2002/zark.sock.ath.cx/docs/zarksoft_goals.html - Archive

<HTML> <HEAD> <TITLE>.:[zark!OS 0.1b0] outline and planning</TITLE> <STYLE TYPE="text/css"> A {text-decoration:none;} A:hover {text-decoration:underline;} </STYLE> <BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#000000" LINK="#0000FF" VLINK="#0000FF" ALINK="#0000FF" STYLE="font-family:verdana,arial;font-size:8pt;"> <BLOCKQUOTE>.:[zark!OS 0.1b0] outline and planning Date: January 19, 2002 Written by: Shane .: 0. Basics There are a few basic parts of the OS we need to concentrate on to get started, and they are: <UL> <LI>Main file system (ZKFS) and loadable file system support <LI>Boot loader (MBR, second- and third-stage boot loader) <LI>Hardware Abstraction and drivers <LI>Text-based shell <LI>Executable file format <LI>Location of executables in memory <LI>Multitasking </UL> .: 1. Main files system (ZKFS) and loadable file system support The main file system of zark!OS is ZKFS. We need to research on how to make fast and secure file systems, but it's probablly going to be a journalling file system, possibly using balanced trees like HPFS (OS/2's file system). I won't get into much detail here because this is just an outline. Files and directories will have unix-style paths starting with / and no drive letters à la Windows. When we get around to adding Windows programs support, we'll give those programs a virtual file system that allows them to access any file on the hard drive while making it seem like a normal windows hard drive. For example, /sys would be mapped to c:\windows and /cdrom would be mapped to d:\. We also need to have support for third-party file systems such as FAT, NTFS, ext2, etc. and should be able to boot off any file system without hassle. .: 2. Boot loader (MBR, second- and third-stage boot loader) In order to do the third-party file system booting, we'll need some smart way to get the boot sector to find the system files to load them on startup. What I was thinking was this: the computer will have a normal MBR that just finds the boot volume and loads the second-stage boot loader from the first 512 bytes of the volume. (This is normal behavour for any IBM compatible PC). Now, the second-stage boot loader will be considered part of the loadable file system driver, and it's only purpose is to load the file /sys/btldr.sys (it will ALWAYS be in that location on all computers and zark!OS will ALWAYS be in /sys/) </BLOCKQUOTE> </BODY> </HTML>