Files by Name (Minix 3 Filesystem)

[pavehawk2007]

https://blog.stephenmarz.com/2020/06/08/files-by-name/

[pavehawk2007]

Just so you know, this is part of a larger tutorial at https://osblog.stephenmarz.com where I write a RISC-V operating system using Rust.

Let me know if you have any questions!

[giancarlostoro → pavehawk2007]

Curious what kind of hardware are you using? I'm interested in trying out RISC-V for myself, but aside from Qemu I'm not sure where I'd start.

[pavehawk2007 → giancarlostoro]

I use the Kendryte K215 which is a dual-core, RV64GC inside of the Sipeed Maixduino (Arduino form factor):

https://www.seeedstudio.com/sipeed

[imheresamir → pavehawk2007]

Have you found the TRM yet? I really like the idea of this chip but the released documentation for it is woefully incomplete.

[pavehawk2007 → imheresamir]

Unfortunately no. I've been reverse engineering it from their BSP. It's slower than I'd like.

[quasarj → pavehawk2007]

I did immediately wonder how Minix was written in Rust, since it predates it by quite a bit.

[lordleft]

I feel like Minix is underappreciated. I'm reading Tannenbaum's Modern Operating Systems at the moment and he makes a persuasive appeal for some of its unique takes of the *nix OS family.

[pavehawk2007 → lordleft]

Minix 3 has taken on a life of its own and is maintained here: https://minix3.org/

I had trouble finding really good documentation on the filesystem itself, so it took a bit of trial-and-error to figure out the structure.

[sillywalk → pavehawk2007]

From the website, it looks like development stopped in 2016.

I read some of the papers on Minix3, and the Loris storage stack. From the bits I understood, it looks pretty interesting.

[lordleft → pavehawk2007]

You're doing impressive work! Thank you for writing this up and sharing your progress!

[pavehawk2007 → lordleft]

Thank you! I appreciate the kind words.

[abawany → lordleft]

It is a really good book and I credit it for saving me when I took an undergraduate class in operating systems a long time ago: the book chosen for the course was mostly incomprehensible to me but reading Tannenbaum's tome was eye opening and insightful. Edit: spelling.

[joshbaptiste]

Wait so this is an alternative Minix 3 FS written in Rust?

[pavehawk2007 → joshbaptiste]

Alternative? No. It's a component of the full RISC-V operating system.

[joshbaptiste → pavehawk2007]

ah ok