Embox is a configurable operating system kernel designed for resource constrained and embedded systems.

Here's a quick overview on how to build and run Embox.

Required environment:

• gcc and make
• cross compiler for the target platform

For Debian-based systems (most packages are installed out of box though):

$ sudo apt-get install build-essential gcc-multilib curl libmpc-dev python

For Arch Linux:

$ sudo pacman -S make gcc-multilib cpio qemu

For MAC OS X (requires MacPorts installed):

$ sudo port install i386-elf-gcc i386-elf-binutils cpio gawk qemu

For alternative instructions please refer to Emdocker wiki page https://github.com/embox/embox/wiki/Emdocker

First of all:

$ git clone https://github.com/embox/embox.git embox
$ cd embox

Since Embox is highly configurable project, it is necessary to specify modules to be built and params for them. To build the OS make command is used. All commands described below are called from the embox directory, which includes src/, templates/, ...

For configuring it is needed to specify params and modules supposed to be included into the system. Embox has several templates prepared, to list them use the following command:

$ make confload

The simplest way to load a template is to specify its name in the command:

$ make confload-<template>

For the quick overview you can use one of qemu templates that exist for most architectures, that is, x86/qemu for x86:

$ make confload-x86/qemu

After configuring the project just run make to build:

$ make

The resulting image can now be run on QEMU. The simplest way is to execute ./scripts/qemu/auto_qemu script:

$ sudo ./scripts/qemu/auto_qemu

sudo is requried to setup a TUN/TAP device necessary to emulate networking.

After the system is loaded, you’ll see the embox> prompt, now you are able to run commands. For example, help lists all existing commands.

To test the connection:

ping 10.0.2.16

If everything's fine, you can connect to the Embox terminal via telnet.

To exit Qemu type ctrl + A and X after that.

You can use the same script with -s -S -no-kvm flags for debugging:

$ sudo ./scripts/qemu/auto_qemu -s -S -no-kvm

After running that QEMU waits for a connection from a gdb-client. Run gdb in the other terminal:

$ gdb ./build/base/bin/embox
...
(gdb) target extended-remote :1234
(gdb) continue

The system starts to load.

At any moment in gdb terminal you can type ctrl + C and see the stack of the current thread (backtrace) or set breakpoints (break <function name>, break <file name>:<line number>).

Embox supports the following CPU architectures: x86, ARM, Microblaze, SPARC, PPC, MIPS.

In order to work with architectures other than x86 you'll need a cross compiler. After installing the cross compiler just repeat the step above, starting with configuring:

make confload-<arch>/qemu
make
sudo ./scripts/qemu/auto_qemu

The output is quite the same as in the case of the x86 architecture.

Embox supports networking on x86, ARM, and Microblaze.