This very simple assignment will show you how to use the virtual machine image we have prepared for you and to set up the environment for your homeworks and submissions. You will need the following:

• The HW0 handout
• The virtual machine image
  • For Intel processors: x86 virtual machine image
  • For Apple Silicon: ARM virtual machine image
• The virtual machine monitor
  • For Windows and Linux users: VMware Workstation 17 Pro
  • For macOS users: VMware Fusion 13 Pro

If you would like to code outside the VM, our SSH guide may be useful.

Please keep in mind that any code you save in the virtual machine will be lost if you delete the VM image itself, unless you check it into your GitHub repository (which we provide; please see the handout for details). The VM will be the official environment for grading all the homework assignments.

This assignment – a simple parallel sorting program – will give you some hands-on experience with concurrency and its impact on application performance, as well as with several basic UNIX primitives. You will need the HW1 handout, as well as some framework code to get to started, as described in the handout. You should continue using the virtual machine image you installed for Homework 0.

For this assignment, you will build a pair of simple email servers (SMTP and POP3) that can be used with a real email client. The assignment involves socket programming, server design, as well as working with RFC-style protocol specifications. You will need the following:

• The HW2 handout
• The basic SMTP specification (RFC 821)
• The basic POP3 specification (RFC 1939)

For this assignment, you will build a replicated chat server that uses multicast to distribute the chat messages. The server should support three different ordering modes: unordered, FIFO, and total multicast. You will need the HW3 handout, as well as some testing tools, which you can download from the link specified in the handout. You should continue using the virtual machine image you installed for Homework 0 for your final testing before submission.

For the final project, you will build a small cloud platform in groups of four. The cloud platform should support a webmail service and a storage service, and it should be based on a distributed key-value store. You will need the project handout, and you should maintain your code in a shared GitHub repository that we will create for each team. You do not need to use the VM for the project.

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