Systems Programming standalone framework information
Notes on the Makefile:
DO NOT USE gmakemake! You must edit the given Makefile to tell
it about the file(s) you create. Add your own file names (both
source and object versions) to the APP_* macros at the top of the
Makefile.
After adding or removing files from the Makefile (or changing
your #includes), do a "make depend" to adjust the Makefile's
dependency entries.
To create your program:
* run 'make' in your project directory
To copy it onto a USB flash drive:
All machines in the DSL have at least two front-panel USB slots
(typically, two USB-2 and one blue USB-3). Under Ubuntu, you
can use any of these slots; insert a flash drive, and the OS
automatically creates device entries for the drive, using the
next available disk name in /dev (e.g., /dev/sdg).
To copy your bootable image to the flash drive, plug the drive
into a USB socket, wait a few moments for Ubuntu to recognize
it and create the device entries in /dev, and type
make usb
This will remake the usb.image file (if necessary), and will then
copy it out to the USB drive. In order to find the correct
drive, the installation uses a local command named 'dcopy'. This
command runs a second command named 'dfind' to identify the USB
drive(s) plugged into the system, and then runs a 'dd' command
to copy the usb.image file to the first USB device it finds.
(You can run 'dfind' yourself if you want to be sure that 'dcopy'
will be able to find the flash drive.)
Note: the Makefile still has a "floppy" target for creating a
bootable floppy disk image. However, this hasn't been used for
quite a while, and the necessary support tools to do the copying
don't exist on the current systems. If you want to try using the
floppy disk as a boot device, let me know.
To boot your program once you have copied it to a bootable medium:
* DO NOT USE the machine named 'sherlock' - it's a server for
the lab, and should not be shut down
* shut down Ubuntu by using the standard Ubuntu "shut down"
menu entry
* insert the bootable medium
* make sure the terminal connected to this machine is turned on
* push the reset button on the front panel (at the top, on
the righthand side - the larger button on the lefthand
side is the power button)
DO NOT just push the reset button - Ubuntu must be shut down
correctly in order to avoid damaging the filesystems.
Unfortunately, the motherboards in the current lab machines are
somewhat stupid; once a flash drive is unplugged, they forget
that we want to give boot priority to flash drives once the
flash drive is unplugged. For now, you will need to interrupt
the boot process in one of the following two ways:
1. When the ASUS logo appears on the screen, press the
F8 key to bring up the boot device screen. Scroll
down the list using the arrow keys until the flash
drive is highlighted, and press ENTER to boot from it.
2. When the ASUS log appears on the screen, press either
the F2 or the DEL key on the keyboard to bring up the
BIOS screen. Use the right arrow key to select the
"Boot" menu, then the down arrow key to the bottom of
the "Boot" menu, where you will find an "Override"
section. Select the flash drive entry and press
ENTER.
If you miss your window of opportunity (about five seconds)
to press one of these function keys and Ubuntu boots up, don't
panic; just shut Ubuntu down and try again.
If you want to run your program again, leave the flash drive
inserted and press the reset button again.
To reboot Ubuntu:
* take your bootable medium out of the machine
* push the reset button
Compiling your program creates several files:
prog.o: linked, object form of the system
prog.b: binary version of the system - generated from prog.o
by removing all the object file headers and symbol table
prog.nl: namelist of the prog.o file - lists all global symbols,
their values, and the program section they're defined in
(Text, Data, Bss)
*.image: the binary system image - contains the bootstrap, the
protected mode startup code, and your stuff, in this layout:
bootstrap first sector
switch code second sector
your program sectors 3 through n+2
next file n+3 through p+n+2
next file p+n+3 through q+p+n+2
etc. (see below)
This file will be named floppy.image or usb.image,
depending on which device you'll be using.
BuildImage: is used to patch the system length into the boot
sector of the disk.image file
Offsets: prints byte offsets for major structures (only present
in distributions of the baseline OS written by the class
in Systems Programming)
Other things you can 'make':
prog.dis: a disassembly of the prog.o file - a text version of
the binary machine code
prog.nll: like prog.nl, but includes non-global symbols as well
as globals (e.g., static local variables in files)
file.X: generates an assembly listing from the C source file
named "file.c" which has the C source code inserted around
the assembly code
clean: deletes all object, listing, and binary files
depend: recreates the dependency lists in the Makefile
Loading additional files:
You can load additional files into memory by adding the name of
the file and the address where you want it loaded to the end of
the BuildImage command in the Makefile. However, because the
loading is done in real mode, you cannot load into addresses
above 0x9ffff. See the code in BuildImage.c for more details.
Modifying the bootstrap:
You can add some code to the bootstrap without significantly
changing its size. The baseline bootstrap assembles to 0x2ad
bytes without the memory map code, or 0x353 with that code; this
leaves about 330 (or 170) bytes available at the end of the second
sector. If you need to add more than will fit there, you will
need to change the definition of BOOT_SIZE at the beginning of
the file, the code which loads the second half of the bootstrap
from the device, and the ".org" at the end of the file to reflect
the new length of the bootstrap.