Pirmin Duss
Benjamin Lamowski
Michael Grunditz
Johannes Schlatow
Christian Helmuth
Josef Söntgen
Martin Stein
Alexander Böttcher
Sagar Acharya
Tomasz Gajewski
Johannes Kliemann
Guido Witmond
Valery Sedletski
Cedric Degea
Daniel Collins-
Sculpt OS 23.04 on MNT Reform2
Though so much time has passed since the last Sculpt OS release for MNT Reform2, the development did not stop, and I proudly present version 23.04 to you. This new release includes some interesting features related to our beloved MNT Reform2 laptop, namely: Continue...
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Sculpt OS 21.10 on ARM
Beside the x86 architecture, the new Sculpt OS 21.10 can also be used on top of the MNT Reform 2 and i.MX 8MQ EVK board. Although those ARMv8-based boards are not yet officially supported, you can give it a first try. Continue...
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Pine fun - Booting Genode on the PinePhone
Until now, my exploration of the Allwinner A64 SoC was mainly concerned with the Pine-A64-LTS board, which offers developer conveniences like booting over the network, or easily accessible reset and GPIO pins. Now, it's time to switch gears by moving the development workflow over to the PinePhone. Continue...
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Pine fun - Networking
This article walks through the challenge of porting a network driver from the Linux kernel to Genode. It thereby exemplifies Genode's device-driver environment approach for the reuse of unmodified Linux kernel code, touches crucial technicalities of the Linux kernel, and provides practical clues. Continue...
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MNT Reform 2 - Use Sculpt OS on SD-card
There is a new, updated Sculpt OS version available for the MNT Reform 2. It features a fully functional, and more performant SD-card driver. It enables you to persistently install Sculpt OS and additional depot packages on your MNT Reform 2. Moreover, the new driver support enables you to exchange the SD-card dynamically at runtime. Continue...
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MNT Reform 2 - Run Sculpt OS
It has been a while since I started to do the first steps of porting Genode to the MNT Reform 2. Continue...
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Pine fun - Taking Linux out for a Walk
In preparation of the porting of drivers from Linux to Genode, we have to gather knowledge about the drivers' natural habitat. This article goes through the steps of building a custom Linux system that is tailored to a driver of our choice. Continue...
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Pine fun - Kernel packaging and testing
With our toes still a bit frozen from testing the waters of the user land, we now take the remaining steps towards a cultivated Genode life, largely automating our work flow, packaging the kernel, and testing the platform like there is no tomorrow. Continue...
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Pine fun - Kernel skeleton
Of the several kernels supported by the Genode OS framework, the so-called base-hw kernel is our go-to microkernel for ARM-based devices. Section Execution on bare hardware of the Genode Foundations book goes into detail about its underlying software design. This article describes the process of porting this kernel to a new board, specifically the Pine-A64-LTS single-board computer. Continue...
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Mobile Tech Demo
Recently, a bunch of posts on this blog platform circled around Genode seriously entering the mobile world. Be it the enabling of a touchscreen, LTE modem support, or the first steps to bring Genode to the Pinephone. But a mobile platform doesn't have different technical requirements only, like support for certain peripherals. It varies in the way people are interacting with it, which needs to be considered in its GUI. To experiment in this direction a bit on the one hand, and to integrate several of the recent new components available in Genode in a sound prototype was the motivation behind the tech demo that is described in the following. Continue...
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Pine fun - Bare-metal serial output
For low-level kernel-bootstrapping work, we need a primitive way to print debug messages over a serial connection. This article goes through the steps of executing custom code on bare-metal hardware with no kernel underneath, and attaining serial output by poking UART device registers directly. Continue...
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Warming up for some Pine fun
I recently got my hands on a PinePhone along with a Pine64 board and have the aspiration to bring Sculpt OS to this platform. This is a very welcome opportunity to document the process of such a porting effort. Continue...
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MNT Reform 2 - First Steps
Recently, I was honored for receiving the first beta MNT Reform 2.0 shipped by MNT Research GmbH. This is an interesting laptop project produced by a team of three people: Lukas Hartmann (electronics / software design), Ana Beatriz Albertini Dantas (product / industrial design), and Greta Melnik (sleeve design / SMD assembly). Continue...
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An Android VM for ARMv8 (update)
This is a follow up on the current state of the An Android VM for ARMv8 line of work. The article explained how to build Android from source and how to execute Android as a virtual machine on Genode. We were able to boot Android successfully but still had issues with the camera and the audio devices. Continue...
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Virtual Machine Monitor for ARM
In my last blog post, I described some aspects of ARMv8 hardware-assisted virtualization. The presented findings were collected during some exploration work I've done together with my colleague Alexander Boettcher during last year. As already mentioned, one outcome of this work was a new Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM) written from scratch for the ARMv8 architecture. In the meantime the VMM got extended to support recent, generic Linux kernels for ARMv8 and ARMv7, and thereby supersedes the former, outdated PoC implementation for ARMv7. Continue...
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An Android VM for ARMv8
In my last article I described how to build a Linux image that can be executed by Genode's VMM on i.MX8 platforms. With this article we take things to the next level by creating and executing an unmodified Android 10 VM on the i.MX 8M EVK SoC. Continue...
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Exploring the ARMv8 system level - Virtualization
During last autumn, my colleague Alexander Boettcher and me wrote a virtual-machine-monitor for ARMv8 for Genode from scratch. It was an intensive teamwork and much more fun than just poring alone over some problem. In this fifth post about my ARMv8 first steps, I'd like to summarize some of the insights from this work. Continue...
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Building a Linux VM image for ARMv8
This brief article summarizes the steps necessary to build a runnable Linux kernel and initrd disk image that can be executed on top of Genode's custom VMM for i.MX8 platforms. Continue...
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Exploring the ARMv8 system level - Multi-Cores
Within the past months I collected some experiences with enabling Genode's own hw kernel on ARMv8 hardware platforms. A first series of posts covered the low-level first steps that had to be taken. In this forth part I like to summarize the insights gained by enabling multi-cores of the NXP i.MX 8M SoC, and by investigating several other SoCs and its SMP setup. Continue...
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Exploring the ARMv8 system level - Part 3
Within the last weeks I collected some experiences with enabling Genode's own hw kernel on ARMv8 hardware platforms, and like to share it via genodians.org. In the first post I've described how to first create a non-functional dummy system image. In part 2, I wanted to show how easily you can develop and debug early system level startup code when using QEMU. This time I'll center on the exception level changes, and the flexible page-table layout in ARMv8. Continue...
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Exploring the ARMv8 system level - Part 2
In this blog series I write about my insights when porting Genode's hw kernel to ARMv8. In the first post I've described how to first create a non-functional dummy system image. In this post, I want to show how easily you can develop and debug early system level startup code when using QEMU. Continue...
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Enablement of Genode's ARMv8 support
ARMv8 introduces a new 64 bit instruction set architecture (ISA). This implies that there exists a different general purpose register set as well as new instructions and opcodes that are not compatible with ARMv7 or ARMv6. While for high level languages like C or C++ the burden of opcode generation is transparently handled by the compiler, there are always cases (e.g, assembly, application binary interface, ELF format) that have to be handled specifically for each ISA. In this article I will describe the most important adaptions required to execute Genode on the ARMv8 architecture. Continue...
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Exploring the ARMv8 system level
Recently I got the chance to explore the 64-bit ARM system level universe. Finally, there were resources left to implement support for the ARMv8 architecture in Genode's own hw kernel. In the following blog posts I'd like to summarize my insights. Continue...
Stories around the Genode Operating System
