Welcome to the OSLab Home Page

Last updated: 16 February 2001

Background

OSLab is a practical, modular approach to teaching the principles of operating systems and concurrency using the PC. The modules are designed in a structured fashion, each building upon the material covered in earlier modules. The course is structured so that students learn theory as well as the practical; work done in earlier assignments is incorporated in later ones, ultimately leading to the implementation of a windowing system atop a message passing micro-kernel.

OSLab is organized as follows:

• Machine architecture. Interrupts, registers, and devices.

• Memory. Types of memory organization (linear, segmented, and paged).

• Processes. Sharing the machine between programs.

• Concurrency. Accessing shared resources using semaphores (both binary and counting).

• Messaging. Interprocess communications using messages.

• Applications. Sample applications.

A description of the internal functionality of OSLab and some early teaching experiences can be obtained from the paper Teaching Operating Systems Using Turbo C. This paper includes a description of the features of Turbo (now Borland) C that can be used to turn the PC into effective OS teaching tool.

Software

The OSLab software is available from this Web site and is listed below:

• OSLAB (directory)
  
  • oslab.zip
  • MODULE1 (subdirectory):
    
    • Description of module 1
      
    • module1.zip
      

  • MODULE2 (subdirectory):
    
    • Description of module 2
      
    • module2.zip
      

  • MODULE3 (subdirectory):
    
    • Description of module 3
      
    • module3.zip
      

  • MODULE4 (subdirectory):
    
    • Description of module 4
      
    • module4.zip
      • BUSYWAIT (subsubdirectory):
        
        • busywait.zip
        
        
      • QUEUES (subsubdirectory):
        
        • queues.zip

  • MODULE5 (subdirectory):
    
    • Description of module 5
      
    • module5.zip

  • MODULE6 (subdirectory):
    
    • Description of module 6
      
    • module6.zip

All of the above modules contain objects and executables made using Borland C++ version 4.5. If using a different compiler, it will probably be necessary to remake all the files using the make utility (a makefile is available in each directory). Note that changes to the compiler and its include directory may be necessary, as described in each makefile.

Text

A text based upon OSLab is in progress.

More Information

Contact Larry Hughes for more information about OSLab.

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