OSDev.org

Hey guys,

I just wanted to say that I have finally posted the first public release of Kube OS for testing. I was planning on doing this quite a while ago but I really wanted to fix a few things, then Christmas came up.

Features so far are:
32bit
Single-tasking (Multi-tasking is almost finished)
FAT12 and 16 filesystems
KB, MOUSE, FD, and HD drivers.
Fasm port
ZC port
Two text editors, edit.com used mode 13h.

It also has a format utility, and an install program for hard drivers. BE WARNED. It's better to install on a virtual hd under bochs because it will destroy the MBR and any partitions you have. You can use grub to setup the boot partition on the HD with the commands (after format and install):
partnew (hd0,0) 1 1 1200
root (hd0,0)
setup (hd0)
makeactive

http://kubeos.freehostia.com

The next release may be a long way off. I want to get gcc and binutils ported before the next one.

It doesn't seem to work in VMware Server 1.0.7. It boots ok and displays the prompt. The keyboard seems to deliver a '7' to the shell (it is printed to the command line before I press any keys and it is possible to delete it with backspace). When trying the 'dir' command it just halts.

Hope this helps.

clange

I think the halting may be something with the way I handled shutting off the floppy motor. There probably isn't long enough of a delay and the kernel is stuck in a loop trying to read the data. Thanks for the reply.

I've testet it on VPC 2007 and it bootet without problems. But the first thing i missed is the cursor, it took me some time to realise that i had the control. After that I tested the help funktion and it works. But all other Fuktions dont work. The system just halts.

Besides, it also halts when you make a improper imput or imputs nothing.

Okay, I just uploaded a quick update. This version gets rid of the code to stop the floppy motor, so it will stay on. I will have to look at that later on, maybe over the weekend. At least now the filesystem commands should be testable.

Downloaded the new update. Still doesn't work. Exactly the same result as last time.

clange

Alright thanks clange. This is very dissapointing. I will have to get a copy of VMWare and see if I can find what's wrong.

I tested it on QEMU, and it seems to work for me, so here was my experience:

Things I liked:
- The CLI, it's minimalist and seems to work well. A bit too DOS-like, but nothing wrong with that
- Working commands! They seem to be integrated into the shell, though.
- The A:\bin folder. Good job on porting FASM and ZC, and the text-based text editor seems pretty slick. Had problems using the mouse though for the graphical one, hmm...
- No noticable delays, problems, things to bug the user - decent user experience.

Things to fix/improve:
- Improve the CD command. Support for relative directory paths would be nice, and the command doesn't seem to check if the target directory is actually valid...
- Better recognition of special keys. The arrows, ctrl, delete key, etc. are recognized as normal letters instead of special keys. But I'm just being fussy.
- FASM seems to give me an out-of-memory error even with 128MB of memory, so that was disheartening...
- More ported programs (because you can't have enough)!

Ways to crash the system :
- Switching the drive when the other drive doesn't exist (type b: on the command line) causes a halt
- Sending commands longer than around 80 characters causes a triple fault. Interesting note: EBX, ESI, and EDI are all set to the hex value of some part of the command string. (I'm wondering, is the shell running in kernel mode? Coupled with a buffer overflow, that would explain this crash pretty well...)
- Typing 'reboot' on the command line

(Wait, I only found 2 ways? I'm getting bad at this.)

Overall, seems like a lot of good work - keep it up!

Thank you very much Zenith. That was an awesome review of things I need to improve/fix.