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@ghaerr ghaerr released this 21 Nov 21:58
· 2905 commits to master since this release
v0.4.0
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ELKS v0.4.0 Downloads

Prebuilt disk images for floppy and hard disks are downloadable below from Github Assets for this release. These images can be used to boot from PC/XT/AT hardware, or an emulator, such as QEMU. The images are built with network support by default, using the NE2K network card, set for I/O address=0x300 and IRQ=12. See the Wiki HowTo for more information.

ELKS v0.4.0 Enhancements

Kernel

  • Tested and works on PCs with 8088, 8086, 80286, 80386 … CPUs and later
  • No compiler warnings on kernel build
  • Strace working, calculates kernel stack usage
  • Implement task zombie state, rewrite wait
  • Implement kernel local heap (@mfld-fr)
  • Improved memory segment allocator (@mfld-fr)
  • Fix userland signals
  • Use single far address for kernel process signaling (@tkchia)
  • New synchronization primitives
  • Remove unneeded and slow kernel locks
  • Add race-safe sleep/wait prepare_to_wait etc
  • Fix select busylooping, network semaphore lockups
  • Much improved kernel debug macros and mechanism
  • ^P kernel/application debug mechanism using SIGURG
  • Restartable system calls
  • Reduce kernel stack to 600 bytes from 988
  • Align stack pointer to even boundary to save malloc issues
  • Kernel FAR text section, saves 11k bytes of .text space
  • Enhance I/O performance w/direct fmemcpy to/from user space
  • Rewritten fmemcpy routines to use word copy

System Call Fixes: wait, rmdir, access, brk, link, stat, gettimeofday

Exec

  • Separate heap & stack, v1 a.out header
  • chmem command enhanced
  • New compiler options for heap and stack (@tkchia)
  • Tuned 4k stack / 4k heap for all processes, tuned min memory usage
  • Run programs w/historical Minix a.out header (@tkchia)
  • Load medium-model programs (@tkchia)

Filesystems

  • FAT filesystem debugged and working
  • Mountable Minix and FAT partitions
  • Improved MBR, use sect_offset to support MBR boots to /dev/hda1 etc
  • Add VFAT long filename support, virtual /dev directory
  • Fix Minix mount/unmount superblock checking/write
  • 16-bit or 32-bit inodes in kernel
  • Mount readonly, remount options, can boot readonly
  • Fix romdisk read directory
  • Allow ramdisk size larger than 64k
  • Allow preloaded ramdisks in upper memory
  • FAT32 fixes, large drive mount fix

Disk & I/O Subsystem

  • Rename /dev/bdX to /dev/hdX
  • Support for USB drives
  • Variable number of L2 buffers
  • Revise /dev/hda from 4 to 8, implement partitions
  • Floppy I/O to use DMASEG only when necessary
  • IDE query to BIOS HD driver for reliable CHS data (@Mellvik)
  • Replaced DDPT allows running on IBM XT v1 BIOS machines (@tkchia)
  • Align buffers on 1K to remove DMASEG requirement
  • Floppy track caching, improves floppy speed tremendously
  • Block I/O subsystem enhanced, no mapbuffer or buffer copying
  • 32-bit block numbers for FAT

Console

  • Direct Console fnkey sequences
  • Direct console CapsLock/Numlock and LED support (@Mellvik)
  • Direct Console ANSI sequences for vi and sh line editing
  • Combine ANSI code in BIOS and Direct Console
  • Direct and BIOS console driver refactoring and cleanup
  • Serial console rewritten, improved structure
  • Kernel printk allowed before console init
  • Add headless console for SBC systems

Drivers

  • Fast serial driver
  • Serial driver FIFO
  • Add O_EXCL for serial com/mouse
  • Implement VMIN/VMAX, termios cleanup in applications
  • Dynamically allocate TTY I/O queues
  • Char I/O excess wakeup calls removed for speed
  • Character queues don’t have to be power of 2
  • Customizable IRQ and I/O ports for all drivers
  • Use simpler wait routines in network drivers
  • New WD8003 network driver (@pawosm-arm)
  • NE2K network driver rewritten (@Mellvik)

Networking

  • Packet statistics via netstat
  • Fixed ARP, Added ARP cache list display
  • Debug RTO values
  • Multiple session support to telnetd
  • Tune timeouts for TCP transmissions
  • Remove double buffering in network drivers
  • Tuned network buffer sizes, implement send window write throttling
  • Network throughput increased substantially
  • File transfers both ways now supported

Networking Bug Fixes

  • Tons of TCP/IP fixes to ktcp and kernel
  • Fixed Async ARP packet handling
  • Fixes to telnet, telnetd and httpd to get them actually working
  • Implement SLIP driver
  • Fix SLIP buffer overrun
  • Fix odd length IP/ICMP checksum calcs
  • Networking fixes for connections, PTY fixes, keypress to continue fix

Boot

  • Boot option parsing in /bootopts
  • Serial console via /bootopts
  • Init run modes for multi-user/multi-console
  • FAT 12/16 boot (@tkchia)
  • FAT32 boot
  • Improved FAT booter, /linux and /dev first 8 entries (@tkchia)
  • Implement ELKS parameter block in boot blocks (@tkchia)
  • MBR boot loader
  • Revised single stage boot loader design for Minix (@mfld-fr)
  • Minix boot loader enhancements (@tkchia)
  • Major setup.S cleanup, source cleanups
  • Refactor REL_SYS, remove !REL_SYS, CONFIG_ROMCODE working

New Commands

  • sys - transfer system images
  • makeboot command to write boot blocks
  • mkfat - create FAT filesystems
  • kilo - visual editor enhancements (@georgp24)
  • cron - schedule background jobs (@georgp24)
  • arp - display ARP cache
  • net - network start/stop script
  • df - disk free
  • time - calculate elapsed time running command (@Mellvik)
  • busyelks - BusyBox for ELKS (@marcin-laszewski)
  • tty - display current TTY (@Mellvik)
  • hd - hex dump
  • unreal - switch to 8086 unreal mode (@georgp24)
  • uuencode/uudecode - encode / decode binary files for network transmission (@Mellvik)
  • fdtest - floppy disk tester
  • sercat - serial port tester
  • mouse - mouse tester
  • Add Nano-X and games into build tree

Improved Commands

  • Sh line editing (@georgp24)
  • BASH command completion
  • Sash history (@Mellvik)
  • Dynamic window size for vi, kilo
  • ANSI /etc/termcap for vi, vi works from serial port
  • Enhanced ps, meminfo, miniterm, ls
  • Major bug fixes to init, getty
  • ^C handling, no shell exit
  • Workaround kernel directory rename with improved mv command
  • Add recursive option to cp to copy entire disks
  • Fixed mkfs and fsck to work
  • Fixed fdisk to work
  • Fixed clock and added to startup for correct date/time from BIOS at boot
  • Fixed init to properly read /etc/inittab, with single and multi-user run modes
  • Fixed getty to handle multiuser logins on serial ports

C Library

  • Debug malloc heap trace
  • Libc Routines added or fixed: putenv, basename/dirname (@cjsthompson), chgrp, snprintf/ vsnprintf (@tkchia), getpass, times, tzset, sleep, rand, srand, gmtime, in_aton, in_ntoa, in_gethostbyname
  • Header file cleanup and all prototypes
  • No warnings on libc compile
  • Split all functions to separate .c files (@marcin-laszewski)
  • Localtime support and TZ=
  • Add stdcall support (@tkchia)
  • Add multilib support (@tkchia)

Build

  • MacOS build
  • Disk images built with mfs tool, no root or host filesystem driver needed
  • Add setboot for managing boot blocks
  • Elkscmd/ reorganization, all commands built w/any config

Compiler / Tools

  • Toolchain enhancements for medium model (@tkchia)
  • Enhance thunk code for 0-6 argument near calls from fartext (@tkchia)
  • Move to new elf linker (@tkchia)
  • Use ligbcc from toolchain (@tkchia)
  • Add objdump86
  • Elksemu enhancements (@tkchia)
  • GCC tools update for GCC v10 (@tkchia)
  • mfs tool to create Minix images w/o being root

Images

  • Build all disk images automatically
  • Images include 2.88M, 1.44M, 1.2M, 720k and 360k, FAT and Minix, 32MB HD, 32MB MBR
  • Config image build system for app category and disk image size
  • Select applications by image size as well as application category
  • Consolidate commands to /bin

Documentation

  • Wiki
  • Improved HTML documentation (@georgp24)
Assets 16
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