Lecturer
Frans Kaashoek
Nickolai Zeldovich
Robert Morris
Teaching assistants
Victoria Ma (vxma)
Nour Massri (mnmassri)
Ben Holmes (bencw12)
Ayana Alemayehu (ayana)
Luca Musk (lulew)
Nathan Xiong (nxiong)
Danny Villanueva (mapleint)
Sasha Fefelova (fefelova)
Beshr Islam Bouli (beshr)
Staff mailing list
61810-staff@lists.csail.mit.edu, but we would prefer that you
use Piazza.
TA office hours
| Day | Time | Room | TA |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | 2:30-4:30pm | 24-317 | Luca |
| Monday | 3:00-6:00pm | 24-310 | Victoria |
| Monday | 7:00-10:00pm | 24-317 | Ayana |
| Tuesday | 4:30-6:30pm | 24-323 | Luca |
| Tuesday | 5:00-6:00pm | 24-310 | Victoria |
| Tuesday | 6:00-8:00pm | 24-317 | Sasha |
| Wednesday | 2:30-4:30pm | 24-317 | Luca |
| Wednesday | 2:30-4:30pm | 24-319 | Nour |
| Wednesday | 5:00-7:00pm | 24-319 | Ben |
| Wednesday | 6:00-8:00pm | 24-323 | Danny |
| Wednesday | 7:00-10:00pm | 24-317 | Ayana |
| Thursday | 1:00-5:00pm | 24-323 | Ben |
| Thursday | 5:00-7:00pm | 24-319 | Nour |
| Thursday | 6:00-8:00pm | 24-321 | Nathan |
| Thursday | 7:00-9:00pm | 24-323 | Danny |
| Friday | 11:00am-1:00pm | 24-321 | Nathan |
| Friday | 12:00-2:00pm | 24-317 | Sasha |
| Sunday | 11:00am-3:00pm | 24-317 | Beshr |
Questions or comments regarding 6.1810? Send e-mail to the course staff at 61810-staff@lists.csail.mit.edu.
