Distributed Systems

Some important points for the midterm:

No registration for the midterm. There is no registration for the midterm. Just show up in class at the usual time on Wednesday, May 28. The exam starts at 10:15 as usual and will be set for ~90 minutes

Scope. Everything covered up to the midterm, including all discussions in the lectures, notes/slides, and assigned readings. The midterm will not have questions specific to the course project.

Open book (no Internet, no interactive agents). The exam is open book, open notes. You can bring a digital device pre-loaded with notes, slides, papers, etc., from any source(s). However, use of the Internet and any interactive agents (even one those that are offline) is strictly forbidden during the exam. 

Grading policy.  We will only consider your two best scores from the three exams (midterm, final, repeat). The midterm requires preparing only the first half of the course. It is, therefore, in your interest to take the midterm.

 

Hi everyone,

Just a reminder that Quiz 4 will take place today in class. Please come to class in person to take the quiz. Each person has to take the quiz individually, and we will only assign grade to those individuals who pass the quiz, regardless of the team.

Just to reiterate, you need to take the quiz INDIVIDUALLY, in order to get any points for the assignment. 

 

Hi all,

A clarification about today's lecture: In the Bayou design, the information stored in lieu of truncated log entries is a list of the (Lamport) timestamps of the last discarded update from each replica. For the example on lecture slides 20 and 21, the entry is [-, 2,1] because all updates from P1 are still in the log (the '-' in the first position), the last discarded update from P2 is D with P2's local timestamp 2 (the '2' in the second position) and the last discarded update from P3 is E with P3's local timestamp 1 (the '1' in the third position). This is also explained on the lecture slides linked from the schedule page, and in the Bayou paper.

-- Deepak

 

Hi all,

Some of you have asked about the course policy for cases where you have to miss an in-class quiz for an important reason. The policy is listed below and is also available on the course main page now.

"If you have to miss a class with a quiz for an important reason, inform the TAs at least two days before the class. Include the reason. The TAs will work out an alternative arrangement with you. If you do not inform the TAs two days in advance, you will not get any points for that project stage. If you fall sick on the day of a quiz unexpectedly, contact the TAs after you recover and produce a doctor's note to work out an alternative arrangement."

In particular, if you will miss the class this coming Monday (1st quiz), inform the TAs at the latest by tomorrow (26.04). Include the reason for missing the class.

 

-- The course staff

 

Hi everyone,

Since some students were confused about the due date for Lab 1, we have decided to make the due date for Lab 1 Saturday April 26 23:59, with No Slip Days Allowed. This means that you can submit Lab 1 until April 26 without being deducted any slip days. Note, that you cannot take any additional Slip Days for this lab. So, everybody has the full 10 slip days for Lab 2 - 8.

In the future, all labs will be due on Wednesdays. You can find the schedule for the semester here: Project Schedule. The submission will be open until Saturday to account for the Slip Days. The quizzes for the Labs will take place on Monday following the Labs.

If you have any questions regarding this, please feel free to contact the TAs.