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Show HN: A 10KiB kernel for cloud apps

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Re: Show HN: A 10KiB kernel for cloud apps

#2

Post by bflesch »

Sorry this might be an extremely stupid question, but can you please explain the benefits of this and what other (larger?) alternatives are?

I understand that this "exokernel" provides more performant hardware access for software and it seems to be written from scratch in assembler.

Does this mean that one should expect a lot of security and robustness issues, which means it should only be used for internal services and never be exposed to untrusted networks?

Re: Show HN: A 10KiB kernel for cloud apps

#3

Post by heliumtera »

bflesch wrote: post #2

Sorry this might be an extremely stupid question, but can you please explain the benefits of this and what other (larger?) alternatives are? I understand that this "exokernel" provides more performant hardware access for software and it seems to be written from scratch in assembler. Does this mean that one should expect a lot of security and robustness issues, which means it should only be used for internal services…

If one decides to boot an arbitrary system, pointing at whatever would be the latest version of exec.asm, it doesn't even matter what the project is today and whatever the setup script is doing. If one chooses to use this, one decides to handover the virtual machine ownership. Your system is whatever OP decides, now or in the future.

Edit: made a clear mistake here. One would clearly not be booting on lates version of exec.asm. It would be libBareMetal.asm instead.

Sorry for confusion guys, totally safe and effective

if [ -x "$(command -v curl)" ]; then curl -s -o libBareMetal.asm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ReturnInfinity/BareMetal/m... else wget -q https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ReturnInfinity/BareMetal/m... fi

Re: Show HN: A 10KiB kernel for cloud apps

#4

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

Given that this is (AFAICT) a way to efficiently run exactly one program on a machine (probably a VM), I would have liked to see more time spent on the particulars of getting a program running on it. Like, can you easily run existing software on BareMetal? Could you compile nginx to run on it? Or does software have to be written specifically for this environment? And either way, how exactly do you actually build your software for/into(?) the image?

Re: Show HN: A 10KiB kernel for cloud apps

#5

Post by cestith »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #4

Given that this is (AFAICT) a way to efficiently run exactly one program on a machine (probably a VM), I would have liked to see more time spent on the particulars of getting a program running on it. Like, can you easily run existing software on BareMetal? Could you compile nginx to run on it? Or does software have to be written specifically for this environment? And either way, how exactly do you actually build your…

You can’t run most Unix/Linux apps without porting.

https://github.com/ReturnInfinity/BareMetal-Examples/blob/ma...

Re: Show HN: A 10KiB kernel for cloud apps

#6

Post by ianseyler »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #4

Given that this is (AFAICT) a way to efficiently run exactly one program on a machine (probably a VM), I would have liked to see more time spent on the particulars of getting a program running on it. Like, can you easily run existing software on BareMetal? Could you compile nginx to run on it? Or does software have to be written specifically for this environment? And either way, how exactly do you actually build your…

The plan is to get existing *nix programs ported over, yes. That will require some more work (ideally a compatibility layer/library).

Re: Show HN: A 10KiB kernel for cloud apps

#7

Post by messe »

Wow, that's some nostalgia for me. I remember encountering BareMetalOS and its bootloader Pure64 back when I still lurked the OSDev.org forums, probably more than 15 years ago at this point. Glad to see you're still at it!

Re: Show HN: A 10KiB kernel for cloud apps

#9

Post by tracker1 »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #4

Given that this is (AFAICT) a way to efficiently run exactly one program on a machine (probably a VM), I would have liked to see more time spent on the particulars of getting a program running on it. Like, can you easily run existing software on BareMetal? Could you compile nginx to run on it? Or does software have to be written specifically for this environment? And either way, how exactly do you actually build your…

I would think that with a bit of work, it should be possible to implement a baseline for a language like Rust or Go to target that environment with a "bare" application that may or may not have a direct filesystem interface to use.

Which could be pretty nice. Just Enough OS, so to speak.

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