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Old 22nd April 2009
bsdnewbie999 bsdnewbie999 is offline
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Default Assembly and kernel programming.

What's the different of assembly language and kernel programming? Any suggested sources??
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Old 22nd April 2009
drhowarddrfine drhowarddrfine is offline
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The first is a language and the second is not.

You write code for the kernel in the second case. It's usually done with C but a smattering of assembly language can be found.

In case you are confused about what the 'kernel' is, that's the core of the operating system that handles all system functions and communications between processes.

Last edited by drhowarddrfine; 22nd April 2009 at 02:28 PM.
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Old 22nd April 2009
indienick indienick is offline
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I, like bsdnewbie999 am interested in programming for a BSD kernel, but I do not know where to start. (I am not trying to hijack this thread, mind you.)

I have just one, simple question: FreeBSD's online documentation has a few sections on programming kernel modules (syn. drivers), but would that knowledge carry over to other BSDs (namely OpenBSD)? Is the BSD kernel a standardized thing, across various BSDs?
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Old 22nd April 2009
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jggimi jggimi is offline
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BSDNewbie:

"Assemblers" have text files as input, as do "Compilers" -- and they both output executable binary objects. That is where their similarities end.

The difference is that the text file written in an "assembly language" or in "assembler" describe the specific CPU instructions to be placed in the binary output file. CPU instruction sets are hardware specific, and may be as simple or as complex as the instruction-set of the individual processor. The old PDP-8, one of the first processors I did programming for, had only 8 different instructions. The last OS built entirely from assembler language, that I dealt with regularly, was one for IBM's System/370, which still survives in their zSeries, if I recall correctly. It had several hundred different CPU instructions.

If you've never looked at a CPU instruction set, they commonly have instructions that are relatively simplistic, such as:

"copy a chunk of memory at this specified address into that CPU register, for later manipulation"

"add the values in these two registers together"

"copy a chunk of memory, for some number of bytes, from this address to that address"

"subtract 1 from this register value. If the register has reached zero, jump to that address, else execute the next instruction after this one"

"Issue the I/O instruction at this address to that hardware controller."

------------------------

indienick:

OpenBSD uses a "monolithic kernel" --- this is a big name to describe what just means, really, "built all into one single file". However, it has the capability to add kernel modules; emulators/kqemu is an example of a kernel module port/package for OpenBSD.
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Old 22nd April 2009
ocicat ocicat is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by indienick View Post
...but I do not know where to start.
Begin by reading the kernel's source followed by reading it more. Unfortunately, you are seeing multiple issues at the same time:
  • Rarely if ever does the source of a large project make sense the first few trips through study. It will take awhile, & multiple reads.
  • The interaction between modules & functions may not be apparent for quite some time.
  • Projects (commercial or Open Source...) grow organically which means that the organization of the overall source base will take time to comprehend why things are as they are. Don't expect to understand it on the first pass.
Rarely is there a published roadmap which will gently guide you through the process. If you really want to learn the kernel, have the fortitude & tenacity to stick to it.

Last edited by ocicat; 22nd April 2009 at 04:14 PM.
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Old 22nd April 2009
BSDfan666 BSDfan666 is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by indienick View Post
I have just one, simple question: FreeBSD's online documentation has a few sections on programming kernel modules (syn. drivers), but would that knowledge carry over to other BSDs (namely OpenBSD)? Is the BSD kernel a standardized thing, across various BSDs?
The BSD projects may share some kernel level API's, but they've had a long time to diverge from each other.. no real effort was made to keep things compatible with each other.

FreeBSD for example has a totally different SCSI layer then the other BSD's.. They may still share some common code, it's becoming less easy to port drivers between them.. definitely not plug and play.

NetBSD and OpenBSD have a kernel module framework called lkm(4), it is supported by both.. but it simply offers a way for modules to be loaded, such modules are free to use kernel functions/symbols which again may not be available or compatible between the two systems.

Also, while OpenBSD does still support lkm(4).. it is not an active utilizer of it.. as jggimi said, the kernel is monolithic and all supported drivers are compiled into the default kernel binaries.

FreeBSD has deprecated lkm(4) in favour of their own framework.. they call it kld(4).

@bsdnewbie999, That kind of question could have been answered easily using a search engine.. was it really necessary to waste our time?

Last edited by BSDfan666; 22nd April 2009 at 04:02 PM.
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Old 22nd April 2009
indienick indienick is offline
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BSDfan666, jggimi, thank you both, very much, for your responses.
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Old 22nd April 2009
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If you have an interest in kernels, I would suggest digging up John Lions' commentary on UNIX 6th Edition, with Source Code*. The book covers a very old version of UNIX, C, and PDP assembly; but it offers a *much* less complex beast to study then the modern BSD or Linux kernels have become.

The best introduction to the modern kernels that I know of, is to poke around the source code, see where things are located, and find out how something you are interested in works; exempli gratia learn how the system goes from CPU power on, to allowing multiple users to login**. Or perhaps study how the the kernel executes programs***. You can even poke around various sub systems and drivers; the implementation of FAT file systems is a nice and simple file system to study compared to modern FSes.


* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lions%2...th_Source_Code
** I found writing notes on that very fun and mildly educational.
*** Doing that is a fun exercise
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Old 8th May 2009
Zmyrgel Zmyrgel is offline
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indienick, I asked pretty much the same question from Marc Balmer (OpenBSD dev) and he suggested that I read the Design and implementation of 4.4BSD operating system and the Advanced Unix programming in Unix environment. This should give pretty good basis and then the kernel code would slowly start to make sense

The first book has bit old information but most of it should describe how things work on OpenBSD too.
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Old 17th May 2009
indienick indienick is offline
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Wonderful! Thank you very much, Zmyrgel.
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