Ticket #1102 (new enhancement)

Opened 1 year ago

Last modified 1 year ago

Enable the kernel to run as a userland process on top of itself

Reported by: axeld Assigned to: axeld
Priority: normal Milestone: Unscheduled
Component: System/Kernel Version: R1 development
Cc: Platform: All

Description (Last modified by axeld)

As a testbed for kernel development, profiling, etc. a virtual kernel running on top of the actual kernel would be beneficial. Also having it run on top of ie. Linux or BeOS would be nice, if possible, especially as long Haiku is not self hosting.

Jonas Sundström was kind enough to collect some more informations, mostly from the DragonFly project:

"Reduces the engineering cycle time for testing new kernel code

from 5 minutes to 5 seconds." -- Matthew Dillon

DragonFlyBSD:
Reasons for wanting to have a working virtual kernel
http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/mailarchive/kernel/2007-01/msg00082.html

A few questions and answers
http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/mailarchive/users/2007-01/msg00237.html

Performance ans system resources
http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/mailarchive/kernel/2007-01/msg00107.html

Use of memory
http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/mailarchive/kernel/2007-01/msg00157.html
http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/mailarchive/kernel/2007-01/msg00039.html

Short-term goals
http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/mailarchive/kernel/2007-01/msg00010.html

A few tickets
http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/mailarchive/kernel/2007-01/msg00002.html

Function conflicts between kernel and libc
http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/mailarchive/kernel/2006-12/msg00018.html
http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/mailarchive/kernel/2006-12/msg00030.html
http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/mailarchive/kernel/2006-12/msg00039.html

Man page
http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/cgi/web-man?command=vkernel&section=ANY

Production uses for virtual kernels
http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/mailarchive/kernel/2007-01/msg00054.html

"Checkpointing" vkernels
http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/mailarchive/kernel/2007-02/msg00079.html

Linux:
http://user-mode-linux.sourceforge.net/kernel.html
http://user-mode-linux.sourceforge.net/UserModeLinux-HOWTO.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User-mode_Linux

Change History

03/11/07 08:03:37 changed by axeld

  • description changed.

03/14/07 18:41:21 changed by jonas.kirilla

Some more on DragonFlyBSD's implementation, FWIW.

mmap(.. MAP_VPAGETABLE ..) - with code snippet
http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/mailarchive/kernel/2006-09/msg00043.html

Commits - Adjustments to low level madvise/mcontrol/mmap support code to accomodate vmspace_*() calls
http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/mailarchive/commits/2006-09/msg00139.html

What the real kernel does and what the virtual kernel does
http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/mailarchive/kernel/2006-09/msg00013.html

Devices that might be meaningful in a virtual kernel
http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/mailarchive/kernel/2006-09/msg00038.html