Search found 589 matches

by andymc
Thu Sep 02, 2021 9:54 pm
Forum: General
Topic: Visopsys 0.91 - Return of the RAMdisk?
Replies: 24
Views: 156178

Re: Visopsys 0.91 - Return of the RAMdisk?

Hi Qmastery, no worries.

I will give those instructions a try. But just to double-check: you created the file /ramdisk in your floppy image? These error messages look like the kernel doesn't know it's supposed to be booting from a RAM disk.

Andy
by andymc
Sat Aug 07, 2021 6:46 pm
Forum: General
Topic: Visopsys 0.91 Released
Replies: 6
Views: 24800

Re: Visopsys 0.91 Released

Thanks Ron, I hope you and yours have been keeping well. There's a new way to compile: first building a cross-compiling toolchain (binutils and gcc) from sources, as a kind of one-time operation. It's described in the updated BUILDING.txt. The vagaries of relying on whatever compiler configuration i...
by andymc
Sun Aug 01, 2021 3:10 pm
Forum: General
Topic: Visopsys 0.91 Released
Replies: 6
Views: 24800

Visopsys 0.91 Released

Available on the download page. https://visopsys.org/download/ From the change log (https://visopsys.org/download/change-log/): Overview: This maintenance release fixes RAM disk boot support, adds sparse file support to the EXT filesystem driver, and updates various build-related things. Added suppo...
by andymc
Fri Jul 30, 2021 12:45 am
Forum: General
Topic: Visopsys 0.91 - Return of the RAMdisk?
Replies: 24
Views: 156178

Re: Visopsys 0.91 - Return of the RAMdisk?

I went ahead and released version 0.91 with these fixes
https://visopsys.org/download/
by andymc
Sun Jul 25, 2021 11:28 pm
Forum: General
Topic: Visopsys 0.91 - Return of the RAMdisk?
Replies: 24
Views: 156178

Re: Visopsys 0.91 - Return of the RAMdisk?

I think I've got this whole RAMdisk booting thing sorted out now. I'm not quite sure why it stopped working between the custom version I made you, or version 0.85, or version 0.9, but anyway, I've made some fixes and hopefully improvements: https://visopsys.org/files/misc/visopsys-2021-07-26-x86-flo...
by andymc
Mon Jun 28, 2021 10:40 pm
Forum: General
Topic: Visopsys 0.91 - Return of the RAMdisk?
Replies: 24
Views: 156178

Re: Visopsys 0.91 - Return of the RAMdisk?

Breakthrough! I took the plunge and integrated a GCC cross-compiler into the Visopsys build system. I'm back to being able to build a working system, and the executable size problem is solved. I should be able to investigate this RAMdisk thing now, and should be able to (still) fit the result on a 1...
by andymc
Mon Jun 21, 2021 11:27 am
Forum: General
Topic: Visopsys 0.91 - Return of the RAMdisk?
Replies: 24
Views: 156178

Re: Visopsys 0.91 - Return of the RAMdisk?

Unfortunately, it gets worse. Even with a custom linker script, the kernel that I'm building is not usable as a kernel. I think there's too much Linux optimization going on here now -- the latest GCC on Mint creates an executable that's effectively relocatable and requires runtime loader fixups (whi...
by andymc
Tue May 04, 2021 11:40 pm
Forum: General
Topic: Visopsys 0.91 - Return of the RAMdisk?
Replies: 24
Views: 156178

Re: Visopsys 0.91 - Return of the RAMdisk?

I'm getting there, slowly. Yes, the newer GNU ld outputs a kernel executable that's quite different. Most notably, it has moved the read-only data out of the code section, and into its own loadable section. My BIOS OS loader isn't equipped; it's necessarily fairly simple-minded w/r/t ELF layout, as ...
by andymc
Wed Apr 07, 2021 9:33 am
Forum: General
Topic: Visopsys 0.91 - Return of the RAMdisk?
Replies: 24
Views: 156178

Re: Visopsys 0.91 - Return of the RAMdisk?

Just an update: I'm experimenting with using clang now, in place of gcc. It looks promising, size-wise, but the kernel still crashes on startup, in what looks like the same sort of way. I think it's probably a linking issue.
by andymc
Sun Mar 28, 2021 10:36 pm
Forum: General
Topic: Visopsys 0.91 - Return of the RAMdisk?
Replies: 24
Views: 156178

Re: Visopsys 0.91 - Return of the RAMdisk?

Hi Qmastery, Ok, that sounds like the best solution for the time being -- making it 2.88. Of course the binaries I'm building now with GCC 9 have some kind of bug in them; they crash on kernel startup. I'm trying to debug that first. But also, I'm in the middle of moving house, so it'll be a little ...