Argentum

Toy UNIX-like operating system written for RealView Platform Baseboard Explore for Cortex-A9.

Building and running the OS

1. Install the necessary headers

   make install-headers
   

2. Build and install the OS-specific toolchain

   make tools-binutils
   make tools-gcc
   

3. Build the standard C library

   make all-lib
   

4. Build and install the libstdc++ library

   make tools-libstdc++-v3
   

5. Build the kernel and command-line utils

   make all
   

6. Build the ported packages (optional)

   make ports-coreutils
   make ports-dash
   make ports-binutils
   make ports-gcc
   make ports-gzip
   make ports-sed
   make ports-ncurses
   make ports-less
   

7. Run the kernel in the emulator (you'll need qemu-system-arm):

   make qemu
   

Resources

General OS Development Information

• OSDev Wiki
• xv6, a simple Unix-like teaching OS by MIT

C Library

The C Library code is heavily based on the following reference implementation:

• The Standard C Library, P.J. Plauger, 1992

ARM architecture

• ARM Category in OSDev Wiki
• ARM System Developer's Guide, Andrew Sloss, Dominic Symes, Chris Wright, 2004
• Embedded and Real-Time Operating Systems, K.C. Wang, 2017
• ARM GCC Inline Assembler Cookbook

Hardware Programming

• ARM RealView Platform Baseboard Explore for Cortex-A9
  • RealView Platform Baseboard Explore for Cortex-A9 User Guide
• Generic Interrupt Controller - kernel/drivers/gic.c
  • Cortex-A9 MPCore Technical Reference Manual
• Keyboard - kernel/drivers/console/kbd.c, kernel/drivers/console/pl050c
  • PS/2 Keyboard in OSDev Wiki
  • ARM PrimeCell PS2 Keyboard/Mouse Interface (PL050) Technical Reference Manual
• LCD - kernel/drivers/console/lcd.c, kernel/drivers/console/pl111.c
  • PrimeCell Color LCD Controller (PL111) Technical Reference Manual
• Maxim DS1338 RTC - kernel/drivers/rtc.c
  • DS1338 data sheet
  • Using the I2C Bus
• SD card - kernel/drivers/sd.c
  • Physical Layer Simplified Specification
  • ARM PrimeCell Multimedia Card Interface (PL180) Technical Reference Manual
• UART - kernel/drivers/console/serial.c, kernel/drivers/console/pl011.c
  • PrimeCell UART (PL011) Technical Reference Manual
• Ethernet - kernel/drivers/eth.c
  • LAN9118 Datasheet