Xv6, a simple Unix-like teaching operating system

[shavenwarthog2]

This is an excellent tool for learning Unix-type systems. At < 10K lines, it's much smaller than Linux v1, but has most of the parts of a more mature kernel. The source code is clear, and well documented in its own booklet.

Highly recommended.

[luckydude]

Huh, I think HN killed their git server, I started the clone and it's just sitting there doing nothing after 100K. Eventually dies with:

pdos.csail.mit.edu[0: 128.52.129.126]: errno=Connection timed out

Just FYI for anyone else trying. I looked and this seems to be a mirror that contains the branch they mention:

https://github.com/sometimesfood/xv6

and you might need this (I did):

sudo apt-get install libc6-dev-i386

but the stock qemu didn't seem to work, their server is kaput, and no mirror on github :(

[jey]

I think this is the official mirror: https://github.com/mit-pdos/xv6-public

[luckydude]

I contacted them and they said use this:

git://github.com/mit-pdos/xv6-public.git

And OP should correct the original link to:

https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2014/xv6.html

[jbangert]

MIT PDOS also cleaned up its infrastructure a while back. Jon (a student there who does cool scalability research) replaced the old ailing server that hosted a lot of things and that wasn't really maintained by anybody with a set of modern vms, not sure if he also moved over the public git server...

[jlappi]

This is an excellent little project to play with if you want to learn more about the functions of the kernel. The accompanying book is a great resource and provides relatively simple projects.

[IshKebab]

Seems a bit sad to me that we're still teaching a 40 year old OS. Hasn't computing advanced since then? Where's the Plan9-like teaching OS?

[gravypod]

Are there any projects like that that show people how to write a bootloader? I have been wanting to write something like Xv6 except I want to write everything that will be running except BIOS code.

I have yet to find something on bootloader code.

[Samathy]

The BrokenThorn OS Dev tutorials have a great section for bootloader development. [1]

You can find a whole bunch more stuff on the OS Dev Wiki too. [2]

[1] http://www.brokenthorn.com/Resources/OSDevIndex.html [2] wiki.osdev.org

[sfishman]

Harvard also has something similar for their OS course (now used outside of Harvard as well) called OS/161.

http://os161.eecs.harvard.edu

[mveety]

I really like the System/161 simulator that they use with it. They made some good choices sticking to the simple R3000 MMU model.