Embox is a configurable operating system kernel designed for resource constrained and embedded systems.
Getting started
Here's a quick overview on how to build and run Embox.
Required environment:
gcc
andmake
- cross compiler for the target platform
Preparing environment
For Debian-based systems (most packages are installed out of box though):
$ sudo apt-get install build-essential gcc-multilib curl libmpc-dev python
For Arch Linux:
$ sudo pacman -S make gcc-multilib cpio qemu
For MAC OS X (requires MacPorts installed):
$ sudo port install i386-elf-gcc i386-elf-binutils cpio gawk qemu
For alternative instructions please refer to Emdocker wiki page https://github.com/embox/embox/wiki/Emdocker
Building Embox
First of all:
$ git clone https://github.com/embox/embox.git embox
$ cd embox
Since Embox is highly configurable project, it is necessary to specify modules to be built and params for them. To build the OS make
command is used.
All commands described below are called from the embox
directory, which includes src/
, templates/
, ...
Configuring the project
For configuring it is needed to specify params and modules supposed to be included into the system. Embox has several templates prepared, to list them use the following command:
$ make confload
The simplest way to load a template is to specify its name in the command:
$ make confload-<template>
For the quick overview you can use one of qemu
templates that exist for most architectures, that is, x86/qemu
for x86:
$ make confload-x86/qemu
Building the image
After configuring the project just run make
to build:
$ make
Running on QEMU
The resulting image can now be run on QEMU. The simplest way is to execute ./scripts/qemu/auto_qemu
script:
$ sudo ./scripts/qemu/auto_qemu
sudo
is requried to setup a TUN/TAP device necessary to emulate networking.
After the system is loaded, you’ll see the embox>
prompt, now you are able to run commands.
For example, help
lists all existing commands.
To test the connection:
ping 10.0.2.16
If everything's fine, you can connect to the Embox terminal via telnet
.
To exit Qemu type ctrl + A and X after that.
Debugging
You can use the same script with -s -S -no-kvm flags for debugging:
$ sudo ./scripts/qemu/auto_qemu -s -S -no-kvm
After running that QEMU waits for a connection from a gdb-client. Run gdb in the other terminal:
$ gdb ./build/base/bin/embox
...
(gdb) target extended-remote :1234
(gdb) continue
The system starts to load.
At any moment in gdb terminal you can type ctrl + C and see the stack of the current thread (backtrace
) or set breakpoints (break <function name>
, break <file name>:<line number>
).
Other architectures
Embox supports the following CPU architectures: x86, ARM, Microblaze, SPARC, PPC, MIPS.
In order to work with architectures other than x86 you'll need a cross compiler. After installing the cross compiler just repeat the step above, starting with configuring:
make confload-<arch>/qemu
make
sudo ./scripts/qemu/auto_qemu
The output is quite the same as in the case of the x86 architecture.
Networking support
Embox supports networking on x86, ARM, and Microblaze.