Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

6.033 Computer Systems Engineering: Spring 2008

Quiz I
There are 10 questions and 12 pages in this quiz booklet. Answer each question according to the
instructions given. You have 50 minutes to answer the questions.
Most questions are multiple-choice questions. Next to each choice, circle the word True or False,
as appropriate. A correct choice will earn positive points, a wrong choice may earn negative
points, and not picking a choice will score 0. The exact number of positive and negative points
for each choice in a question depends on the question and choice. The maximum score for each
question is given near each question; the minimum for each question is 0. Some questions are
harder than others and some questions earn more points than others—you may want to skim all
questions before starting.
If you find a question ambiguous, be sure to write down any assumptions you make. Be neat and
legible. If we can’t understand your answer, we can’t give you credit!
Write your name in the space below AND at the bottom of each page of this booklet.

THIS IS AN OPEN BOOK, OPEN NOTES QUIZ.

NO PHONES, NO COMPUTERS, NO LAPTOPS, NO PDAS, ETC.

CIRCLE your recitation section number:

10:00 1. Toledo/Zhou
11:00 2. Toledo/Dorai 3. Girod/Zhou 4. van Dijk/Craig
12:00 5. Girod/Craig 6. van Dijk/Dorai
1:00 7. Lampson/Schultz 8. Karger/Daher
2:00 9. Lampson/Daher 10. Karger/Schultz

Do not write in the boxes below

1-4 (xx/30) 5-6 (xx/24) 7-10 (xx/46) Total (xx/100)

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6.033 Spring 2008, Quiz 1 Page 2 of 12

I Reading Questions

1. [6 points]: Which of the following statements are true of the X Window System (as described in
the X Windows paper, reading #5)?
(Circle True or False for each choice.)

A. True / False The only use for windows in X is to give each application its own virtual display.

B. True / False X version 10 supports running an X client on the same computer as the X server.

C. True / False When using an X server in a typical way, with several applications running in separate
top-level windows, it’s only the server that is responsible for determining the placement of top-level
windows.

2. [8 points]: Which of the following statements about Eraser (described in reading #7) is true?
(Circle True or False for each choice.)

A. True / False By extending the basic Lockset algorithm to reduce false positives for initialization
and read sharing (Section 2.2), the number of false negatives is also reduced.

B. True / False For a given program, Eraser detects the same race conditions for every execution of
this program.

C. True / False For each shared-modified variable, the Lockset algorithm determines a set of candidate
locks. The Lockset algorithm reports a race condition if this set is empty.

D. True / False A use of locks that eliminates race conditions also eliminates deadlocks.

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3. [8 points]: Based on the description of UNIX in the 1974 Ritchie and Thompson paper (read-
ing #6), which of the following statements are true?
(Circle True or False for each choice.)

A. True / False The execute() system call creates a new process, loads the requested image, loads
arguments onto the stack, and jumps to the appropriate entry point.

B. True / False A file’s i-node is stored in the first 64 bytes of the file.

C. True / False Suppose a process allocates a variable x on the stack, then forks a child process. The
child may change its value of variable x without changing the value of x seen by the parent process.

D. True / False Any two running processes can communicate by creating a shared pipe.

4. [8 points]: Based on the the investigation of the Therac-25 accidents (reading #4), which of the
following statements about the Therac-25 are true?
(Circle True or False for each choice.)

A. True / False The race conditions that caused some of the accidents could have been avoided by the
use of locks and condition variables.

B. True / False The manufacturer proved that faulty switches caused the first accidents.

C. True / False The authors of the paper believe that, in practice, hardware interlocks are necessary for
safety.

D. True / False The fact that the Therac-25 was a multifunction machine, supporting two types of
radiation, contributed to the accidents.

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II UNIX File System

For his many past sins on previous 6.033 quizzes, Ben Bitdiddle is assigned to spend eternity maintaining a
PDP-11 running the version of UNIX described in the 1974 Ritchie and Thompson paper. The file system
implementation is described in Section IV of the paper.

Recently, one of his user’s database applications failed after reaching the file size limit of 1,082,201,088 bytes
(approx 1 GB). In an effort to solve the problem, he upgraded the computer with an old 4 GB (232 byte)
drive – the disk controller hardware supports 32 bit sector addresses, and can address disks up to 2 TB in
size. Unfortunately, Ben is disappointed to find the file size limit unchanged after installing the new disk.

In this question, the term block address refers to the block pointers stored in i-nodes. In Ben’s system
(described in the paper) each i-node contains 13 block addresses of 4 bytes each; the first 10 block addresses
point to the first 10 blocks of the file, with the remaining 3 addressing the rest of the file. The 11th block
address points to an indirect block, containing 128 block addresses, the 12th block address points to a
double-indirect block, containing 128 indirect block addresses, and the 13th block address points to a triple-
indirect block, containing 128 double-indirect addresses.

5. [12 points]: Which of the following adjustments, applied individually, will allow files larger than
the current 1 GB limit to be stored?
(Circle ALL that apply)

A. Increasing the file size field in the i-node from a 32 bit to 64 bit value.

B. Increasing the number of bytes per block from 512 to 2048 bytes.

C. Reformatting the disk to increase the number of i-nodes allocated in the i-node table.

D. Replacing one of the direct block addresses in each i-node with an additional triple-indirect block
address.

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6.033 Spring 2008, Quiz 1 Page 5 of 12

Ben observes that there are 52 bytes allocated to block addresses in each i-node (13 block addresses at 4
bytes each), and 512 bytes allocated to block addresses in each indirect block (128 block addresses at 4
bytes each). He figures that he can keep the total space allocated to block addresses the same, but change
the size of each block address, to increase the maximum supported file size. While the number of block
addresses in i-nodes and indirect blocks will change, Ben keeps exactly one indirect, one double-indirect
and one triple-indirect block address in each i-node.

6. [12 points]: Which of the following adjustments, applied individually (without any of the modi-
fications in the previous question), will allow files larger than the current 1 GB limit to be stored?
(Circle ALL that apply)

A. Increasing the size of a block address from 4 bytes to 5 bytes.

B. Decreasing the size of a block address from 4 bytes to 3 bytes.

C. Decreasing the size of a block address from 4 bytes to 2 bytes.

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6.033 Spring 2008, Quiz 1 Page 6 of 12

III Course Swap

The Subliminal Sciences department, in order to reduce the department head’s workload, has installed a
web server to help assign lecturers to classes for Fall 2008. There happen to be exactly as many courses
as lecturers, and department policy is that every lecturer teach exactly one course, and every course have
exactly one lecturer. For each lecturer in the department, the server stores the name of the course currently
assigned to that lecturer. The server’s web interface supports one request: to swap the courses assigned to a
pair of lecturers.

Version One of the server’s code looks like this:

// CODE VERSION 1

String assignments[]; // assignments[lecturer] -> a course name

void server():
while true:
m = wait for a request message
value = m.function(m.arguments, ...) // execute function in request message
send value to m.sender

String exchange(lecturer1, lecturer2):

temp = assignments[lecturer1]
assignments[lecturer1] = assignments[lecturer2]
assignments[lecturer2] = temp
return "OK"

Note that there is only this one application thread on the server; the server handles only one request at a
time. Requests contain a function and arguments (in this case exchange(lecturer1, lecturer2))
which is executed by the m.function(m.arguments, ...) call in the server() procedure.

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6.033 Spring 2008, Quiz 1 Page 7 of 12

For all following questions, assume that there are no lost messages and no crashes. The operating system
buffers incoming messages. When the server program asks for a message of a particular type (e.g. a request),
the operating system gives it the oldest buffered message of that type.

Assume that network transmission times never exceed a fraction of a second, and that computation also
takes a fraction of a second. There are no other concurrent operations other than what is mentioned in the
question (and implied by the code), and no other activity on the server computers.

Suppose the server starts out with the following assignments:

assignments["Katabi"] = "Steganography"
assignments["Morris"] = "Numerology"

7. [8 points]: Lecturers Katabi and Morris decide they wish to swap lectures, so that Katabi teaches
Numerology and Morris teaches Steganography. They each send an exchange("Katabi", "Morris")
request to the server at the same time. If you look a minute later at the server, which states are possi-
ble?
(Circle ALL that apply)

A. assignments["Katabi"] = "Numerology"
assignments["Morris"] = "Steganography"

B. assignments["Katabi"] = "Steganography"
assignments["Morris"] = "Numerology"

C. assignments["Katabi"] = "Steganography"
assignments["Morris"] = "Steganography"

D. assignments["Katabi"] = "Numerology"
assignments["Morris"] = "Numerology"

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6.033 Spring 2008, Quiz 1 Page 8 of 12

The Department of Dialectic decides it wants its own lecturer assignment server. Initially it installs a
completely independent server from that of Subliminal, with the same rules (an equal number of lectur-
ers and courses, with a one-to-one matching). The two departments later decide that they wish to allow
their lecturers to teach courses in either department, so they extend the server software in the following
way. Lecturers can send either server a crossexchange request, asking to swap courses between a lec-
turer in that server’s department and a lecturer in the other server’s department. In order to implement
crossexchange, the servers can send each other set-and-get requests, which set a lecturer’s course
and return the lecturer’s previous course. Here’s Version Two of the server code, for both departments:

// CODE VERSION 2
// server() and exchange() are the same as in Version One

crossexchange(local-lecturer, remote-lecturer):
temp1 = assignments[local-lecturer]
send "set-and-get", remote-lecturer, temp1 to other server
temp2 = wait for response to "set-and-get"
assignments[local-lecturer] = temp2
return "OK"

set-and-get(lecturer, course):
old = assignments[lecturer]
assignments[lecturer] = course
return old

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6.033 Spring 2008, Quiz 1 Page 9 of 12

Suppose the starting state on the Subliminal server is:

assignments["Katabi"] = "Steganography"
assignments["Morris"] = "Numerology"

And on the Dialectic server:

assignments["Jerison"] = "Epistemology"
assignments["Goemans"] = "Reductionism"

8. [12 points]: At the same time, lecturer Katabi sends a crossexchange("Katabi", "Jerison")
request to the Subliminal server, and lecturer Goemans sends a crossexchange("Goemans",
"Morris") request to the Dialectic server. If you look a minute later at the Subliminal server, what
states are possible?
(Circle ALL that apply)

A. assignments["Katabi"] = "Steganography"
assignments["Morris"] = "Numerology"

B. assignments["Katabi"] = "Epistemology"
assignments["Morris"] = "Reductionism"

C. assignments["Katabi"] = "Epistemology"
assignments["Morris"] = "Numerology"

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6.033 Spring 2008, Quiz 1 Page 10 of 12

In a quest to increase performance, the two departments make their servers threaded: each server serves
each request in a separate thread. Thus if multiple requests arrive at roughly the same time, the server may
process them in parallel. Each server has multiple CPUs. Here’s the threaded server code, Version Three:

// CODE VERSION 3
// exchange(), crossexchange(), and set-and-get() are the same as in Version Two

server():
while true:
m = wait for a request message
allocate_thread(doit, m) // create a new thread that runs doit(m)

doit(m):
value = m.function(m.arguments, ...)
send value to m.sender
exit() // terminate this thread

9. [12 points]: With the same starting state as the previous question, but with the new version
of the code, lecturer Katabi sends a crossexchange("Katabi", "Jerison") request to the
Subliminal server, and lecturer Goemans sends a crossexchange("Goemans", "Morris")
request to the Dialectic server, at the same time. If you look a minute later at the Subliminal server,
what states are possible?
(Circle ALL that apply)

A. assignments["Katabi"] = "Steganography"
assignments["Morris"] = "Numerology"

B. assignments["Katabi"] = "Epistemology"
assignments["Morris"] = "Reductionism"

C. assignments["Katabi"] = "Epistemology"
assignments["Morris"] = "Numerology"

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6.033 Spring 2008, Quiz 1 Page 11 of 12

An alert 6.033 student notes that Version Three may be subject to race conditions. He changes the code to
have one lock per lecturer, stored in an array called locks[]. He changes exchange(), crossexchange(),
and set-and-get() to acquire locks on the lecturer(s) they affect. Here is the result, Version Four:

// CODE VERSION 4
// server() and doit() are the same as in Version Three

exchange(lecturer1, lecturer2):
acquire(locks[lecturer1])
acquire(locks[lecturer2])
temp = assignments[lecturer1]
assignments[lecturer1] = assignments[lecturer2]
assignments[lecturer2] = temp
release(locks[lecturer1])
release(locks[lecturer2])
return "OK"

crossexchange(local-lecturer, remote-lecturer):
acquire(locks[local-lecturer])
temp1 = assignments[local-lecturer]
send "set-and-get", remote-lecturer, temp1 to other server
temp2 = wait for response to "set-and-get"
assignments[local-lecturer] = temp2
release(locks[local-lecturer])
return "OK"

set-and-get(lecturer, course):
acquire(locks[lecturer])
old = assignments[lecturer]
assignments[lecturer] = course
release(locks[lecturer])
return old

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6.033 Spring 2008, Quiz 1 Page 12 of 12

10. [14 points]: This code is subject to deadlock. For each situation below, indicate whether
deadlock can occur. In each situation, there is no activity other than that mentioned.
(Circle Yes or No for each choice.)

A. Yes / No Client A sends exchange("Katabi", "Morris") at the same time that client B
sends exchange("Katabi", "Morris"), both to the Subliminal server.

B. Yes / No Client A sends exchange("Katabi", "Morris") at the same time that client B
sends exchange("Morris", "Katabi"), both to the Subliminal server.

C. Yes / No Client A sends crossexchange("Morris", "Jerison") to the Subliminal server

at the same time that client B sends crossexchange("Goemans", "Katabi") to the Dialec-
tic server.

D. Yes / No Client A sends crossexchange("Morris", "Jerison") to the Subliminal server

at the same time that client B sends crossexchange("Jerison", "Morris") to the Dialec-
tic server.

E. Yes / No Client A sends crossexchange("Morris", "Jerison") to the Subliminal server

at the same time that client B sends crossexchange("Goemans", "Morris") to the Dialec-
tic server.

End of Quiz I

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