Genode OS Framework / News: Recent posts

The current version of the Sculpt operating system improves overall performance and introduces copy and paste between terminals, virtual machines, and graphical applications. It can be downloaded from the Sculpt download page and is accompanied by updated documentation.

The current release targets various topics ranging from the introduction of our kernel-agnostic virtualization interface, which enables the user-level VMMs Seoul and VirtualBox to make use of hardware-assisted virtualization across supported kernels/hypervisors, right up to the ability to run Tomcat and Spring with our port of OpenJDK on ARM and x86.

Further notable highlights of the release are the update of our tool chain (GCC 8.2, binutils 2.32) including support for 64-bit ARM (AARCH64), unified build-directories across different boards (esp. on ARM), performance optimizations of our custom base-hw kernel, and updates for the Zynq platform and Intel network drivers. Also, the downloadable Genode Foundations book experienced its yearly update.... read more

With this release, we pursue our goal to broaden the Genode community by making the system more attractive with regard to software installation, extension by components implemented in programming languages other than C/C++, and a platform for Genode-related news.

First, we enhanced Sculpt OS with an easy-to-use GUI and mechanism to discover, install, and intregrate third-party software into the live system. This federated software provisioning enables any developer to become a software provider for the community with a direct, cryptographically-secured distribution channel to users. Second, we ported OpenJDK with JIT compilation to Genode x86-64 and ARM 32-bit and improved our support for Ada/SPARK (incl. AUnit). The Java port is accompanied by a IoT network appliance showcase scenario. Third, we support the spreading of Genode-related news, stories, and software updates with the https://genodians.org federated blogging platform. Everyone who is enthusiastic about Genode - users and developers alike - is invited to express ideas, announce software, or share practical tips and tricks by joining the growing number of authors. Besides the work on shiny features, the current release includes a profound cleanup, which finalizes the huge API modernization initiated almost three years ago.... read more

The main subject of the November release is software quality and resilience on multiple levels. First, we integrated dozens of our component test into one orchestrated on-target test scenario. This approach not only stresses the resilience of the base framework and the underlying kernels across all supported hardware platforms, but it also makes each individual test easily reproducible, e.g., on top of Sculpt OS. Furthermore, we incorporated the Clang static code analyzer into our development workflows and enabled runtime code coverage metrics based on Gcov. Last, we added a mechanism for component health monitoring to our base framework to improve the resilience of Genode systems with undependable components.... read more

With version 18.08, we advance the Genode OS framework further in the direction of our endeavor to develop a general-purpose operating system. The first key element is the support for latest PC hardware with a substantial update of our ported device drivers as well as enhancements to our custom driver implementations. Further, the release addresses the steady stream of new discovered CPU-level vulnerabilities with a kernel-agnostic microcode update mechanism. Beside extensive improvements in our VFS and networking infrastructure, the highlight of Genode 18.08 is the novel user interface for the upcoming Sculpt by Visual Composition (VC) release. It enables the user to see and consciously control the interaction of components with one another and with the hardware making the technical foundation of capability-based security graspable for non-technical people.... read more

With Sculpt for The Curious - the second development stage of the Genode-based general-purpose OS used at Genode Labs, we invite a broader user base to explore the system. It comes in the form of a ready-to-use disk image for a bootable USB thumb drive and as a virtual-machine appliance. Immediately after booting the Sculpt base system, a graphical user interface enables the user to access and manage storage devices, and to configure network connectivity. The actual "sculpting" of the system is performed using a text-based interface, which is described in the accompanied documentation. It covers everything from the configuration of the base system up to the installation and deployment of software.

The Year of Sculpt for Genode marches on with release 18.05 and Sculpt for The Curious (TC). This incarnation of Genode as a general-purpose operating system is tailored for those that follow our project with curiosity. Sculpt TC comes with a graphical user interface, which enables the user to interactively perform fundamental tasks like storage and network connectivity management as well as installation and deployment of software. On the back seat of this update Genode brings major improvements of the base framework (update of seL4 and Muen, modern font rendering, UTF-8 support), enhanced utilities (Java language support, improved Ada support, Seoul VMM update), and on the device driver side (support NVMe, NXP i.MX SoC). Additionally, the Genode Foundations book was updated to the state of Genode 18.05.... read more

The fresh release kicks off the Year of Sculpt by featuring the first revision of the Sculpt operating system for general-purpose computing. Further highlights of the new release range from network-stack improvements, over a new tracing utility, to the experimental use of the Nim programming language.

For detailed information consult the release documentation https://goo.gl/qJJAtJ

The current release lacks one shiny major feature but instead brings many small improvements regarding the interactive use of Genode. Driven by our endeavor to use Genode as secure and robust working platform in the Genode Labs team, we smoothened great many rough edges. On the path, the system got a completely revised GUI and input stack, a dynamic driver manager, and over 150 packaged depot archives. The package management represents the key to easy deployment and update in the future.... read more

With the fresh release, we publish the outcome of our long-term investigation of hardware-accelerated graphics on modern Intel platforms that we conducted over the past year. As a result, Genode comes now with a brand new GPU multiplexer for Intel-Gen8 graphics hardware and an updated OpenGL stack with Qt5 and SDL integration. Further, we improved the seL4 microkernel platform support with an update to version 6.0. seL4 can now be used on x86 32-bit and 64-bit as well as the ARMv7 Wandboard. We also added preliminary UEFI support, non-blocking VFS operation, Genode as Xen DomU, and much more.... read more

The current release improves the framework in various aspects ranging from a new approach for package management over the adoption of the GNU compiler collection version 6.3 and Qt 5.8 to the feature completeness of VirtualBox 5.1.22 on the NOVA microhypervisor. With Genode 17.05 we completed our framework API modernization, which brings users close to a stable API with rare changes in the future. A notable gem is the initial support for the Nim programming language.... read more

Genode 17.02 brings the following major improvements. First, we largely revised our C runtime environment with respect to compatibility of our component framework to C applications. Therefore, we enhanced the VFS to support asynchronous I/O operations and changed the libc execution model to fit our state-machine-based component approach. Further, the release introduces the Genode application binary interface (ABI), which finally renders most Genode components entirely kernel-agnostic. System scenarios can now be moved from one kernel to another in a few seconds. Also, we packed a brand input-event filter component into this release and updated the init component to suit as a generic subsystem-composition engine that applies configuration updates differentially to its subsystems.... read more

The fresh release revisits the most fundamental aspect of the framework - the interplay between parent and child components. We replaced the fully synchronous model of communication by asynchronous communication to vastly improve scalability and reduce the effort of thorough evaluation of crucial system components. Further, we refined the design and configuration interface of our NIC-router component to ease its application in common use cases. Additional highlights are NOVA kernel improvements, VirtualBox version updates, and support for smart cards.... read more

Genode 16.08 brings lots of improvements ranging from base-platform support over networking and virtualization to a new tool for statistical profiling. We are proud to announce that we support seL4 as base platform for dynamic and interactive scenarios on x86. The new version enables users of seL4 to compose dynamic operating systems from a plethora of ready-to-use Genode components. Further, the Muen developers contribute their efforts in running unmodified guest operating systems on top their separation kernel with a port of VirtualBox 4. As we consider VirtualBox as key feature of Genode, this release includes a first experimental version of VirtualBox 5 on top of the NOVA kernel. Another highlight of the new version is a virtual networking component for routing and NAT accompanied by the ability to use the TOR network.... read more

The central aspect of the current release is the fundamental renovation of our base API. The API gradually evolved over the years since 2006 while we gained a wealth of experience with a wide range of usage scenarios and their requirements. We eventually realized that we need fundamental changes to greatly increase robustness and flexibility, and those changes will break backwards compatibility in many places. Therefore, this release brings new API functions reflecting our current knowledge about how a secure C++ OS framework should look like and, on the other hand, deprecates a wide range of interfaces that will be removed in future versions.... read more

Genode 16.02 adds RISC-V as a supported CPU architecture to our custom kernel, enables secure pass-through of individual USB devices to virtual machines, and updates the support for the Muen and seL4 kernels. We also improved our GUI stack and developed a custom USB mass-storage driver that runs separated from the now reconfigurable USB host-controller driver.

Detailed information about all changes of Genode 16.02 can be found in the release documentation at http://goo.gl/zYRMGq

With a strong focus on Genode as a desktop operating system, version 15.11 brings lots of improvements in the whole software stack. The new features range from a port of Intel graphics adapter driver from Linux over secure copy-paste to completely dynamic configuration of the de-componentized GUI. Additionally, we added support for Xilinx Zynq-7000 and 64-bit guests in VirtualBox as well as improved support for TrustZone on the USB Armory device.... read more

The current release is characterized by our efforts to use Genode as day-to-day operating system. From this background, we packed plenty of small improvements regarding user GUI experience, VirtualBox robustness and performance, integration of native Genode applications and guest OSes as well as tools to inspect the system behavior into Genode 15.08. Beyond that, we're proud to integrate community contributions as the support to run Genode base-hw on the Muen separation kernel on x86_64 and extended device-driver support for Raspberry Pi and Odroid-X2.... read more

With Genode 15.05, our base-hw kernel, which enables the execution of Genode without a third-party microkernel and originally supported the ARM architecture only, has become able to run on the 64-bit x86 architecture. Also, base-hw received support for kernel-protected capabilities and the scheduler got much more flexible. Beside the improvements of our custom kernel, we also introduce preliminary support to run simple system scenarios on top of the seL4 microkernel. With seL4, there is now the prospect of running Genode on top of a formally verified kernel.... read more

Our plans for 2015 comprise the consolidation and cultivation of the existing feature set of Genode rather than the conquering of new grounds. Along these lines, our fresh release introduces a highly modular tool kit for automated testing and brings plenty of stability and performance improvements, e.g., for VirtualBox on NOVA. Nevertheless, we added one prominent feature to Genode 15.02, which is support for virtualization on ARM with our custom base-hw kernel.... read more

With the current release, we enable support for wireless networking including WiFi protected access (WPA) in Genode. The supported hardware is currently limited to Intel wireless chipsets, i.e., iwl6xxx. The second major improvement is a new scheduler for our custom HW kernel. The new scheduler allows to trade CPU resources among Genode subsystems, similarly to how RAM is managed in Genode.

Other highlights of Genode 14.11 are a new dynamic linker implemented from scratch with a complexity of less than 20% of the old ported one, an upgrade of VirtualBox to version 4.3.16 along with extensive stability improvements, networking support for Raspberry Pi, and new GUI components.... read more

The main theme of Genode 14.08 is its new GUI architecture that scales to modern flexible and dynamic GUIs but also maintains the strong security of the nitpicker approach. Further, the release improves virtualization on the NOVA microhypervisor with SMP support in Seoul and networking in VirtualBox. Our custom base-hw kernel got a boost on ARM hardware, OpenVPN was ported to Genode and DDE Linux was updated to upstream version 3.14.5.... read more

The fresh release comes with a strong focus on framework scalability. We introduce a new concept for integrating third-party software. The concept unifies existing separate solutions into one port-management tool. Also, we are proud of our per-process virtual file system library, which supports programs based on the C runtime to seamlessly integrate with isolated file services for distinct concerns, e.g., web-server configuration and data.... read more

We dived right into the world of ARM TrustZone. Read about our endeavor of combining Genode with ARM security extensions in a new article [1] and enjoy the accompanying video [2].

[1] http://genode.org/documentation/articles/trustzone
[2] http://youtu.be/voFV1W4yyY8

This release focuses on storage and virtualization bringing Genode one step further to a general-purpose OS. Storage-wise we improved our block-driver API to better support asynchronous operation, added a block-cache implementation, and extended our file-system support with NetBSD rump kernels. Genode now supports ext, FAT, exFAT, and NTFS. Second, we enhanced our virtualization portfolio by a port of the VirtualBox VMM to Genode/NOVA, which enables support for a wide range of guest OSes (including MS Windows).... read more