Assignment 4

Friday, September 24, Due Friday October 1

1.  Do part A of Exercise 2 in the Nutt book.  This has to do with processes and forking.

2.  Write a short paper that gives a general overview of how Unix as an operating system gets started, beginning with the BIOS when a computer is turned on.  Note that the intent is to give the basic steps that must be performed in general to get Unix running and that this description should not be specific to the point of providing details about a specific version of Unix.  Think of it this way.  Suppose you wanted to post something to the web for Computer Science juniors to read.  You can assume that they know basic stuff about machine hardware, assembly language, fundamentals of operating systems, Unix use, and C programming.  How would you describe this to them so that they had a pretty clear understanding of happens as the operating system is set up.