Sanos: A Core For Java-Based Appliances

Iman Habib writes "Sanos is a minimalistic 32-bit x86 OS kernel for jbox appliances. A jbox is a JavaOS server appliance running on standard PC hardware. This enables you to run Java server applications without the need to install a traditional host operating system like Windows or Linux. Only a standard Java HotSpot VM and the sanos kernel are needed. The kernel was developed as part of an experiment on investigating the feasibility of running Java server applications without a traditional operating system only using a simple kernel. The kernel implements basic operating system services like booting, memory management, thread scheduling, local and remote file systems, TCP/IP networking and DLL loading and linking. A thin win32 wrapper allows the Windows version of the standard HotSpot JVM to run under Sanos, essentially providing a JavaOS platform for server applications. This enables you to run java based server applications, like Tomcat and Jboss, under Sanos. Sanos is open source under a BSD-style license."

Comments

Why a new OS?

[Fished]

Why bother creating a whole new OS kernel for this? Why not just put together a Linux distribution, compile a statically linked JVM (if you can - do they still make the JDK source available?) and have nothing but a kernel and a jvm binary?

That would give you all the drivers for free, and you would have a stable and proven reliable operating system instead.

How about embedding a JVM into the Linux kernel?

[mnmn]

Or even running the JVM instead of init.

With a minimal kernel, this could be quite small.

Re:Sanos implementation

[mbogosian]

+1 Interesting? Did I miss something? How is some overweight naked amature a "good example of Sanos implementation together with the description of APIs and server-side architecture"?

I really hope this doesn't slip through on Meta-Moderation....