OSDev.org

Hey guys, I'm new here. I just started OS development, and I'm not sure where to start (since the tutorials on the wiki are flawed, don't make sense, and have bad, non-working code). At the moment, what I really want to do is just make a small little command interface. How would I do this? Or better, yet, a working anything would do. What could you guys give me as an example? Thanks!

The wiki has decent enough information. the wiki pages are not all tutorials but guides to specific parts of of making an OS. if you have read the beginners mistakes part of the wiki you would have read that even getting a functional shell might take a year. if you want to understand how kernels work start with brans tutorial. http://www.osdever.net/tutorials/view/b ... t-tutorial . Please don't bash the wiki simply because it cannot make the hardest programming subject there is a copy paste subject. the babysteps tutorials ( http://wiki.osdev.org/Babystep1 ) give some of the smallest bootable assembly code that a bios would not reject out of hand. Your going to make a tonne of mistakes, just don't give up when you do.

... and I'm not sure where to start ...

Don't start by making a post like this one.

... since the tutorials on the wiki are flawed, don't make sense, and have bad, non-working code ...

Hmm, which wiki articles are like that ?

The code on the wiki works perfectly fine. If the Bare Bones section doesnt work for you I suggest looking at James Molloy's tutorial.

http://www.jamesmolloy.co.uk/tutorial_html/index.html

Also you have to be more specified in your questions. It would take hours for us to explain how to get to the place you want. You must get there by yourself perhaps asking for smaller directions along the way.

TheGag96 wrote:the tutorials on the wiki are flawed, don't make sense, and have bad, non-working code

??? So you decided this was a site to ask questions at ???


You might want to check out http://www.brokenthorn.com/Resources/OSDevIndex.html

TheGag96 wrote:I just started OS development, and I'm not sure where to start (since the tutorials on the wiki are flawed, don't make sense, and have bad, non-working code).

Proof wanted.

Specifically, "It does not work" is the worst error description ever by some, and the best error description by others since it's often said by a user - you included? - which has more troubles than the subject complained about.

Please, if you really think the wiki is of poor quality, show us some examples so we might actually be able to improve it.

Jezze wrote:If the Bare Bones section doesnt work for you I suggest looking at James Molloy's tutorial.

But please not before telling us what didn't work for you. The Bare Bones is meant to work for everybody. To show that, indeed, your computer can boot into your self-made main kernel function, as the easiest way around any "compiler doesn't work" or "it doesn't boot" or such problems.

If it doesn't work on your machine, I would be very interested to hear about it.

Ok, here's the proof. Maybe I was supposed to get rid of something when I copypasta'd it, but, here it is: http://wiki.osdev.org/Real_mode_assembly_bare_bones When I copied and pasted that into notepad, saved it, and compiled it just like it said, there was an error. It said that something was already declared twice (but I don't know what it was).

Edit: It was "Duplicate declaration of .loop"

Edit2: I have Windows and not Linux (because Ubuntu and Fedora crashed n too many times), so I can't get ld.

Being vague is no proof. And besides, doing what you said works here (and everywhere else).

After your edit: do you have a sane version of nasm, like not from the previous decade? Are you actually using the netwide assembler or do you want to get away with something else?

Um, actually, I don't know. I did get nasm, but I don't know what version. Could you point me to a good version?

Do nasm -r

I used yasm on it, it didn't work. What do I do now?

Im personally thinking if you dont know how to fix that error you should get more into x86 assembly. Although as Combuster hinted any recent version of nasm should support it.

nasm -v can be used to find your nasm version. You should be able to find nasm 2.7 with a quick google search.

TheGag96 wrote:Edit2: I have Windows and not Linux (because Ubuntu and Fedora crashed n too many times), so I can't get ld.

LD is not a linux program. LD is a GNU program. There are ports of GNU programs to Windows, such as MingW32 and Cygwin.

How would we be running (a few of us at least) ld inside our own OS?

The wiki source uses a nasm misfeature that doesn't work in yasm. Or at least, it did until 5 minutes ago. But you could have easily found that error and fix that based on the error message you will have received from yasm.