Go to http://www.cs.utah.edu/flux/oskit/ for any more recent
announcements and soon a FAQ.  Both contain good information
on what the OSKit is, and what it's good for.

Here are the recent announcements:

----------------------------------------
From: Roland McGrath <roland@cs.utah.edu>
To: oskit-announce@flux.cs.utah.edu
Subject: New OSKit snapshot oskit-19991124

Date: Wed Nov 24 1999

This is an informal snapshot to make available the improvements we've made
to the OSKit lately, and give all you energetic OS hackers something to
chew on along with your leftover turkey this weekend.  An incomplete list
of changes appears below.

As before, go to http://www.cs.utah.edu/flux/oskit/
and everything hangs off there; currently mostly in ftp.

Enjoy, and Happy Thanksgiving from the Flux Group!


New versions of Linux device drivers.
	The entire suite of Linux device drivers has been updated to
	2.2.12, replacing the code from Linux 2.0.29 used in previous
	OSKit versions.  This adds a number of new devices as well as
	better versions of existing drivers, bringing the last 2.5 years
	of Linux device driver development into the OSKit.

Floppy support.
	The PC floppy disk driver (from Linux 2.2.12) is now available
	(on x86 only).  This driver has had only very minimal testing.

New versions of FreeBSD components.
	The FreeBSD C library, math library, and network stack components
	have been updated to release 3.2-STABLE of FreeBSD from the prior
	collection of code from various 2.x releases.  The ISA device
	drivers taken from FreeBSD have not been updated.

OSKit StrongARM support improved.
	The port of the OSKit to the StrongARM continues to progress
	quickly.  FreeBSD networking, NetBSD filesystem, and Linux
	device driver support have been added.  The builtin 10Mbit
	ethernet and IDE Zip drive have been modestly tested.  So far we
	still only support the DNARD ("Shark") platform.

Flask security components.
	Our colleagues at the NSA have integrated several more
	components of the Flask security architecture (see
	http://www.cs.utah.edu/flux/flask) into the OSKit, drawing upon
	the work done in the Fluke operating system and from their
	current work in Linux.	This snapshot includes COM interfaces
	and default implementations for the "access vector cache" and
	"security server" components, as well as updates to the file
	access control wrappers.  The Flask COM interfaces are
	documented in a new chapter of the OSKit documentation
	(doc/flask.tex).  A simple example program,
	examples/x86/netbsd_sfs_com.c, demonstrates the use of the
	security server and filesystem access check framework.

GCC 2.95 support for the x86.
	Previous versions of the OSKit would not work (or even build)
	with the EGCS line of GCC.  This snapshot supports building with
	GCC 2.95.2, which is now the recommended version to use.
	Note that the StrongARM port has always required GCC 2.95.
	(See the previous snapshot announcement in the ANNOUNCE file
	for full details about the tools needed for the StrongARM build.)

Dropped a.out build support.
	We no longer support an aout build of the OSKit.  You can still
	produce aout format kernels, but it is done by converting an ELF
	kernel with mkbsdimage and a special version of GNU ld.  Please
	contact us if you have concerns about object file formats for
	your uses of the OSKit.

Support for buffering/blocking console input instead of busy-wait.
	A new component layered on top of the minimal console support
	provides a console device with interrupt-driven, buffered input
	and proper blocking support with no busy-waiting (for both the
	serial-port console and the PC console).  (This is still not a
	production-quality device driver, and the default console
	support remains unchanged, using a simple busy-wait.)  The new
	function start_cq_console in -loskit_startup is the easy way to
	use the new console code.

"Enhanced" console support on X86.
	The minimal output support for the X86 PC console has been
	extended from emulating a teletype on steroids to emulating the
	venerable ADM3A terminal, including support for a ^G bell using
	the PC speaker.  The minimal keyboard input support for the X86
	console now recognizes the Control and Meta (Alt) modifier keys.
	(You can enjoy the world's only ADM3A with 25 lines and a Meta key!)

Prototype packet dispatcher.
	Framework for generic packet filtering support.  Currently uses DPF.

Numerous bug fixes.
	Fixed problem with interrupts being enabled too soon in the
	base_* code.  The most annoying manifestation of this was netboot
	hanging/crashing on some machines.

	Many bootp fixes from Michael Hohmuth <hohmuth@innocent.com>.
	Thanks Michael!

	Lots of fixes to the pthreads library.  Most notably, a memory
	leak when threads exited, indefinitely delayed thread cleanups,
	and a random memory trashing bug on context switching.

	Tweaks to X86 interrupt handling.  Mostly related to GPROF support.
	The interrupt flag should now consistantly be disabled in hardware
	interrupt handlers and enabled in software interrupt handlers.
	With GPROF, the profiling timer should almost always be enabled
	except for small sections of code on interrupt entry and exit.


----------------------------------------
From: Leigh Stoller <stoller@fast.cs.utah.edu>
To: oskit-announce@flux.cs.utah.edu
Subject: OSKit StrongARM support

Date: Tue Sept 14 1999

This informal snapshot is to make available a very preliminary version
of StrongARM support. The only platform supported at this time is the
Digital DNARD (Shark), which contains an SA-110 StrongARM CPU, and an
I/O architecture that is very similar to a PC. There is still quite a
bit of work to do, and the device support is extremely limited since
the OSKit's device driver framework has not yet been ported to the
Digital DNARD. The only documentation at this time is this message,
although the kernel library is very similar to its x86 counterpart.
If you are familiar with the x86 kernel library, you should be able to
apply that knowledge to the ARM kernel library.

***********************************************************************
WARNING: If you are not interested in StrongARM support, then do not
update to this snapshot, as validation has been very minimal.
***********************************************************************

As before, go to http://www.cs.utah.edu/flux/oskit/
and everything hangs off there; currently mostly in ftp.

These components and libaries build and appear to work okay:

	oskit		crt		kern
	boot/ofw	libc		posix/sys
	posix/sys_r	threads		svm
	amm		com		exec
	lmm		dev		startup
	clientos	memdebug	memfs
	fsnamespace/fsn	fsnamespace/fsn_r
	freebsd/libc	freebsd/libc_r
	examples/arm32	examples/arm32/extended	examples/arm32/threads

There is a new boot adaptor in boot/ofw that provides OFW->Multiboot
boot adaptor support. The operation is very similar to the BSD boot
adaptor, in that you can give it a multiboot compliant executable plus
optional boot modules, and it will generate an OFW compliant (netbsd
a.out) image which you can boot via tftp (dhcp). See the mkofwimage
script in boot/ofw.  Note that mkofwimage relies on linker emulation;
binutils needs to be built with both arm-elf and arm-netbsd targets
enabled so that an a.out file can be generated from ELF input files.
More on that below.

At the moment, the only console that is fully supported is the serial
console. VGA display output works, but keyboard input has not been
finished, so you will need to interact with your DNARD via a serial
line.  The baud rate defaults to 9600, since that is the speed at
which the OFW boot loader drives the port. Of course, if you do not
need to input anything, you can use the display for output by changing
the "serial_console" variable in kern/arm32/shark/base_console_init.c.

These components are not yet available:

	* FreeBSD networking and math library
	* Netbsd filesystem
	* Linux filesystems and device drivers
	* Netboot and multiboot adaptor
	* Runtime Linker (RTLD)
	* bootp
	* fsread
	* video/X11/wimp
	* Keyboard support
	* GPROF profiling support

A note about compiler tools: Finding a consistent and working set of
tools that would allow us to build on our FreeBSD 3.0 machines was a
bit of a pain. We ended up using:

	GCC 2.95
	Binutils 990818 daily snapshot with a small patch
	GDB 19990816 daily snapshot (for remote debugging)

Using this toolset, you can build ELF multiboot compliant libraries
and executables, but still create a proper OFW compliant a.out image
using linker emulation. You can pick up these tools at the OSKit ftp
site: ftp://flux.cs.utah.edu/flux/oskit/tools. There is a README file
in that directory with instructions on how to configure and build the
tools.

Once you have a working tool chain on your path, the OSKit can be
configured as follows (for cross compilation on a FreeBSD 3.0 box):

	cd oskit-obj-dir
	oskit-src-dir/configure --prefix=/your/prefix/dir \
			--build=i586-freebsd arm-elf
	gmake
	gmake install

Once you have an example kernel, you can create an OFW-bootable image
using the mkofwimage script:

	/your/prefix/dir/bin/mkofwimage -o foo.image your_kernel
	cp foo.image /your/tftp/dir/proper_kernel_name

Then log into your DNARD, and reboot it.

---------------------------------------
From: Leigh Stoller <stoller@fast.cs.utah.edu>
To: oskit-announce@flux.cs.utah.edu
Subject: New OSKit Snapshot oskit-990722

Date: Thu July 22 1999

We are making this snapshot to get out a large amount of new code for
testing before making an official release of it. Much has changed,
including some changes to how OSKit kernels should initialize themselves.
Please take a look at the example programs in examples/x86 to see what
needs to be done. As a companion to this release, there are two new
substantial demonstration kernels available from the OSKit web page; an
"fsck" kernel FreeBSD disk partitions, and a kernelized version of the
popular "rsync" program.

As before, go to http://www.cs.utah.edu/projects/flux/oskit/
and everything hangs off there; currently mostly in ftp.

A number of changes and fixes are contained in this snapshot:
	Rework of the C and POSIX libraries to remove all linktime external
	dependencies. All external interfaces are now accessed via a
	services database that is provided to the C/POSIX library when the
	kernel is initialized. The clientos library (described below) is
	responsible for setting up the services database, as well as the C
	library environment object that contains an assorted collection of
	interfaces that only the C/POSIX library are interested in (such as
	the console stream, the filesystem namespace, the memory allocator
	for malloc, the sleep interface to give up the CPU in select,
	etc.).

	Addition of a new "ClientOS" library to encapsulate and initialize
	many of the interfaces that an application program is dependent on,
	typically through the C/POSIX library. The clientos is a mandatory
	library that is responsible for initializing certain core
	interfaces, such as the memory object (lowest level allocator), the
	global registry, the C library environment object, and the default
	console stream object. See the Client Operating System
	(doc/clientos.tex) chapter in the documentation, as well as the
	example programs for the new initialization sequence (notably, the
	requirement of a call to oskit_clientos_init() in all OSKit
	kernels).

	Addition of a new Dynamic Linker/Loader (RTLD) library to allow ELF
	format OSKit kernels to dynamically load ELF format shared
	libraries (.so) files. This code is imported from the FreeBSD 3.0
	rtld-elf library, and is contained in the rtld directory. See the
	RTLD chapter in the documentation, (doc/rtld.tex) and the
	demonstration kernel in examples/dyntest.

	Lots of improvements and additions to the "startup" library.
	Although still undocumented, the startup library is intended to
	insulate the application program from the details of initializing
	many devices and subsystems, and to aid in setting up the client
	operating system. All of the example programs (sans one or two
	maybe) now use the startup library for most of their device and
	subsystem initialization. See the example programs in examples/x86.

	Completion of the "services database" COM interface and
	implementation.  The services database is a registry that maps GUID
	to COM object instantiation. Its original implementation allowed
	for a single global registry accessed by global functions. The
	implementation is now complete, and allows per-object
	instantiation. The global registry is now an instantiation of such
	an object, but for backwards compatibility, is still accessible
	through the original global function calls. See the Interface
	Registration (doc/register.tex) chapter in the documentation.

	Addition of a new filesystem namespace component. All pathname
	translation has been moved out of the POSIX library and into the
	oskit_fsnamespace component, which also encapsulates mount/unmount
	and mountpoint traversal. Also does symlink traversal. See
	oskit/fs/fsnamespace.h. In addition, a pathname cache (much like
	the "namei" cache in the unix FS) was added to prevent repeated
	entry into the driver framework to do directory lookups. This
	resulted in huge performance improvements (up to 6x) in programs
	that make heavy use of pathname translation (eg: rsync). The
	improvement was especially pronounced in multithreaded programs,
	where each entry into the driver framework results in the process
	lock being taken and released.  See the fsnamespace chapter in the
	documentation (doc/fsnamespace.tex), and the startup library
	(startup/start_fs.c) for example usage.

	Pthread library: Rework the mutex/condition code. Some general
	clean up, and now allows statically allocated and initialized
	mutexes and condition variables.  A statically allocated mutex or
	condition will be properly initialized the first time it is used if
	the program does not arrange for that to happen explicitly. Also
	added sigwait, sigwaitinfo, sigtimedwait and sigqueue to the
	multithreaded version of the signal code. Add documentation for the
	CPU Inheritance framework to the pthread chapter.

	Add small amounts of support for rsync and fsck kernels. More
	additions to the C (added stuff that was previously excluded) and
	POSIX library (some tty ioctls, getpass, lots of trivial stubs to
	allow linking).  Added asyncio I/O support to the COM pipe
	implementation since rsync uses pipes with select. Some fixes to
	the network code to make sure that connections to a server get torn
	before the oskit reboots, and to make sure a new initial segment
	value gets chosen so that the server side is not confused by a new
	connection with an old segment value.  This was causing failed
	connections from the rsync client to the rsync server when doing
	quick reboots. Much improved versions of memset, bzero, bcopy,
	memcpy, etc (from NetBSD). Make sure all open files are closed
	before the oskit reboots, so that all files are flushed to disk and
	the disk can be cleanly unmounted.

	A number of GPROF fixes and improvements when using the FreeBSD C
	library. Certain errors (such as no a.out file) no longer result in
	a partly written gmon.out file. This allows postmortem dump of the
	gprof data, rather than having it dumped out on the console. Also
	added a start_gprof() entrypoint to get the gprof code running in
	main, since it is often the case that you do not want to count the
	initialization code, or even have to worry about it. See
	examples/x86/hello.c for an example program that uses
	start_gprof().

	The memfs now understands internal vs. external links (akin to
	internal and external inode link counts in UNIX), which allows more
	precise cleanup semantics and fixes memory leaks in some usage
	patterns.  Several global variables were eliminated in favor of
	per-instantiation variables.  Stat now returns more accurate
	information about the file.

	The simple console now uses COM Stream wrappers for the console
	drivers (direct, gdb, serial).  Simplified base_console to use the
	COM wrappers and separated out initialization into
	base_console_init.c making it easier to override just the
	initialization.

	A fair amount of documentation reorganization, as well as some
	additional chapters. The OSKit web page also reflects these
	documentation changes (unlike the previous snapshot).

	Osenv stuff. All of the "osenv" interfaces in the device library
	have been COMified, and are exported to the device driver
	libraries (Linux, Freebsd, Netbsd), which have been reworked to use
	the dynamic interfaces, rather than static linktime dependencies on
	the device library itself. These changes are not well documented
	yet, but if you stick to using the "startup" library to initialize
	your kernels, you should not have to worry about it much. Feel free
	to ask us questions though.


---------------------------------------
From: Leigh Stoller <stoller@fast.cs.utah.edu>
To: oskit-announce@flux.cs.utah.edu
Subject: New OSKit Snapshot oskit-990402

Date: Fri April 2 1999

The main reason we're making this snapshot is to get out the new
support for running OSKit kernels in emulation mode on top of Linux
(previously it only ran on FreeBSD).  Linux users with their own
OSKit kernels please give it a whirl and report back.
See doc/unix-support.tex for details; search for "Linux".

As before, go to http://www.cs.utah.edu/projects/flux/oskit/
and everything hangs off there; currently mostly in ftp.

A number of modest changes and fixes are contained in this snapshot:
	Unix Mode emulation:
	-Added support for building and running the Unix emulation
	 package on Linux (ELF) and Freebsd 3.0 (a.out and ELF).
	-Simplified the libraries and link lines in the makefiles so
	 that building an oskit kernel under Unix mode is easier to do.
	-Added code to several of the example kernels (socket_bsd,
	 http_proxy) to demonstrate the use of Unix mode options.

	Netboot kernel:
	-Speed improvements: Overlap requests of several blocks of data at
	 a time from the network, instead of serially in 1K chunks.
	-Added support for building a GRUB-style DOS boot floppy image
	 containing the GRUB boot loader and a netboot kernel.

        Moved the bmod filesystem code out of the kernel library and into
        its own library (liboskit_memfs). See memfs/memfs_com.c. The memory
        file system is now completely independent of the multiboot and bmod
        parsing code, allowing easier creation of multiple memory file
        systems. The support code to populate a memfs from a multiboot bmod
        is now part of the startup library. See startup/start_fs_bmod.c for
        example usage.

	Creating kernels:  added a new perl script for creating
	MultiBoot images, "mkmb2".  Works the same as mkmbimage, but
	runs much faster on large kernels.

	Cleaned up the NetBSD glue code. Removed the fs library support
	code, and replaced it with different glue code that uses the osenv_
	routines in the device library (just as the Linux and Freebsd
	drivers already did).

	Pthread library changes: Implementation of pthread_kill() and
	pthread_sigmask(). Conformant pthread_cleanup_push/pop; now
	lexically scoped. A number of name changes to make the distinction
	between API functions and local additons clear.

	Assorted minor bug fixes.

----------------------------------------
From: Jay Lepreau <lepreau@cs.utah.edu>
To: oskit-announce@flux.cs.utah.edu
Subject: New OSKit release, 0.97

Date: Fri Jan 15 1999

As before, go to http://www.cs.utah.edu/projects/flux/oskit/
and everything hangs off there; currently mostly in ftp.

The significant changes in 0.97 are:
	Many thread library fixes and improvements. CPU inheritance
	scheduling is much more stable, as is the generic threads code.

	Restructuring of the minimal C library and FreeBSD C libraries. The
	syscall to COM layer was split out into a separate library (see the
	posix directory). Both C libraries now use the posix library for the
	COM layer calls.

	Patch1 to 0.96:
	Fixes to the FreeBSD ISA device drivers. Now operational, and can be
	used to provide a proper console TTY device that does cooked input.
	See the example program console_tty.c in examples/x86/extended,
	which demonstrates how to initialize a console TTY device and have
	the FreeBSD C library make use of it.

	Changes to how boot options are handled; OSKit programs no longer
	see booting-options, such as "-h" or "-d", in argv.  These are now
	stored in the oskit_bootargv array.  This is to make porting Unix
	programs to the OSKit easier since they do not need to have special
	OSKit code to tweak argv.  Syntax is documented at the end of the
	Intro chapter.

        We provide a mini-Java-shell for the Kaffe/OSKit environment.  All
	the OSKit changes have been merged into Transvirtual's tree (but
	shortly after they did a major change in build tools so we provide a
	separate Kaffe tar file for the nonce).

The above improvements were mainly due to the good work of Leigh Stoller;
Bart Robinson did the booting/cmdline work and Godmar Back does a lot in all
Kaffe-related work.

   Fixes for all the bugs/fixes you sent in (thanks!) and others, including:
	-Fixed remote GDB code so function calls from GDB work correctly.
	-Linux ext2fs fixes
	-lmm assert fix
	-fix sleep record leak in linux/dev
	-mklinuximage upgraded to match other mk* scripts
	-Bad linuxboot.bin.good replaced with good uuencoded linuxboot.bin.uue.

   Small stuff, including:
	-Changes to support Kaffe.
 	-Add a #define for _OSKIT_VERSION in oskit/version.h.
	-Some new files in preparation for importing secure filesystem and
	 networking components.
	-Document arg syntax for mk*image scripts, in their comments.


----------------------------------------
From: Jay Lepreau <lepreau@cs.utah.edu>
To: oskit-announce@flux.cs.utah.edu
Subject: OSKit 0.96 was released today
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 98 21:58:09 MST

Go to http://www.cs.utah.edu/projects/flux/oskit/
and follow your nose for all the goodies.

Briefly: it's up to 30 component libraries now, comes with 45 example
mini-kernels, a 500 page (help!) document with few blank pages anymore
(although still lots of gaps in it), can be configured with full
multithreading and Posix threads, has prototype CPU inheritance scheduling
in it (5 policies including 2 real time), has a hierarchical network
link-sharing component, has a "simple virtual memory" component including
pageout.  Has most Linux [and BSD] filesystems, several networking libs, the full
FreeBSD library (which means most of Posix), lots of device drivers (perhaps
60), profiling support, and some minimal video and window manager support.
A currently inelegant but useful component lets you run many kernels on Unix
in user-mode, which is great for debugging.  Most components now use the COM
object model, which is a first in internal OS design.

Just about every component is optional, and unlike any other OS, is designed
to fit into *other* operating systems and environments if desired.  Of
course the OSKit's got problems, too, don't we all.  There are a ton of
things that it needs.  One nice thing in that regard is that it's easy to
incrementally add to the OSKit.  Let's do it!

Re licensing, the OSKit comes with full source, and is GPL'ed; "open
source" is now the "in" term apparently.  If a business or someone has
trouble with the GPL, the University is willing to talk about other options.

As a special holiday bonus-- for such patience on your part-- this release
supports a version, which we provide, of the Kaffe OpenVM (Java to you) from
Transvirtual.  Thus you can link them together and you've got Kaffe on the
bare HW [but without local display support], or with a configuration change,
you can run the same "Java OS" on
top of Unix.  Our Kaffe changes will go into the next beta release.
Thanks to Tim Wilkinson and his company for giving Kaffe to the world.

We are grateful to the long line of free software project from whom we drew
code, including Mach, Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and XFree86.  The GNU build
tools were, as always, invaluable.  DARPA's support has been great.

Finally, I want to thank and acknowledge the fine team at Utah that has
accomplished so much, and with whom I have the honor to work with.  Check
out the CREDITS file for their names.

Jay Lepreau
University of Utah
lepreau@cs.utah.edu