Lib.rs

A secure, fast, and general-purpose OS kernel written in Rust and compatible with Linux

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Introducing Asterinas

Asterinas is a secure, fast, and general-purpose OS kernel that provides Linux-compatible ABI. It can serve as a seamless replacement for Linux while enhancing memory safety and developer friendliness.

• Asterinas prioritizes memory safety by employing Rust as its sole programming language and limiting the use of unsafe Rust to a clearly defined and minimal Trusted Computing Base (TCB). This innovative approach, known as the framekernel architecture, establishes Asterinas as a more secure and dependable kernel option.

• Asterinas surpasses Linux in terms of developer friendliness. It empowers kernel developers to (1) utilize the more productive Rust programming language, (2) leverage a purpose-built toolkit called OSDK to streamline their workflows, and (3) choose between releasing their kernel modules as open source or keeping them proprietary, thanks to the flexibility offered by MPL.

While the journey towards a production-grade OS kernel is challenging, we are steadfastly progressing towards this goal. Over the course of 2024, we significantly enhanced Asterinas's maturity, as detailed in our end-year report. In 2025, our primary goal is to make Asterinas production-ready on x86-64 virtual machines and attract real users!

Getting Started

Get yourself an x86-64 Linux machine with Docker installed. Follow the three simple steps below to get Asterinas up and running.

1. Download the latest source code.

git clone https://github.com/asterinas/asterinas

2. Run a Docker container as the development environment.

docker run -it --privileged --network=host --device=/dev/kvm -v $(pwd)/asterinas:/root/asterinas asterinas/asterinas:0.11.3

3. Inside the container, go to the project folder to build and run Asterinas.

make build
make run

If everything goes well, Asterinas is now up and running inside a VM.

The Book

See The Asterinas Book to learn more about the project.

License

Asterinas's source code and documentation primarily use the Mozilla Public License (MPL), Version 2.0. Select components are under more permissive licenses, detailed here. For the rationales behind the choice of MPL, see here.

lib.rs:

The definition of Linux Boot Protocol boot_params struct.

The bootloader will deliver the address of the BootParams struct as the argument of the kernel entrypoint. So we must define a Linux ABI compatible struct in Rust, despite that most of the fields are currently not needed by Asterinas.