willOS

willOS is a minimal 64 bits kernel (not really an Operating System because it cannot do a lot of things currently). Some screencasts are available in this Twitter thread.

Setting up a development environment

The following dependencies are required to build this project:

• gcc (build-essential)
• nasm
• ld
• grub-mkrescue (part of grub2-common)
• xorriso
• (optional) qemu

This project targets x86_64 architectures, so you likely need a cross-compilation toolchain.

Getting the sources

This project contains git submodules. You have to clone the main project as well as the submodules, either by using this command:

$ git clone --recurse-submodules <url pointing to this repo>

or by using this command if you already have a copy of this git repository:

$ git submodule update --init

Docker (recommended way)

Use Docker with the provided Dockerfile. Start by building the toolchain image:

$ docker build -t willos/toolchain .
[...]

You can then use it with docker run:

$ docker run -it --rm -v $(pwd):/app willos/toolchain make help
clean                          remove build artifacts
console-font                   compile the (default) kernel console font
debug                          build the OS in debug mode
docs                           build the docs
fmt                            automatically format the code with clang-format
gdb                            build, run the OS in debug mode and enable GDB
initrd                         build the init ram disk
iso                            build the image of the OS (.iso)
kernel                         compile the kernel
libc                           build the libc (userland)
run-debug                      run the OS in debug mode
run-test                       run the OS in test mode
run                            run the OS in release mode
test                           run unit tests
userland                       compile the userland programs (statically linked to libc)
version                        print tool versions

MacOS

Install Homebrew, then run the following commands:

$ brew install nasm
$ brew install xorriso
$ brew install qemu
$ brew install x86_64-elf-gcc

You need to tap hawkw/x86_64-pc-elf and hawkw/grub to be able to install the GRUB utility:

$ brew tap hawkw/x86_64-pc-elf
$ brew tap hawkw/grub
$ brew install x86_64-pc-elf-gcc
$ brew install grub --with-x86_64-pc-elf --HEAD

Hat tip to Eliza Weisman for the taps!

Linux

See the circle-ci config.

Building willOS

The different final files are located in the build/<arch>/dist/ folder.

Debug

To build the ISO in debug mode, run:

$ make clean debug

To compile the OS in debug mode, build the ISO, and start qemu with the OS loaded, run:

$ make clean run-debug

Note: in DEBUG mode, logging uses the serial port COM1 to write various debugging information. qemu is configured to write the output of this serial port to ./log/debug.log. DEBUG level logs are not necessarily written by default, though, and it is possible to enable DEBUG logs for specific modules like this:

# Enable the debug logs for the "net" and "fs" modules
$ make ENABLE_NET_DEBUG=1 ENABLE_FS_DEBUG=1 clean run-debug

The available debug variables are:

• ENABLE_CONFIG_DEBUG
• ENABLE_CORE_DEBUG
• ENABLE_FS_DEBUG
• ENABLE_MMU_DEBUG
• ENABLE_NET_DEBUG
• ENABLE_PROC_DEBUG
• ENABLE_SYS_DEBUG
• ENABLE_USERLAND_DEBUG

There is also ENABLE_ALL_DEBUG to turn all debug logs on.

Release

To compile the OS in release mode, build the ISO, and start qemu with the OS loaded, run:

$ make clean run

Boot options

The GRUB configuration offers two choices: the normal mode and the kernel mode. The normal (or "default") mode will load the /bin/init program in user mode ("ring 3"). The kernel mode will load the kshell instead and will stay in kernel mode (as its name implies).

It is possible to change the command line by passing the GRUB_KERNEL_CMDLINE variable to make:

$ make clean GRUB_KERNEL_CMDLINE="/bin/init foo bar" run-debug

Early boot sequence

1. The BIOS loads the bootloader (GRUB) from the ISO
2. The bootloader reads the kernel executable and finds the multiboot header
3. The bootloader copies the .boot and .text sections to memory (to addresses 0x100000 and 0x100020)
4. The bootloader jumps to the entry point (at 0x100020)
5. Various checks are performed to make sure we can continue the boot process
6. Page table and paging are configured and enabled
7. Load a 64-bit Global Descriptor Table
8. Load a Task State Segment
9. Reload all the data segment registers
10. Call the C kmain() function
11. Eventually switch to user mode and call /bin/init by default

Memory management

During the early boot sequence, we identity map the first gigabyte of our kernel with 512 2MiB pages. When kmain() is called, we call paging_init() to update the mapping:

1. Memory from 0x00000000 to 0x000A0000 is identity mapped (present)
2. Memory from 0x000A0000 to 0x00100000 is identity mapped (present + writable)
3. The VBE framebuffer might be identity mapped as well (present + writable, and only if ENABLE_FRAMEBUFFER=1 is passed to make)
4. The kernel sections are identity mapped with the correct flags for each section
5. The multiboot information is identity mapped
6. The multiboot modules are identity mapped with the correct flags (in our case, it is the init ramdisk)
7. The memory allocated for the frame allocator is then identity mapped

In addition, paging_init() will:

1. enable the write protection
2. enable the no-execute feature
3. create a guard page

Memory map

Virtual address space

• 0x00000000 to 0x00100000: the first 1MiB area is reserved
• 0x00100000: the kernel code and data and multiboot modules
• 0x0020xxxx: after the end of the previous area (which is computed at runtime using the multiboot information), we allocate some space for the frame allocator
• 0x10000000: kernel heap area (we currently have a fixed heap size)
• 0x40000000: user space

License

willOS is released under the MIT License. See the bundled LICENSE file for details. In addition, some parts of this project have their own licenses attached (either in the source files or in a LICENSE file next to them).