michalismeng/suckless-os

A simplistic micro-kernel.

Suckless Operating System

This is an attempt to make a simplistic yet working operating system. Our main focus will be on creating an elegant and solid design, even if we end up sacrificing performance in terms of speed and space.

Our kernel is going to be a micro-kernel. Our primary target is x86-64, although it would be interesting to explore other architectures as well.

We use the BOOTBOOT bootloader, a multi-platform bootloader designed mainly for micro-kernels. We are interested in its ability to directly setup a x86-64 long mode environment, with color mode enabled. You can find more information at https://gitlab.com/bztsrc/bootboot.

Kernel features

Here is a list of the kernel features that we plan to implement over time:

• Logging mechanism
• Physical memory manager
• Virtual memory manager
• Interprocess communication mechanism
• Process scheduler

After implementing the above, we will turn our attention to the kernel's ecosystem: the necessary drivers to support basic user interaction.

How to build

Building a bootable image of the kernel is a three step process:

1. Build the Rust kernel and produce a freestanding ELF archive.
2. Put the ELF archive in an initrd directory.
3. Pack initrd into a bootable .img file, by using BOOTBOOT tools.

The above can be accomplished by running

$ make kernel
$ make initrd
$ make disk

Note that each make rule depends on the previous one(s), so running the last command is equivalent to running all of them. In addition, if you don't have BOOTBOOT, the above commands will clone the project from GitLab and build it. For more information on the build process, take a look at the Makefile in the project's root directory.

How to run

To run the project, execute:

$ make run-x86

The above command will start a QEMU virtual machine running our kernel.

You can also specify the number of cores of the virtual machine. For example:

$ make ncores=4 run-x86

Do not expect to see anything printed on screen. The kernel only outputs information to the serial port.