Booting TempleOS
Greeting Linode Community.
I was wondering if anybody here has some experience booting TempleOS on a Linode?
I'm pretty experienced in both systems and C, however this one is continuing to elude me. Unfortunately, I'm not even getting any useful errors or dumps.
Even sought out the creator, Terry Davis, to ask for some guidance. I was pleasantly surprised to learn he has a pretty prolific online presence and regularly interacts with the growing TempleOS community. Terry was glad to also discuss the core mechanics of his OS implementation and I was thrilled to have insight/access at such a low level.
However, things turned a little sour when I politely brought up the suggestion of implementing paging instead of totally flat memory mapping, as well as the risks of running ALL code on ring 0. I honestly tried to show I did appreciate the purity and aesthetics of such a clean OS model, but it just isn't a practical implementation in today's modern computing paradigm. Terry immediately responded with a long and feverish tirade on the racial makeup of certain members of our Central Intelligence Agency as well as their apparent ambient luminosity during the night time hours.
Obviously floored and disgusted, I cut off all contact with Terry and reported him to my designated local Anti-Fascism staffed ReEducation court. Yet…I still feel a strange allure to TempleOS itself and have decided to still attempt to run it, despite its creators character flaws. There are even rumors of an oracle program written in HolyC that will allow the end user to talk directly to God. I'm a dyed in the wool Linux guy, yet even I will admit you can't do that with Gentoo!
Whew, sorry for the wall of text and any help is deeply appreciated!
//-_iamthatis
3 Replies
jackley
Linode Staff
Hey! This might be possible, but it's so far eluded a few of us on the Support team. In theory, this should work. I'm able to get TempleOS to boot using qemu on a Mac with the follow command:
$ qemu-system-x86_64 -boot -d -cdrom Downloads/TempleOS.ISO -m 1024
A few of us our interested to see if this will work. If we can get it working, we'll share it here!
So this has been bugging me since it was posted, because if TempleOS is able to work on QEMU then it should work just fine on a Linode. First I tried to copy the ISO to a disk and boot it, but it looks to me that the installer is formatted in a way that the bootloaders do not like. Taking jackley's post into mind, I installed it locally to a raw disk using VirtualBox, then used the "Copying a Disk Over SSH" guide to get the bootable disk on a Linode.
After booting this freshly copied disk via the "direct disk" boot setting (I also made sure all of the "helpers" were turned off in the configuration profile), I am presented with TemplOS's bootloader in the Glish console. Sweet success! …or so I thought. Upon selecting the correct boot device, I am presented with a fatal error, and a now-unresponsive prompt.
Hmm… this is disheartening. I set the project down for a bit and gave myself time to think. After sleeping on it, an idea came to me as if by divine inspiration: try full virtualization! It makes sense that TempleOS, having been built from the ground up by one man, may not have the drivers for Virtio SCSI devices, so giving it a plain old virtual IDE device would probably be best. Once I switched things over to full-virt, I was able to boot TempleOS without issue. Hope this helps!
Sorry it's been so long, but I just wanted to thank you guys for taking the time to provide a solution. Linode staff truly are top tier.
Also wanted to pay my respects for the passing of Terry Davis last year when he sadly lost his long war of attrition against mental illness. Controversial un-medicated meme rants and all, Terry was a fascinating and dynamic person that will be missed by a dedicated group of online fans. More importantly, he was a highly competent and knowledgeable computer scientist that bootstrapped his own compiler for HolyC just because some aspects of C bugged him. All for writing his own OS! [DAILY REMINDER: Networking is overrated & 640x480 is a divine covenant with God] When Terry was feeling well (or even otherwise many times), listening to him talk about OS architecture/design and low level programming with assembly was like getting a master class in old school compsci concepts. Of course, all the other, … stuff, which was equal parts engrossing/entertaining/concerning was treasured as well.
Anyways… RIP Terry Davis (1969 - 2018), you are gone but absolutely not forgotten. Eternally pressing F for you and S for the glow in the darks.
//-_iamthatis