[TUHS] Help with a Unix-ish project?

[TUHS] Help with a Unix-ish project?

[Warren Toomey]

Hi all, I'm working on a Unix-related project, and I thought I'd ask if
anybody here might help.

There's a pared-down Unix-like system, xv6, which is inspired by 6th Edition
Unix and the Lions Commentary. Its purpose is to teach OS principles.
The website and book are here:
https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2014/xv6.html
https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2014/xv6/book-rev8.pdf

Unfortunately, while the kernel is nice, they don't provide much of
a run-time environment, so it feels too much of a toy to use. I had the
idea of porting a small set of libraries and commands over to get it to
the point where it feels a bit like 7th Edition.

I've made a start by using the Minix 2.0 libraries and commands, see
https://github.com/DoctorWkt/xv6-minix2 and the NOTES file. I now realise
that bringing up a libc plus associated commands will involve a fair bit of
work.

So, if anybody is interested in helping, let me know.

Thanks in advance, Warren

[TUHS] Help with a Unix-ish project?

[Random832]

On Fri, Jul 15, 2016, at 18:56, Warren Toomey wrote:
> Unfortunately, while the kernel is nice, they don't provide much of
> a run-time environment, so it feels too much of a toy to use. I had the
> idea of porting a small set of libraries and commands over to get it to
> the point where it feels a bit like 7th Edition.
> 
> I've made a start by using the Minix 2.0 libraries and commands, see
> https://github.com/DoctorWkt/xv6-minix2 and the NOTES file. I now realise
> that bringing up a libc plus associated commands will involve a fair bit
> of
> work.

https://github.com/DoctorWkt/xv6-minix2/commit/f6159743fd9d7dd13a1a4c2285a16629176931da

Wouldn't it be easier to simply change the xv6 stat structure itself,
and possibly the filesystem structure as well?

[TUHS] Help with a Unix-ish project?

[Warren Toomey]

On Fri, Jul 15, 2016 at 09:32:42PM -0400, Random832 wrote:
> Wouldn't it be easier to simply change the xv6 stat structure itself,
> and possibly the filesystem structure as well?

Yes, but the xv6 book from MIT is something that I can't change, and I
want to keep their goals of a minimalist OS.

I've just committed a change where the syscall is now called _Fstat(),
and I've written a fstat() function to convert the minimal struct stat
into a more POSIX stat structure.

I don't want to use this list as the discussion area for the project.
I'll set another one up and we can move the conversation there.

Cheers, Warren

[TUHS] Help with a Unix-ish project?

[Ronald Natalie]

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BRL modified our kernel to support both the V6 and V7 file systems.   Yes there were indeed two versions of stat with hacky-conversions between the two.
We already had the kludge of “JHU Ownership” which allowed the V6 systems to work in an instrucitonal situation with more than 256 users.
If your GID >=200, your “effective” uid was the combination of the UID and GID.


> On Jul 15, 2016, at 9:44 PM, Warren Toomey <wkt at tuhs.org> wrote:
> 
> On Fri, Jul 15, 2016 at 09:32:42PM -0400, Random832 wrote:
>> Wouldn't it be easier to simply change the xv6 stat structure itself,
>> and possibly the filesystem structure as well?
> 
> Yes, but the xv6 book from MIT is something that I can't change, and I
> want to keep their goals of a minimalist OS.
> 
> I've just committed a change where the syscall is now called _Fstat(),
> and I've written a fstat() function to convert the minimal struct stat
> into a more POSIX stat structure.
> 
> I don't want to use this list as the discussion area for the project.
> I'll set another one up and we can move the conversation there.
> 
> Cheers, Warren

[TUHS] Help with a Unix-ish project?

[Random832]

On Fri, Jul 15, 2016, at 21:44, Warren Toomey wrote:
> I don't want to use this list as the discussion area for the project.
> I'll set another one up and we can move the conversation there.

Did this ever materialize?