This involves running the desktop program on the laptop under Linux and the desktool program/s running along with the new kernel in a QEMU VM.
This configuration demonstrates just one advantage of having a networked architecture in the desktop system, as the desktop is faster when the whole thing doesn’t need to run in an emulated configuration.
The kernel is still fairly stable in QEMU but seems to be pretty broken when running under RVVM (which is more convenient for testing graphics features). The problem is probably in my code – not in the emulator – but since switching back to QEMU seems to resolve the issue and since I’m sick of debugging it I think that will be the solution for the short term.
The bug itself is probably in my code interfacing to SBI, which isn’t necessary in the QEMU build because I use some old xv6 bootstrap code instead on those builds. This code should be simple but there must be some quirks I’m unaware of with SBI’s timer setup, which may arise on real hardware but for now are only holding up testing when using RVVM.
The good news is I can probably get the desktop system working with QEMU now that I’ve got the foundations working, since the display part of the system can just be run on the host machine anyway – at least if I can get networking to function well enough in that configuration.
So I should be back to work again now (not just debugging my existing code…) and my scheduler itself should be stable as long as I can resolve any timer/interrupt problems later on.
RVVM seems to be a really good emulator though aside from my present issues so it’d be nice to get the system running properly on there eventually but isn’t really necessary to continue development (fixing structural things and testing on real hardware are both more important!).
Might actually be a good platform assuming their kernel is more stable than mine, despite the Linux people making jokes about it.
It feels like I’ve been battling scheduler lockups forever.
My scheduler bug is definitely due to missing some timer interrupts but it’s hard to tell exactly what’s going on as I think this only happens when booted via SBI. So the SBI firmware code manages setting up the timer, and I don’t know maybe the SBI interface is just not intended for the way I’m using it or maybe I’ve missed some other necessary initialisation on secondary cores.
There is a fallback plan if I can’t get it working, which would be like a legacy mode that maxes out each CPU core in a hot loop with no interrupts. This mode would probably work okay on modern hardware and would be responsive enough in a multi-core setup but might not be useful outside of demos (would waste battery power on devices).
In the longer term I need to finish the PLIC code to get all the interrupts set up properly, my short term approach will depend on whether I make a breakthrough soon or whether I get frustrated and revert to simpler ways of doing things.
I think I’ve worked out what’s going on with my scheduler code but I’m not sure – I may be have to expect some timer interrupts to be missed and perhaps use a repeat timer setup… Once this issue is resolved I think the scheduler will be stable.
It’s April Fools Day and there are Zionist accounts online thinking posts from Ralph Babet about the alien cover-up are real. I’m just going to address some other bullshit that keeps popping up on Elon’s site, some of which is obviously being pushed by Elon’s anti-African agenda and some of which comes from more general crusader/zionist logic.
I am forced to single out Christians here because as someone with Christian and Muslim and Pagan and Atheist relatives it’s very obvious which side most of these lies originate from, and I have singled out Jews because these lies are often pushed by Israeli influences.
This criticism mostly relates to Egyptian & other “crusader” style accounts online as well as mainstream Christian academics and sponsored Zionists (often Christians) spreading misinformation online, not to official policies of the Coptic church which are surely less idiotic.
This is bullshit, my ancestors taught him history and he wrote well. Christians have intentionally misinterpreted Greek words and spread faulty English translations to paint Herodotus as a liar.
People who oppose the “Herodotus was a liar” narrative are actively excluded from academic history, I was thrown out of history class myself by a “white” Christian because I refused to call Herodotus a liar.
This never happened, the church was always unpopular in Egypt and has survived only because we aren’t all supremacist arseholes like many Christians are.
The early churches had so much infighting between the existing Christians that they hardly had time to convince everyone else of their nonsense.
Also bullshit. Islam as it’s known today was originally a response to Christian/Jewish imperialism in Arabia. Christians were already trying to wipe out Arab culture before Muhammad, that’s how he got the name (after an elephant in the Christian army that came to destroy Mecca, the elephant refused to serve them).
Again bullshit, my ancient ancestors in Egypt who they now call pharaohs were Libyan Arabs. The upper Egyptian pharaohs who they praise as the pure race are just the darker skinned version of us. Native Egyptian religion was similar to West African and Indian religions, obviously there were Arab influences too.
Christians went on organised campaigns numerous times to loot & destroy the native Egyptian temples, now some claim that they exclusively are the representatives of ancient Egyptian culture and blame Muslims for the destruction which was mostly led by Christian organisations.
I don’t know where exactly this idea comes from (except it was pushed by French colonists) and today it’s mostly pushed by American Christians. We also had other names but we were obviously called Egyptian since the times of the pharaohs and Egyptian Christians are obviously also called Egyptian (Coptic).
Anyone who owns or reads old books should know this, including Christians.
As for Africans pushing this lie to proliferate some racial replacement theory, you are useless idiots pushing the French agenda. Keme and Egypt both sound like Congolese words and our language is obviously related to central Africa as well as Europe and Asia. The only notable political difference between these names is that parts of France were also referred to with words like Keme and either that name or Masr fits better with biblical versions of history (“Egypt” was used more in popular Pagan sources).
I’m barely even welcome in Egypt because I refuse to submit to the Jewish lord, Christians almost universally act like I must be banished to Australia to live with Aboriginals for this crime, yet still many Christians online act like I am actively oppressing them. Meanwhile Christians are destroying this country as well.
Christians have always been obsessed with castration because they like to fuck choirboys and make them act like girls, so this is nothing new. But this lie is particularly stupid as there are obviously many “Black Arabs” and you can simply ask people if they or their ancestors have all been castrated to serve in a harem.
The real problem many western-minded Christians have with Arabs is that we aren’t big on racial segregation.
It’s also worth pointing out that Christians seem to only acknowledge slavery of men, never women, and that they appear to emphasise castration to make African men feel powerless (rarely mentioning that many enslaved Africans served in militaries etc.). No mention of the potentially millions of white choirboys that Christian organisations castrated for sex, or of deep Christian & Jewish involvement in the slave trade in Arab lands.
Islam was meant to be a peace treaty and a step towards universal knowledge, it was not meant for Muslims to submit to men from religions which spread corruption. I doubt myself that Muslims can be pulled out of this habit but it’s up to institutional Islamic leaders to at least make an effort to defend people from sheer idiocy.
Similarly many westerners claim to be Atheists or Pagans but still push scientifically outdated Christian narratives & incomprehensible biblical race theories on their own people.
It turns out (once again) my scheduler issue is just timing not a “real” deadlock. So changing the frequency at which the scheduler is invoked is a temporary workaround but it looks like I just need to make some general improvements to scheduler performance in the longer term.
It was also a good opportunity to test my backup scheduler implementation, so it looks like it will be very easy to switch between the simpler scheduler version (“round-robin”) & more full-featured versions (“priority-based” etc.) after a little more cleanup.
Latest screenshot running on top of the kernel:
https://github.com/instructkr/claude-code
This isn’t the whole AI but does seem to include a lot of the frontend for coordinating the AI to write/edit code. I’ve only had a quick look but I’m sure it’ll be very interesting to researchers at companies competing with Anthropic.
It seems that they were keeping their internal source code on publicly accessible servers and that the npm package metadata included an address pointing to the source code. As I suspected, the people running these AI companies seem a bit dumb.
An engineer friend once said “aesthetics are important”, in relation to machines not being merely mechanical in their features but also needing to be useful to humans. This means that a machine has to look/feel useful for us to understand it’s purpose and a machine should not be obstructive to human needs.
But more generally culture is important, a machine needs to fit culturally into it’s surroundings and I think that’s the real problem with modern operating systems. They fit into a kind of California & Washington oriented culture that probably isn’t that relevant even for American audiences.
I’m a vi guy but not in it’s original cultural sense, I’m a hacker but not in it’s true American-vs-Russian form, I’m a Mac guy but not a fan of Apple, I’m a DOS guy but I want nothing to do with Microsoft, I’m a TempleOS guy but I oppose the religion of the schizophrenics. We culturally become part of the machine and if we don’t direct this culture ourselves we end up as second-class citizens.
So am I developing an operating system for myself, or for Australians, or for Africans, Irish, etc.? Am I developing an operating system for the real hackers, for the 1337357? Am I developing an operating system for the old or for the young, for the most disabled or for the most able?
I guess I intend to develop an operating system for those who value security, and for those who enjoy tinkering and learning, and it is very much inspired by Egyptian political thought that I don’t want ourselves and the rest of Africa and the Palestinians and the Iraqis etc. to be treated as outsiders everywhere.
I guess the main defining feature of my operating system is that it’s my operating system, and doesn’t belong to anyone who wants us excluded from the industry.