Boot a linux kernel right inside your browser. • Hacker News Board

Re: Boot a linux kernel right inside your browser.

#151

Post by nupark2 » Tue, May 17, 2011, 3:16 PM UTC

euroclydon wrote: post #145

cakeface wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is explained well in the Technical Notes section of the site. http://bellard.org/jslinux/tech.html

I saw that, but I don't understand how it's booted.

From what I can see from the minimized JS, it:

- Loads the linux binary and the root memory disk image into 'memory' at the expected addresses (0x100000 and 0x400000, respectively)

- Sets the interpreted x86 CPU's EIP to the kernel's entry point

- Initializes additional requisite register state

- Starts execution.

Take a look at load_binary() and start() functions.

[edit] rickard already discussed this here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2555552

Re: Boot a linux kernel right inside your browser.

#152

Post by aw3c2 » Tue, May 17, 2011, 3:17 PM UTC

re wrote: post #50

Qerub wrote: post #46

ERROR: your browser is too old to run JS/Linux. You should use a recent browser such as Firefox 4.x or Google Chrome. No, it isn't. Stop using user-agent matching and start using JavaScript feature detection instead.

It does. It tests for ArrayBuffer support, outputting that message if the necessary constructors aren't found. What browser are you using that you expect to be supported? (Safari doesn't have support for ArrayBuffer, but a recent WebKit nightly does, and this runs in that).

Even in that case the error messages is still wrong. My browser is up to date, it just does not support the needed feature(s).

Re: Boot a linux kernel right inside your browser.

#153

Post by danvet » Tue, May 17, 2011, 3:27 PM UTC

jokermatt999 wrote: post #139

dendory wrote: post #89

Fun command to use: reboot -f

Crashed Firefox portable 4.0.1 for me. What's the intended result?

Iirc the way to reboot an x86 machine is to triple-fault, i.e. execute an interrupt in an interrupt in an interrupt. Could be done by e.g. marking the pagefault handler's stack space as "not available" in the pagetables.

Now if the virtual cpu does not implement that reboot behaviour, the likely result is just an endless recursion of fault handlers. So the script runs an endless loop, hanging Firefox until it notices this and stops it.

Re: Boot a linux kernel right inside your browser.

#154

Post by m0th87 » Tue, May 17, 2011, 3:35 PM UTC

The emulator code is just 86 kb, and it isn't even aggressively minified!

http://bellard.org/jslinux/cpux86.js

Re: Boot a linux kernel right inside your browser.

#155

Post by delinka » Tue, May 17, 2011, 3:43 PM UTC

Cloud VPS in the browser. ("Please standby while we create a browser tab for your new instance...")

"The browser as the operating."

Someone must buzzword the hell out of this and then create a new startup based on it.

Re: Boot a linux kernel right inside your browser.

#156

Post by spudlyo » Tue, May 17, 2011, 3:49 PM UTC

vessenes wrote: post #10

My favorite bit: # cat /proc/cpuinfo ... f00f bug: yes # Hah! 20 bogomips by the way, at least on Chrome on a MacBook Pro. I sense a whole new era of browser performance testing..

Heh, I get 'Illegal instruction' when I compile and run:

long main = 0xc8c70ff0;

That used to crash my old Pentium box.

Re: Boot a linux kernel right inside your browser.

#157

Post by mnutt » Tue, May 17, 2011, 3:54 PM UTC

dkasper wrote: post #68

wladimir wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, this is completely awesome. I first thought it was some remotely hosted virtual machine, but it really runs inside the browser. Insane! Especially considered how fast it is. When he adds X, we can run Firefox inside Linux inside Firefox inside Linux :') Edit: seems the terminal emulator supports ANSI escape codes such as the 16 Linux colors, but not the XTerm 256 color mode (\e[38;5;CCm) or Konsole 24 bit (\e…

No network connection yet either :( ~ # ifconfig lo Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1 RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B

This would require a server-side component, as the browser has cross-domain limitations and couldn't generate arbitrary network traffic anyway. You could tunnel through websockets, however.

Re: Boot a linux kernel right inside your browser.

#158

Post by windsurfer » Tue, May 17, 2011, 3:55 PM UTC

bhoung wrote: post #137

starwed wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, you can run Firefox inside of Firefox... just enter the url: chrome://browser/content/browser.xul

why??

Because XUL is rendered with gecko.

Re: Boot a linux kernel right inside your browser.

#159

Post by zipdog » Tue, May 17, 2011, 4:52 PM UTC

Qerub wrote: post #46

ERROR: your browser is too old to run JS/Linux. You should use a recent browser such as Firefox 4.x or Google Chrome. No, it isn't. Stop using user-agent matching and start using JavaScript feature detection instead.

Yeah, its a poorly worded error message for anyone running the latest version of Opera

Re: Boot a linux kernel right inside your browser.

#160

Post by anc2020 » Tue, May 17, 2011, 5:01 PM UTC

CountHackulus wrote: post #144

wladimir wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, this is completely awesome. I first thought it was some remotely hosted virtual machine, but it really runs inside the browser. Insane! Especially considered how fast it is. When he adds X, we can run Firefox inside Linux inside Firefox inside Linux :') Edit: seems the terminal emulator supports ANSI escape codes such as the 16 Linux colors, but not the XTerm 256 color mode (\e[38;5;CCm) or Konsole 24 bit (\e…

Sadly my dreams were also crushed when I discovered that lynx wasn't in there. However, wget is there, so all the building blocks are in place.

As far as I can guess, any networking implementation would have to pass low level requests through a proxy on the server, which would end up making things pretty slow even on an unburdened server.