COMP 430 Presentation Guidelines

The purpose of this assignment is to investigate a particular component of the Linux kernel, and present your findings to your classmates.

Presentation requirements:

• Prepare readings. You should prepare a set of readings so that we will be able to come to your talk with intelligent questions. Readings can be from Linux Kernel Development, from our textbook, or from the web. You need to have readings prepared by the Wednesday before you give your presentation. If you need photocopies made, you can give me a copy of your readings no later than noon on the Tuesday before your presentation. The amount of reading you assign should be on the order of other reading assignments for this course.

• Make an alteration to your component the Linux kernel. Probably the best thing to do is to find a place in the code where something interesting is happening and insert a printk that provides some information about what the kernel is up to. For example, if you are working with the scheduler, you might add a printk that prints out the id of the next task that is scheduled. You are welcome to do something more ambitious, but I suggest that you start small. Be prepared to describe the change you made, show the code, and demonstrate the result.

• Prepare a presentation. You should have some sort of visual aids prepared for your presentation. This could take the form of a power point presentation, a series of web pages, or whatever else works best for you. Your presentation should include diagrams, code segments, and other visual aids where appropriate. After you've given your presentation you'll submit your supporting material to me, and I'll post it to the course web page. By the end of the class we'll have collaboratively prepared a nice primer on the Linux kernel.

  If you are planning on using power point, or something similar, a rough rule of thumb for how much to prepare is that every slide takes about two minutes. So for a 45 minute presentation should have about 20-25 substantive slides. I suggest that you practice your presentation at least once to get an idea of timing. I won't reduce your grade if you go over the time limit (as long as you stay within the class period), but you should have enough information to fill the full 45 minutes.

  Topics that you should address in your presentation:

  • What are the main issues/challenges in implementing your kernel component? What are the big picture issues that we should be keeping in mind as we look at the details of the implementation?
  • What are the main data structures that your kernel component makes use of, and how are they organized?
  • What are the important algorithms and why were they chosen?
  • (Note that the previous two bullet points should include code walk-throughs where appropriate)
  • What change did you make to the kernel?
  • What questions do you have left about your kernel component?
    As with any research project, your presentation should include citations where appropriate.

• Prepare at least three exam questions based on the material that you present. These should be short answer questions. They should test for understanding of some of the important concepts in your talk. They should not be incredibly difficult or obscure.

Presentation Topics

• Process Management (week 4) (Sarah Jerrod)

• Scheduler (week 5)

• Memory Management (week 6) Aidan

• Modules (any time)

• File Systems(week 8) Evan

• Networking (week 9)

• Security Enhanced Linux (week 10)(Mat Trevor)

• Detailed Look at a Device Driver (any time)

Grading

The following list is intended to give an indication of what my grading criteria will be for evaluating the presentations:

• A: The presentation is well organized. Time is used efficiently. Complicated concepts are explained using appropriate figures and diagrams. Presentation content is clearly based on a close reading of the relevant kernel code, and not just on material from secondary sources. The presentation gives a sense of the forest as well as the trees: it goes into detail where appropriate but also gives a sense of the big picture concepts behind particular implementation decisions. The presenter doesn't know everything about his or her kernel component but, to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, the unknowns are known unknowns.

• B: The presentation is well organized. Time is used efficiently. Complicated concepts are explained using appropriate figures and diagrams. The presentation may make substantial use of material from secondary sources, but it is clear that a real effort has been made to understand the relevant source code. Code walk-throughs hit on all of the most important code segments. Although the presenter may not understand all of the implementation details, he or she has a good general sense for how the various pieces work together.

• C: Presentation meets the time limit, but does not use time efficiently. Most of the main points are hit, but the organization leaves something to be desired. Presentation material is based mostly on secondary sources. Presentation does include some relevant code examples, but the presenter doesn't display a good understanding of how the code works, or how it fits in with the rest of the kernel.

• D-F: Presentation is a hastily repackaged version of information taken from 1-2 secondary sources. Presentation does not contribute much beyond what the audience could have learned from reading those sources directly.