Research And Realization Of A Visual Operating System Virtual Lab Based On Stub Method

Operating System Principle Course is an import course of Computer Science of Higher Institute.It is also a well-known course of high teaching difficulty.The difficulty lies in the experimental teaching.The lack and inefficiency of experiment teaching tools exists in the experiment teaching.In order to address this problem,VOSLS-A Visual Operating System Virtual Lab Based On Stub Method is proposed. VOSLS contains two parts.The first part is the experimental operating system kernel developed for VOSLS.This kernel combines the advantages of the macro operating system kernel (operating system kernel of Linux) and the micro operating system kernel(operating system kernel of Minux). So it is very suitable for the students to experiment. This kernel contains boot module,protected mode module,the page storage module,process management module,input-output system module,inter-process communication module,the file system module and the memory management module. Every module provides corresponding experimental interfaceto student. These modules provide experiments for students by gradual building the operating system kernel. The second part,which is built on the experimental operating system kernel developed for VOSLS,is the main part of the VOSLS program. Its goal is to provide highly integrated and automated operating system experimental environment for the students. And it uses Stub method to debug the experimental operating system kernel, and reduces the complex GDB debugging protocols to simple Stub communication protocols. It communicates with the experimental operating system running on a Virtual Machine through the floppy or hard disk image files. Then the running operating system's information is graphically and vividly delivered to the users by using visualization graphics engine technology.Practice has proved that the use of this system can shorten the time using to study the operating system kernel code, simplify the experimental procedure, make the running process of the experimental kernel graphical, and finally significantly improved the experimental teaching effect of the operating system principles course.