A Linux-based Lab for Operating Systems and Network Courses

The lab began in the late summer of 1995 with six Pentium 90 machines running Red Hat Linux version 1.0. We made an effort to buy only hardware that supported Linux: IDE disk drives and CD-ROM, SCSI tape backup and file servers, ATI Mach 32 video cards, SVGA monitors. Hardware incompatibilities caused several delays, as we attempted to show that Linux was competitive with commercial Unix as a platform for instructional computing. These delays seem to be a thing of the past, both due to our increasing familiarity with Linux and to the non-stop efforts of the Linux development community.

The “PC lab running Unix” initially was regarded rather like the dancing bear: People were impressed not that it worked well, but that it worked at all. Faculty were amazed that we could run essentially the same set of tools on $2000 boxes as ran on their $4000-$8000 Unix workstations. Benchmarking and practical experience on tasks ranging from document preparation to compiler writing soon revealed that performance on these machines was comparable to that achieved with workstations. Further, the fact that all OS source code was available, and that the developers could be contacted directly (and generally provided very helpful advice via e-mail) were big pluses. The machines went through a shakedown period in the fall of 1995, in which any interested student or faculty was granted access, but the machines were not used as part of any formal course work.

Figure 2

During the shakedown period, we attempted to attach virtually any peripheral we could find to our Linux system and attempted to install Linux on a variety of processors.

The initial six machine configuration was used to support a systems administration course during the spring quarter of 1996, with teams of about six students assigned to each machine. Students installed Linux, configured networking, mounted file systems over the network, installed devices, developed device drivers and made minor kernel modifications. It was becoming clear that with more machines, the lab could be a platform for most, if not all, of our systems courses.

At about the same time, we scavenged a large number of 386 and 486-based machines that were being surplussed as a large college of engineering laboratory was upgraded, and while we found many broken computers, we were able to build somewhere between 10 and 20 working systems, all capable of running Linux. We wanted an environment that was varied and in which hardware was plentiful (if not always state-of-the-art). These older machines provided a platform that could be freely used without worry about damage by any student interested in hacking. One such project included interfacing a color Connectix QuickCam which exported pictures of the laboratory to the World Wide Web and to a file server, thus providing both security and convenience at a low cost.

Figure 3

Based on our preliminary results, we submitted a proposal to the National Science Foundation (NSF) Instructional Laboratory Improvement program to expand this lab, and to use it as our main platform for undergraduate education in operating systems and networks. The NSF agreed to supply $44,512 to purchase equipment, if Auburn University would provide a matching $44,512. The total $89,024 was allocated toward purchase of the following items:

We are currently in the process of acquiring this equipment and developing a curriculum for introductory operating systems and networks courses based on the Linux kernel.

For the introductory operating systems course, we currently use the Nachos instructional operating system, developed at the University of California at Berkeley. We start the students out with a very limited-capability kernel and require them to extend the scheduling, file system, process management and networking in various ways. This OS runs on a MIPS R2/3000 processor simulator, running on top of Solaris on a SPARCstation. We hope to remove most of these software layers by using Linux. We plan to augment the use of our traditional textbook, Operating Systems Concepts by Galvin and Silberschatz, with a Linux-specific text, such as Linux Kernel Internals, by Beck, et al.

Figure 4