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

But Java is slow

[Anonymous Coward]

And without the award-winning industry-acclaimed Microsoft(r) Windows (tm) operating systems how can a machine be expected to perform reliably?

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.

Re:Why a new OS?

[RevAaron]

With a more or less pure Java thing like this, Linux simply isn't needed. A "stable and proven reliable operating system" isn't what is needed- just a platform for interpreting/JITing bytecodes. Linux processes, threads, etc aren't used, so why bother with all that needless cruft?

Or better yet, why not just use OSKit? You can use FreeBSD and Linux drivers as well as choose the TCP/IP stack from a couple of choices (incl. Linux, etc).

I presume the argument against a stripped down version of Linux would be detailed on the page, in the FAQ, or answered via an email- why not ask? Perhaps you can write drivers in Java, something you couldn't do in either OSKit or Linux?

Going with Linux would probably be the easiest thing to do, but I imagine there are reasons against it which perhaps those working on this project could share. For one of the distributions of Dynapad (my Smalltalk-based PDA OS/OE) I do more or less what you say- dump most userland tools, including X11 and QPE, and just run a statically linked VM on top of that. I managed to do that with no coding in C, which suits me fine. For people willing to muck around in C, their approach likely has a number of other advantages.

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....