Operating System Theory

Schaum's Outline of Operating Systems

Format: Paperback
Author: J. Archer Harris
ReleaseDate: 23 October, 2001
Publisher: McGraw-Hill
Rating:

Good at what it does
Each section alternates between text and answered problems, as is usual for a Schaum's Outline. What it does: lead the reader through the basic concepts of classic operating systems: processes, synchronization, memory, virtual memory, file systems, IO, and security. That's very helpful - putting a concept to use on one problem drives the point home better than a hundred pages of reading. The reader who completes this book, working a good number of the problems, will have seen most of the topics presented in a one-term OS class. No problem there.

The book necessarily lacks in breadth and in detail, however. This book doesn't try to be a Tanenbaum, and isn't, so it skips many crucial topics. The interaction of hardware and OS is very under-represented. That includes things like memory-mapped IO, interrupt levels, multiprocessor configurations, and cache coherency. It mentions real-time systems, without discussing the many ways that embedded kernels differ from Windows. It discusses priveleged instructions, but skips context switching between privelege levels. The section on virtual memory skips a lot - how it interacts with a system's process structure, multiple address spaces, shared pages, reasons for non-pageable memory, and more. It brings up ancient topics, like swapping and overlays, that have just about no significance in major commercial systems. Having brought them up, it fails to mention why they're no longer relevant.

But there's only so much you can cram into a 228-page summary. The content is worth three stars at best, but I give it one more for (mostly) meeting its goals.

//wiredweird.

Excellent supplement
I would say this OS guide is perhaps the best one along with the Seymour Lipschutz's erudite "probability" (not to be confused with Murray R. I have over 10 Schaum's guides for my various courses. Spiegel's befuddled attempt for Schaum's).

The last reviewer's comments seemed unwarranted especially since this book has more then enough problems on semaphores even if it's not as strong on file systems. This book is spot on covering the important parts of the classic operating systems curriculum from the sublime Tannebaum to the feckless Nutt. This book has an abundance of sample problems from all the major topics: File Systems, Interprocess communication, Device I/O, Networks, Security, and the dreaded Virtual Memory. Besides this the author covers algorithms, from the Philosophers to Bankers, from Hard drive c-scan to Paging LRU. I find the author easy to understand, complete, and very much in tune with what you will likely be tested on. I can honestly say this 200 page book was more valuable to me then the pescribed text.

Mediocre book, disappointing
I wanted more practice for the kinds of questions we would get on exams, but many of the topics addressed were treated at too simplistic of a level. I was looking for a rigorous review to supplement my Operating Systems course and I found that this book certainly fell short of that.

I also would have have preferred a range of examples dealing with topics like semaphores and mutual exclusion, deadlock, file systems, but instead all the sample questions were disappointing and I found myself actually wasting time with this book. It would have been more productive to have just stuck with the textbook. Usually Schaum's does a good job, but I think they seriously fell short with their Operating Systems book.