RE: please lower the barrier for novice users, up-to-date instructions with screenshots

> -----Original Message-----
> From: marian klein [mailto:[email protected]]
> Sent: Wednesday, July 02, 2008 10:52 PM
> To: Jan Stoess
> Subject: Re: please lower the barrier for novice users, up-to-date
> instructions with screenshots

> screen or serial ?
Serial = serial console (aka COM1, /dev/ttyS0, ...)
Screen = vga text console

> I don't know what are you talking about. I didn't put anything.
> That is what I usually do, I ignore everything I don't understand.
> I rely on default options or no extra options for options I don't
> understand.
> I don't need any extensive debuging at the start.
> First I want to see a domonstration it works and how it works, and
> what your software is capable of.
> I just want to get it working under qemu and and/or hardware.
> So please advise me what I need to do exactly to see it working
> properly.
> Imagine you have to write instruction to someone who knows very little
> about computers (your grandma).
> Please simplify  the configuration, so that no additional parameters
> are necessary to get the software working with hardware and qemu.
> Configuration of linux kernel is much easier and all important options
> are enabled by default.

L4Ka is a research project meant for investigating and developing advanced, micro-kernel based operating systems; it is not meant to be used by someone who knows next to nothing about computers. L4Ka is presently maintained by a fairly low number of researchers from a single institution, with their focus typically lying on research rather than on making the code base grandma-proof. It is not run by a plethora of open-source developers coming from all sorts of companies and academic or private institutions, as is the case for Linux.

> So please advise me what I need to do exactly to see it working
> properly.

Once again read, http://l4ka.org/projects/pistachio/amd64/ , where it says "The kernel debugger can direct its I/O via the serial line or the keyboard/screen. Be sure to configure your kernel for the appropriate I/O device. [...] The user-level applications are configured to use the serial port for I/O by default. To use screen I/O, run the configure script with the  --without-comport  command line option. If you want to use the serial port, you can choose a particular port by either specifying an index (0, 1, 2, or 3), or its physical device address (e.g. 0x3f8), with the  --with-comport=  command line option."

> Please simplify  the configuration, so that no additional parameters
> are necessary to get the software working with hardware and qemu.

You can get it working with qemu once you know the difference between a serial port and the VGA screen. I'd suggest you either use the VGA screen or to read the manual of qemu to find out the switch to enable a virtual serial port and then use the serial screen.

> No compiler works for http://l4ka.org/download/pistachio/pistachio-
> 0.4.tar.bz2.

That incorrect. Release 0.4 works for GCC versions that were recent at the time version 0.4 was released. However, version 0.4 is outdated, as the website says in huge letters, and the same can safely be assumed for the GCC versions that worked with version 0.4.

>
> The Optoron CPU
> >
> > We didn't drop support for Opteron. It's still in the HG version (and
> has
> > even been extended to EM64T).
> The opteron is not visible in 'make menuconfig' in the latest hg
> version.
> I am confused now. I thing  the EM64T is architecture name.
> (EM64T=amd64=x86_64)
> The opteron is instruction set used in the binary. Or
> I find usefull to control instuction set as well. I don't want to have
> too generic instruction set, I want to have highly optimized.
>

L4 currently supports the x86-64 architecture for Intel based CPUs (EM64T), and for AMD based CPUs (AMD64). For the former, you select x64 architecture and a P4 or P3 CPU type, for the latter x64 architecture and k8 CPU type (also works for k10). Older versions only had support for AMD64 architecture and Opteron CPUs. EM64T and AMD64 are mostly identical instruction sets, with some minor differences in fast system call instructions, and in MSRs, performance counters etc., as it is the case in x32. That's why we use a generic name for the architecture/instruction set (x64) and differentiate per CPU.



--
Jan Stoess
System Architecture Group
University of Karlsruhe
Phone: +49 (721) 608-4056
Fax: +49 (721) 608-7664
eMail: [email protected]