PC99 (32-bit)

seL4 runs on 32-bit ia32 and 64-bit x64 machines, on QEMU and on hardware.

Simulation

Checkout the sel4test project using repo as per seL4Test

repo init -u https://github.com/seL4/sel4test-manifest.git
repo sync
mkdir cbuild
cd cbuild
../init-build.sh -DPLATFORM=ia32 
# The default cmake wrapper sets up a default configuration for the target platform.
# To change individual settings, run `ccmake .` and change the configuration
# parameters to suit your needs.
ninja
# This platform is a simulation target. This script should work to run the
# generated image if you also use -DSIMULATION=1 for init-build above:
./simulate

If you plan to use the ./simulate script, please be sure to add the -DSIMULATION=1 argument when running cmake.

Generated binaries can be found in the images/ directory.

Real Hardware

When running on real hardware console output will be over serial. You will need to plug a serial cable into your machine to see any output.

The build system produces a multiboot compliant image for x86; a grub2 stanza is here, but we usually boot via PXE for convenience.

menuentry "Load seL4 VM" --class os {
    load_video
    insmod gzio
    insmod part_msdos
    insmod ext2
    set root='(hd0,msdos2)'
    multiboot /boot/sel4kernel
    module /boot/sel4rootserver
}

Booting via PXEBOOT using syslinux PXELINUX requires setting up a tftp and dhcp server on the network that the machine you want to boot is connected to. The syslinux site has a download for pxelinux which we load over PXEBOOT that then can load seL4. The configuration for pxelinux.cfg/default is provided below.

label seL4
        kernel mboot.32
        append kernel-ia32-pc99 --- apps-ia32-pc99

Booting off USB with syslinux

Use syslinux to create a bootable USB stick as follows.

Assuming your USB flash drive is at /dev/sdb with a FAT partition at /dev/sdb1:

install-mbr /dev/sdb
syslinux --install /dev/sdb1
mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt
cp images/sel4test-driver-image-ia32-pc99 /mnt/rootserver
cp images/kernel-ia32-pc99 /mnt/sel4kernel
cat > /mnt/syslinux.cfg <<EOF
SERIAL 0 115200
DEFAULT seL4test
LABEL seL4test
    kernel mboot.c32
    append sel4kernel --- rootserver
EOF
cp /usr/lib/syslinux/modules/bios/mboot.c32 /mnt
cp /usr/lib/syslinux/modules/bios/libcom32.c32 /mnt
umount /mnt

Use fdisk to make sure the first partition is bootable.

And you’re done. Output will come on the serial port