Re: L4::BSD, Subclass your OS

I can't think of a single good reason to redo Unix/Linux/BSD yet again.

Still, good luck to you I guess.  But I suppose this just proves Rob  
Pike was right.  No one's doing anything original :)

I'll likely get into #l4bsd later today and we can chat more.

Dave
On May 11, 2006, at 4:13 AM, R. Tyler Ballance wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> - - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Well, let me first introduce myself. I'm R. Tyler Ballance, I'm a  
> Computer Engineering student at Texas A&M University. I've been  
> using BSD (Free/Net/Open/Mir/ekko) since I bought a G3 iBook 4 or 5  
> years ago, and was introduced to open source. I participated in the  
> Google Summer of Code last year, and started work on porting  
> Apple's launchd utility to FreeBSD, according to Google, I  
> succeeded in my project, but it's terribly unfinished, and it's  
> nothing i'm proud of. I now run my own software and consulting  
> company to pay the bills, but my interest in getting a very Darwin- 
> esque operating system running on top of the L4 microkernel is  
> still quite strong.
>
> Thusly, I think starting  project, tentatively named L4::BSD, would  
> be a magnificent way to really introduce myself into the inner  
> workings of FreeBSD. A project like this has a few wonderful  
> possibilities. The most enticing, in my opinion, of which, could be  
> platform agnostic device drivers. Since the operating system would  
> run in user-space on top of the L4 microkernel, as well as device  
> drivers (hopefully I'm not misunderstanding the concept), I believe  
> it would be possible to merely define an interface for interacting  
> with the driver, which would then run on top of the L4 kernel (in  
> user space) regardless of what the main operating system (L4Linux,  
> L4:BSD) would be. The basic idea would be that a developer could  
> write a driver for his specific network card, let's call it an  
> UnrealTech card, which adheres to some L4::Network standard for  
> network devices, then in the host operating system, if a the host  
> OS can "speak" this L4::Network standard, it could easily use this  
> card, as well as any other operating system running on top of L4,  
> that spoke the L4::Network standard. (it's a pretty lofty idea, but  
> in my opinion, would be an excellent use of the microkernel  
> abstraction) Developing something like this would be along the  
> lines of Apple's IOKit subsystem, which provides a wonderful  
> interface for dealing with hardware through the Mach microkernel.
>
> jkoshy@ of the FreeBSD project also pointed out to me on the  
> freebsd-hackers@ list that there would also be the possibility of  
> "migrating VMs between machines
> 'on-the-fly', as described in the following paper: http:// 
> www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Research/SRG/netos/papers/2005-migration-nsdi- 
> pre.pdf" Which would be a fantastic use of a microkernel. If i  
> remember correctly, Xen uses a microkernel approach to running host  
> operating systems.
>
> Presumably we'd use L4::Pistachio, which I believe is a wonderful  
> microkernel to start with. Since L4 is largely an academic  
> microkernel (as is Mach, and that didn't stop Apple ;)), a lot of  
> documentation, white papers, test code, and proof-of-concepts are  
> out there. TU Dresden (which i've considered attending) has plenty  
> of great resources as well as some of their Fiasco microkernel work  
> all posted here: http://os.inf.tu-dresden.de/
>
>
> I'm still researching, I took my last final exam yesterday, so I'm  
> looking into and gathering information on the best way to start  
> working on this project. I've also registered the channel #l4bsd on  
> the Freenode network (irc.freenode.net), since i'm an avid user of  
> IRC during the work day :)  If you guys would like, I can setup a  
> berlios or sourceforge project for this? Let me know.
>
> I'm going to go ahead and forward this message to the l4ka@ mailing  
> list, so I'm certain they'll point out any complete flaws in my  
> logic, or otherwise.
>
> So, suggestions, ideas, flames, comments, etc, are all welcome :)
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> - - - -R. Tyler Ballance
> Prospective kernel hacker at large ;)
>
>
> - - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (Darwin)
>
> iD8DBQFEYxw1qO6nEJfroRsRAmZ/AJ48ENBgF1fD10tjazshJGfO/IB1twCdF9Tl
> Wt7lSdsUMgV0XTpgZvq3KWw=
> =v4FR
> - - -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (Darwin)
>
> iD8DBQFEYxw9qO6nEJfroRsRApmQAKCH6RXmcqYjF+Iqs18KOC1cd7C/vQCcDRO9
> ibh+tHt/B0VJLHUEHIjmFlk=
> =xWaF
> - -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (Darwin)
>
> iD8DBQFEYxxJqO6nEJfroRsRAnqeAJ97NgEhoKrrUCNDBtq9+7jpyCk0cACeKaUa
> eqgW27WXPnjkwR9a5ClLo9g=
> =bR3X
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>