• M. Rochkind, Advanced UNIX Programming (2nd edition), Addison Wesley, 2004.
• A. Silberschatz, P. Galvin and G. Gagne, Operating System Concepts (6th edition, Windows XP update), Wiley, 2003 (or other edition).
• A. Tanenbaum, Modern Operating Systems (2nd edition), Prentice Hall, 2001.
• W. Stallings, Operating Systems: Internals and Design Principles (5th edition), Prentice Hall, 2005.
• H. Deitel, P.Deitel and D. Choffnes, Operating Systems (3rd edition), Prentice Hall, 2004.
• B. Molay, Understanding Unix/Linux Programming: A Guide to Theory and Practice, Prentice Hall, 2003.
• K. Robbins and S. Robbins, UNIX Systems Programming: Communication, Concurrency and Threads, Prentice Hall, 2003.
• W. R. Stevens, Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment, Addison Wesley, 1993.
• A. Tanenbaum, Computer Networks (4th edition), Prentice Hall, 2003 (or earlier edition).
• L. Peterson and B. Davie, Computer Networks: A Systems Approach (3rd edition), Morgan Kaufmann, 2003 (or earlier edition).

A detailed teaching plan can be found on the course website.

Lectures are used to introduce course concepts and give demonstrations of associated tools and techniques.

Prac sessions are lab times supervised by a tutor during which students can work through prac material, work on assignments and seek help from a tutor if necessary. You should sign up for two one-hour pracs each week - one early in the week (a "C" session) and one later in the week (a "P" session). Pracs will take place in room 78-109 (GPSouth Building). Access to this lab (and others) will be possible outside these hours (except when other scheduled classes are occurring), but tutors will not be available outside these hours. Whilst it is possible to attend sessions to which you are not signed up, students who are signed-up to a session will receive preferential treatment (access to computers and/or tutors).

You are not required to attend any of the teaching sessions (except those in which an assessment activity is taking place), however, you are strongly encouraged, to do so. The lectures and pracs have been specifically designed to aid your learning of the course material. Failure to attend a session may result in you being disadvantaged. It is up to you to find out what happened at any class session that you miss.

A system of "grace days" will exist to allow you to make a limited number of late assignment submissions during the course. The system of grace days will work as follows:

• Each student will initially receive a budget of three (3) grace days.
• For each day (i.e. 24 hour period or part thereof) that an assignment is submitted late, you will consume a grace day.
• If, at the time of an assignment submission, your grace days balance is zero or higher, you will not be penalised for late submission of that assignment.
• If, at the time of an assignment submission, you have consumed more grace days than you had available, you will lose 20% of your mark for that assignment per excess grace day consumed and your grace day balance will be reset to zero.
• If you submit an assignment more than 24 hours early, you will earn a grace day for every multiple of 24 hours that your assignment is early up to a maximum of five grace days earned per assignment. You can then use these grace days on a later assignment. (You will only earn grace days if your assignment mark is greater than 0 - i.e. early "empty" submissions won't earn you additional grace days.)
  
• No assignment can be submitted more than five days late, independent of the number of grace days that you have available.
• If you fail to submit an assignment, you will receive a mark of zero for that assignment and you will lose five (5) grace days. If this makes your grace day balance less than zero, it will be reset to zero.
• Grace day balances are always a whole number of days. Any positive balance of grace days remaining at the end of semester is irrelevant.

Grace days are a tool to help you manage your time and to help smooth out any busy periods of assignment submission, minor illness etc. It is recommended that you do not use all of your grace days early in the semester - save some for later in the semester when things tend to get busier or for when you have conflicting assignment deadlines for other courses. You should note that it is always better to submit something (up to the maximum 5 days late) than to submit nothing at all, e.g. a minimal submission (worth more than 0) more than 5 days early will get you a small number of marks, but add five grace days. No submission will get you zero marks, but cost you five grace days. All late submissions must be made electronically in the same manner as for on-time submissions.

The following is an example of how the system works:

• A student commences the semester with a balance of 3 grace days
• Assignment one is submitted 25 hours early, so the student earns one grace day (and now has 4).
• Assignment two is submitted 100 hours (5 days) late, so the student loses 5 grace days and because this would make their balance negative, is penalised by 20% of their assignment mark for every day over their balance (one in this case). In other words, the student's assignment 2 mark is multiplied by 0.8 and their new grace day balance becomes zero.
• Assignment three is submitted 50 hours early, so the student earns two grace days (and now has 2).
• Assignment four is submitted ten seconds (one day) late. Because the student has two available grace days, no penalty applies. One grace day will be consumed so the student ends the semester with one unused grace day.

If you have extenuating circumstances (e.g. illness) which are supported by documentation (e.g. medical certificate) then it may be possible to gain additional grace days, but note that no assignments will be accepted more than 5 days late under any circumstances. Extenuating circumstances (e.g. major illness) preventing the completion of an assignment will mean either (1) waiving of the assignment (only available for assignment one or two), and/or (2) that later special assignment(s) will need to be undertaken - possibly after the teaching weeks of semester. If an assignment is waived, all other assignments will be reweighted to make up the overall assignment mark, but the relative weightings will remain the same.

Failure of a non-UQ computing system (e.g. student's own computer) or ISP link will not be accepted as an extenuating circumstance. You are advised to keep regular backups of your work (including that on UQ/ITEE servers). Failure or overloading of a UQ/ITEE computing server (e.g. agave.itee) will not be grounds for an extension unless the outage is confirmed by IT staff or the course coordinator AND either exceeds one hour in the six hours immediately before the due time OR exceeds twelve hours in the seven days (168 hours) immediately before the due time. You should keep in mind the potential for outages and overloading near assignment deadlines and plan accordingly.