============================================== Genode Labs Newsletter - October/November 2011 ============================================== Content 1. Meet Genode at FOSDEM 2012 2. Exploring a Plethora of Levels of Virtualization 3. Genode OS Framework 11.11 released 1. Meet Genode at FOSDEM 2012 ----------------------------- FOSDEM is one of the biggest gatherings of Open-Source and Free- Software enthusiasts and professionals. The yearly event attracts all kinds of projects ranging from operating systems over development tools and databases to application software: http://fosdem.org The upcoming edition of FOSDEM to be held in February 2012 will host a developer room specifically dedicated to multi-server and micro- kernel-based operating systems. The participating projects include HelenOS, MINIX, GNU Hurd, and Genode. Further projects are more than welcome to join. As stated in the official announcement, the developer room is open for contributions: https://lists.fosdem.org/pipermail/microkernel-devroom/2011-November/000008.html For everyone interested in operating systems in general and micro- kernel technology in particular, visiting FOSDEM will be great way to get in touch. FOSDEM 2012: 4-5 February 2012, in Brussels, Belgium We look forward to meeting you in Brussels! Thanks a lot to Jakub Jermar of the HelenOS project for having initiated the developer room and for the invitation of our project! 2. Exploring a Plethora of Levels of Virtualization --------------------------------------------------- During the past three months, we have started to explore various opportunities to combine the Genode OS Framework with virtualization techniques. Our investigations include the faithful virtualization of x86 PC hardware, paravirtualized Linux, OS-level virtualization, and a application-level virtualization. The latter approach is particularly related to Genode as it capitalizes the framework's fundamental security mechanism, which is the execution of each program in a dedicated sandbox. For making faithful x86 virtualization available to Genode, we started integrating the Vancouver virtual machine monitor (VMM) into our framework. Vancouver is a VMM that was developed in concert with the NOVA hypervisor. In contrast to commodity virtualization products, Vancouver's design was aided by microkernel principles. We found that it fits perfectly with Genode's architecture. In contrast to faithful virtualization, which is able to run unmodified guest operating systems in a virtual machine, para- virtualization takes changing the OS kernel into consideration in order to support running the guest OS on hardware with no virtualization support. Genode supports OKLinux and L4Linux as paravirtualization options. For the latter solution, we have greatly advanced the level of integration with the framework. Thanks to our ongoing work, it has become possible to interface L4Linux with Genode's networking, block-device, UART, input- device, and display facilities. The results of our exploration are featured in the just released version 11.11 of the framework. 3. Genode OS Framework 11.11 released ------------------------------------- As mentioned above, our work on the version 11.11 was primarily motivated with the exploration of virtualization options. In this process, the framework has gained plenty of new features and has reached a new level of maturity. Some highlights of the current release are the added support for user-level debugging via the GNU debugger, the integration of L4Android, the upgrade of several base platforms such as NOVA and Fiasco.OC, new device drivers and extended ARM platform support, and optimizations throughout the whole framework. The complete story behind Genode 11.11 is described in the release notes: http://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/11.11 Have fun with exploring the new version! About the newsletter -------------------- If you have friends or colleagues who might be interested in our projects, we would appreciate you to forward this email. If you received this newsletter as a forwarded email, you may subscribe to the newsletter here: http://genode-labs.com/newsletter In the case of receiving this newsletter unintended, you can cancel your subscription at any time by replying to this email with the subject set to "unsubscribe". Best regards -- Dr.-Ing. Norman Feske Genode Labs http://www.genode-labs.com · http://genode.org Genode Labs GmbH · Amtsgericht Dresden · HRB 28424 · Sitz Dresden Geschäftsführer: Dr.-Ing. Norman Feske, Christian Helmuth
