Nachos and Related Information

How to get started by installing Nachos in your account.

A quick tour through the operating system for the simulated workstation.

A quick tour through the simulated workstation.

Some information about working in groups in CSCF's Unix environment. This includes information about file access control, and some suggestions for sharing Nachos files among the members of a group.

Unix File Permissions

Find out what various file permissions mean and how to manipulate them.

Debugging Nachos

A tour through Nachos' built-in debugging facilities, and how to get started running Nachos under GDB.

Cyclic Include Files

There are dependencies among the header files used in Nachos. Adding one #include can make your code not compile. Find out more.

Running Nachos on Linux ; Running Nachos on Mac OS X (PPC)

Some information for those who would like to run Nachos at home on a Linux PC or on a PPC Mac.

Nachos Tutorial Slides

PDF version of the slides used in the Nachos tutorial

Nachos Architecture

Diagram of the Nachos OS running beside the MIPS machine simulator

Nachos System Call Example

Diagram of system call handling in Nachos.

Non-UW Nachos Material

Nachos Overview Paper: This is a paper about Nachos by the authors of Nachos. It describes the ideas behind Nachos and discusses the assignments as they once existed. The assignments currently being used at Waterloo are different from the ones described in this paper.
Overview of MIPS registers: A description of all the MIPS registers and a mapping between the numeric and symbolic names for them.
Road Map Through Nachos by Thomas Narten: This is a more detailed overview of Nachos, written by Thomas Narten. Previous classes have found it useful. However, you should be aware of several things before reading this. First, it describes an older version of Nachos than the one installed at UW. The descriptions are still mostly relevant, but there have been some changes. Second, the UW versions of the Nachos projects differ from others, including Narten's. Don't take assignment-specific comments too literally. A Postscript version of the Road Map is also available, perhaps unofficially.