Boot a linux kernel right inside your browser.

Re:Boot a linux kernel right inside your browser. by js4all on Tuesday May 17, 2011 @02:31AM (#2555529)

Unbelievable, this is like magic. I am totally impressed. It is a real linux instance. BTW. I see the hello.c file someone mentioned here. Have we all mounted the same disk image?

I see so many use cases for this, but I don't fully understand what is going on behind the scenes. Maybe someone can shed some light on it:

  1) How is the disk emulated. Is it a local image, or is it running on the backend?

  2) Is there a remote possibility to get the networking up and running?

  3) Can the disk image be externally accessed to be customized?

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Re:Boot a linux kernel right inside your browser. by rickard on Tuesday May 17, 2011 @02:47AM (#2555552)

1): The disk doesn't seem to be emulated; it's just a rootfs in RAM.

2): See another thread here.

3): Check out cpux86.js. In the start() function at the very end, the following section might be enlighting (even though it is a bit obfuscated by a javascript compressor):

  function start() {
  [...]
    If=32*1024*1024;
    ya.phys_mem_resize(If);
    ya.load_binary("vmlinux26.bin",0x00100000);
    Jf=ya.load_binary("root.bin",0x00400000);
    start=0x10000;
    ya.load_binary("linuxstart.bin",start);
    ya.eip=start;

The files vmlinux26.bin, root.bin and linuxstart.bin are fetched from the server.

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Re:Boot a linux kernel right inside your browser. by js4all on Tuesday May 17, 2011 @07:17PM (#2558384)

Thanks for the info. I got it running locally with those bins you mentioned. There is currently no further backend action.

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Re:Boot a linux kernel right inside your browser. by KonradKlause on Tuesday May 17, 2011 @01:46PM (#2557125)

is linuxstart.bin the bootloader?

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