Doubt about kernal and .exe file....

[isaisa]

Hi,
This is a very general question that i would like to ask about the .exe file and the kernal of OS.

I read some articles on this but not yet clear on the topic.

My question is :
What is a responsibility of OS kernal ??? I got confused in to words kernal & device drivers. Please tell me the diff. Are the system calls made by user programe a part of kernal's job ????

Second question is .... what is a format of .exe file ??? I mean what info it contains to make a program running ??

I am asking this questions in this forum by experiancing the response and also by thinking that 'C' programmers are the best pool to answer my querry.

Thanks in advance.
Sanjay

 

[yatindra]

See the responsibility of device driver is to manage the device and providing the IO and it results to the Kernel. They are device specific.
While the tasks of Kernel include Scheduling of User Process, Memory management(it includes allocation and deallocation of the memory to the User process and the other parts of the kernel ), Device IO on behalf of the User Process, File/File system(its a part of the Kernel) management, Security management among the processes and many more...

The system call made by the user is a part of the kernel, rather we shud say these are the entry points of the Kernel, to take service from the kernel.

See every executable contains the information for OS as well as user specific code and data. Every OS has their own standard for executable format so the DOS/Windows also. This is a COFF format presently but the previous OS will have Windows own standard format of .exe.

 

[isaisa]

Thanks Yatindra.

I got some idea about the Kernal and Device Driver. Still i need to do some homework.

About the .exe format you mentioned here, i am trying to understand it but still in a confused state as how .c file converted to .obj and then to .exe after linking stage. I am searching on this.
Still i will be greatful to you if you slightly elaborate your point.

Thanks for your help and time.
Sanjay