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maksw 73abd6f90d isolate POSIX builds from the host UCRT, wire lwext4 and ntfs-3g as ext4.sys and ntfs.sys, split the FAT driver into directory/file/async/driver/mount units, add posixsrv and dwm plus input/console/desktop syscall clients and a pile of new smoke targets, rename serial.sys to cereal.sys, name HDA/USB/lwIP/AHCI workers, harden ATA probing/reset/removal around actual hardware deadlines, absent-channel detection, diagnostics and explicit worker lifetime, redo ACPI S5 shutdown around GAS/MMIO and HW-reduced firmware, scan SSDTs for _S5 and deal with Intel SMI sleep trapping, make serial and SMP timeouts use real monotonic deadlines, add thread names and fix terminal thread teardown, scheduler and APC prepare/commit races, make advisory file locks queryable and preserve split ranges and add mutable file append state, add shared-memory pipes with kernel-assisted wait/wake, introduce capability-scoped input and display managers, split surface map rights into read/write, add explicit unmap and replace present with commit/generation/damage tracking while keeping physical presentation under the display manager, decouple native exception classes from Win32 exception numbers and translate them in kernel32, add opaque process startup data, bump the resource protocol to v3 with namespace directories, symlinks and enumeration and service control to v2 with generic READY handle exports, add the new POSIX errno/status surface and rebuild fds around posixsrv-owned shared open descriptions, descriptor-local flags, exact inheritance snapshots, dup/fcntl/record locks and shared-ring pipes, add waitpid, POSIX credentials/groups/sessions/passwd/group lookups and move sockets onto stable open descriptions, port the shells and apps to the new console/input services and surface commit API, teach init to load services.ini and start/supervise RSSRV, DWM and generic services under restricted capabilities while publishing their endpoints through RSSRV, split RSSRV into namespace, volume, display, session, input, console and resource components and make /SystemRoot a real symlink to the independently published system volume, shift the syscall table again, expand lock/resource/surface/POSIX/service/thread smoke coverage, make docs scream ASK QUESTIONS and DISCUSS at LLMs, replace MIT No Attribution with WTFPL+.
2026-09-16 10:33:20 +02:00
code
isolate POSIX builds from the host UCRT, wire lwext4 and ntfs-3g as ext4.sys and ntfs.sys, split the FAT driver into directory/file/async/driver/mount units, add posixsrv and dwm plus input/console/desktop syscall clients and a pile of new smoke targets, rename serial.sys to cereal.sys, name HDA/USB/lwIP/AHCI workers, harden ATA probing/reset/removal around actual hardware deadlines, absent-channel detection, diagnostics and explicit worker lifetime, redo ACPI S5 shutdown around GAS/MMIO and HW-reduced firmware, scan SSDTs for _S5 and deal with Intel SMI sleep trapping, make serial and SMP timeouts use real monotonic deadlines, add thread names and fix terminal thread teardown, scheduler and APC prepare/commit races, make advisory file locks queryable and preserve split ranges and add mutable file append state, add shared-memory pipes with kernel-assisted wait/wake, introduce capability-scoped input and display managers, split surface map rights into read/write, add explicit unmap and replace present with commit/generation/damage tracking while keeping physical presentation under the display manager, decouple native exception classes from Win32 exception numbers and translate them in kernel32, add opaque process startup data, bump the resource protocol to v3 with namespace directories, symlinks and enumeration and service control to v2 with generic READY handle exports, add the new POSIX errno/status surface and rebuild fds around posixsrv-owned shared open descriptions, descriptor-local flags, exact inheritance snapshots, dup/fcntl/record locks and shared-ring pipes, add waitpid, POSIX credentials/groups/sessions/passwd/group lookups and move sockets onto stable open descriptions, port the shells and apps to the new console/input services and surface commit API, teach init to load services.ini and start/supervise RSSRV, DWM and generic services under restricted capabilities while publishing their endpoints through RSSRV, split RSSRV into namespace, volume, display, session, input, console and resource components and make /SystemRoot a real symlink to the independently published system volume, shift the syscall table again, expand lock/resource/surface/POSIX/service/thread smoke coverage, make docs scream ASK QUESTIONS and DISCUSS at LLMs, replace MIT No Attribution with WTFPL+.
2026-09-16 10:33:20 +02:00
OVMF
isolate POSIX builds from the host UCRT, wire lwext4 and ntfs-3g as ext4.sys and ntfs.sys, split the FAT driver into directory/file/async/driver/mount units, add posixsrv and dwm plus input/console/desktop syscall clients and a pile of new smoke targets, rename serial.sys to cereal.sys, name HDA/USB/lwIP/AHCI workers, harden ATA probing/reset/removal around actual hardware deadlines, absent-channel detection, diagnostics and explicit worker lifetime, redo ACPI S5 shutdown around GAS/MMIO and HW-reduced firmware, scan SSDTs for _S5 and deal with Intel SMI sleep trapping, make serial and SMP timeouts use real monotonic deadlines, add thread names and fix terminal thread teardown, scheduler and APC prepare/commit races, make advisory file locks queryable and preserve split ranges and add mutable file append state, add shared-memory pipes with kernel-assisted wait/wake, introduce capability-scoped input and display managers, split surface map rights into read/write, add explicit unmap and replace present with commit/generation/damage tracking while keeping physical presentation under the display manager, decouple native exception classes from Win32 exception numbers and translate them in kernel32, add opaque process startup data, bump the resource protocol to v3 with namespace directories, symlinks and enumeration and service control to v2 with generic READY handle exports, add the new POSIX errno/status surface and rebuild fds around posixsrv-owned shared open descriptions, descriptor-local flags, exact inheritance snapshots, dup/fcntl/record locks and shared-ring pipes, add waitpid, POSIX credentials/groups/sessions/passwd/group lookups and move sockets onto stable open descriptions, port the shells and apps to the new console/input services and surface commit API, teach init to load services.ini and start/supervise RSSRV, DWM and generic services under restricted capabilities while publishing their endpoints through RSSRV, split RSSRV into namespace, volume, display, session, input, console and resource components and make /SystemRoot a real symlink to the independently published system volume, shift the syscall table again, expand lock/resource/surface/POSIX/service/thread smoke coverage, make docs scream ASK QUESTIONS and DISCUSS at LLMs, replace MIT No Attribution with WTFPL+.
2026-09-16 10:33:20 +02:00
.gitignore
add a realtime scheduler class and priority-inheritance mutexes with timeouts and abandonment, add an HDA audio driver and a SYS_AUDIO_* syscall family, flesh out kernel32 with Win32 threads, events, mutexes, critical sections, and condition variables, add SYS_RESUME_THREAD for suspended thread creation, add KeInitializeMemoryTypes to reprogram MTRRs and install a canonical PAT for WB/WC/UC control, rework the display pipeline with a pitched present path and console output flush, bring back disk.vhd with mtools since vvfat fucking sucks, harden AHCI with serialized cache flush, USB mass storage with SCSI sense-data decoding, and xHCI with cleaner DMA teardown, fix the last stray for(;;) in HalStopProcessor to while(true), pile on smoke tests for audio, win32 sync primitives, and thread suspend, implement AHCI timeout, kill readahead since it was desperetaly trying to murder me, fix doom sound x2.
2026-08-11 18:38:36 +02:00
build.bat
use a real build system (if you can call it that)
2026-05-30 11:44:09 +02:00
docs.md
isolate POSIX builds from the host UCRT, wire lwext4 and ntfs-3g as ext4.sys and ntfs.sys, split the FAT driver into directory/file/async/driver/mount units, add posixsrv and dwm plus input/console/desktop syscall clients and a pile of new smoke targets, rename serial.sys to cereal.sys, name HDA/USB/lwIP/AHCI workers, harden ATA probing/reset/removal around actual hardware deadlines, absent-channel detection, diagnostics and explicit worker lifetime, redo ACPI S5 shutdown around GAS/MMIO and HW-reduced firmware, scan SSDTs for _S5 and deal with Intel SMI sleep trapping, make serial and SMP timeouts use real monotonic deadlines, add thread names and fix terminal thread teardown, scheduler and APC prepare/commit races, make advisory file locks queryable and preserve split ranges and add mutable file append state, add shared-memory pipes with kernel-assisted wait/wake, introduce capability-scoped input and display managers, split surface map rights into read/write, add explicit unmap and replace present with commit/generation/damage tracking while keeping physical presentation under the display manager, decouple native exception classes from Win32 exception numbers and translate them in kernel32, add opaque process startup data, bump the resource protocol to v3 with namespace directories, symlinks and enumeration and service control to v2 with generic READY handle exports, add the new POSIX errno/status surface and rebuild fds around posixsrv-owned shared open descriptions, descriptor-local flags, exact inheritance snapshots, dup/fcntl/record locks and shared-ring pipes, add waitpid, POSIX credentials/groups/sessions/passwd/group lookups and move sockets onto stable open descriptions, port the shells and apps to the new console/input services and surface commit API, teach init to load services.ini and start/supervise RSSRV, DWM and generic services under restricted capabilities while publishing their endpoints through RSSRV, split RSSRV into namespace, volume, display, session, input, console and resource components and make /SystemRoot a real symlink to the independently published system volume, shift the syscall table again, expand lock/resource/surface/POSIX/service/thread smoke coverage, make docs scream ASK QUESTIONS and DISCUSS at LLMs, replace MIT No Attribution with WTFPL+.
2026-09-16 10:33:20 +02:00
image.png
add page cache with read-ahead and dirty writeback, file-backed and anonymous mmap with CoW, VAD-based virtual memory replacing the old user region model, PFN database with eviction and reclaim, file identity for cross-open section sharing, FAT32 path cache and per-file cluster chain cache, serial.sys for COM1 keyboard input, xHCI MSI with INTx and polled fallback, PciEnableMsiAuto, waitable input queue, KeWaitForAnyEvent, per-process thread info syscall, expanded kernel stats (PFN/PTE/VAD/file-cache/disk), pool allocation tags, async I/O user buffer locking, file flush on close, add docs.md.
2026-06-20 13:17:39 +02:00
license
isolate POSIX builds from the host UCRT, wire lwext4 and ntfs-3g as ext4.sys and ntfs.sys, split the FAT driver into directory/file/async/driver/mount units, add posixsrv and dwm plus input/console/desktop syscall clients and a pile of new smoke targets, rename serial.sys to cereal.sys, name HDA/USB/lwIP/AHCI workers, harden ATA probing/reset/removal around actual hardware deadlines, absent-channel detection, diagnostics and explicit worker lifetime, redo ACPI S5 shutdown around GAS/MMIO and HW-reduced firmware, scan SSDTs for _S5 and deal with Intel SMI sleep trapping, make serial and SMP timeouts use real monotonic deadlines, add thread names and fix terminal thread teardown, scheduler and APC prepare/commit races, make advisory file locks queryable and preserve split ranges and add mutable file append state, add shared-memory pipes with kernel-assisted wait/wake, introduce capability-scoped input and display managers, split surface map rights into read/write, add explicit unmap and replace present with commit/generation/damage tracking while keeping physical presentation under the display manager, decouple native exception classes from Win32 exception numbers and translate them in kernel32, add opaque process startup data, bump the resource protocol to v3 with namespace directories, symlinks and enumeration and service control to v2 with generic READY handle exports, add the new POSIX errno/status surface and rebuild fds around posixsrv-owned shared open descriptions, descriptor-local flags, exact inheritance snapshots, dup/fcntl/record locks and shared-ring pipes, add waitpid, POSIX credentials/groups/sessions/passwd/group lookups and move sockets onto stable open descriptions, port the shells and apps to the new console/input services and surface commit API, teach init to load services.ini and start/supervise RSSRV, DWM and generic services under restricted capabilities while publishing their endpoints through RSSRV, split RSSRV into namespace, volume, display, session, input, console and resource components and make /SystemRoot a real symlink to the independently published system volume, shift the syscall table again, expand lock/resource/surface/POSIX/service/thread smoke coverage, make docs scream ASK QUESTIONS and DISCUSS at LLMs, replace MIT No Attribution with WTFPL+.
2026-09-16 10:33:20 +02:00
readme.md
isolate POSIX builds from the host UCRT, wire lwext4 and ntfs-3g as ext4.sys and ntfs.sys, split the FAT driver into directory/file/async/driver/mount units, add posixsrv and dwm plus input/console/desktop syscall clients and a pile of new smoke targets, rename serial.sys to cereal.sys, name HDA/USB/lwIP/AHCI workers, harden ATA probing/reset/removal around actual hardware deadlines, absent-channel detection, diagnostics and explicit worker lifetime, redo ACPI S5 shutdown around GAS/MMIO and HW-reduced firmware, scan SSDTs for _S5 and deal with Intel SMI sleep trapping, make serial and SMP timeouts use real monotonic deadlines, add thread names and fix terminal thread teardown, scheduler and APC prepare/commit races, make advisory file locks queryable and preserve split ranges and add mutable file append state, add shared-memory pipes with kernel-assisted wait/wake, introduce capability-scoped input and display managers, split surface map rights into read/write, add explicit unmap and replace present with commit/generation/damage tracking while keeping physical presentation under the display manager, decouple native exception classes from Win32 exception numbers and translate them in kernel32, add opaque process startup data, bump the resource protocol to v3 with namespace directories, symlinks and enumeration and service control to v2 with generic READY handle exports, add the new POSIX errno/status surface and rebuild fds around posixsrv-owned shared open descriptions, descriptor-local flags, exact inheritance snapshots, dup/fcntl/record locks and shared-ring pipes, add waitpid, POSIX credentials/groups/sessions/passwd/group lookups and move sockets onto stable open descriptions, port the shells and apps to the new console/input services and surface commit API, teach init to load services.ini and start/supervise RSSRV, DWM and generic services under restricted capabilities while publishing their endpoints through RSSRV, split RSSRV into namespace, volume, display, session, input, console and resource components and make /SystemRoot a real symlink to the independently published system volume, shift the syscall table again, expand lock/resource/surface/POSIX/service/thread smoke coverage, make docs scream ASK QUESTIONS and DISCUSS at LLMs, replace MIT No Attribution with WTFPL+.
2026-09-16 10:33:20 +02:00
run.bat
add a realtime scheduler class and priority-inheritance mutexes with timeouts and abandonment, add an HDA audio driver and a SYS_AUDIO_* syscall family, flesh out kernel32 with Win32 threads, events, mutexes, critical sections, and condition variables, add SYS_RESUME_THREAD for suspended thread creation, add KeInitializeMemoryTypes to reprogram MTRRs and install a canonical PAT for WB/WC/UC control, rework the display pipeline with a pitched present path and console output flush, bring back disk.vhd with mtools since vvfat fucking sucks, harden AHCI with serialized cache flush, USB mass storage with SCSI sense-data decoding, and xHCI with cleaner DMA teardown, fix the last stray for(;;) in HalStopProcessor to while(true), pile on smoke tests for audio, win32 sync primitives, and thread suspend, implement AHCI timeout, kill readahead since it was desperetaly trying to murder me, fix doom sound x2.
2026-08-11 18:38:36 +02:00
runa.bat
add a realtime scheduler class and priority-inheritance mutexes with timeouts and abandonment, add an HDA audio driver and a SYS_AUDIO_* syscall family, flesh out kernel32 with Win32 threads, events, mutexes, critical sections, and condition variables, add SYS_RESUME_THREAD for suspended thread creation, add KeInitializeMemoryTypes to reprogram MTRRs and install a canonical PAT for WB/WC/UC control, rework the display pipeline with a pitched present path and console output flush, bring back disk.vhd with mtools since vvfat fucking sucks, harden AHCI with serialized cache flush, USB mass storage with SCSI sense-data decoding, and xHCI with cleaner DMA teardown, fix the last stray for(;;) in HalStopProcessor to while(true), pile on smoke tests for audio, win32 sync primitives, and thread suspend, implement AHCI timeout, kill readahead since it was desperetaly trying to murder me, fix doom sound x2.
2026-08-11 18:38:36 +02:00
runad.bat
add a realtime scheduler class and priority-inheritance mutexes with timeouts and abandonment, add an HDA audio driver and a SYS_AUDIO_* syscall family, flesh out kernel32 with Win32 threads, events, mutexes, critical sections, and condition variables, add SYS_RESUME_THREAD for suspended thread creation, add KeInitializeMemoryTypes to reprogram MTRRs and install a canonical PAT for WB/WC/UC control, rework the display pipeline with a pitched present path and console output flush, bring back disk.vhd with mtools since vvfat fucking sucks, harden AHCI with serialized cache flush, USB mass storage with SCSI sense-data decoding, and xHCI with cleaner DMA teardown, fix the last stray for(;;) in HalStopProcessor to while(true), pile on smoke tests for audio, win32 sync primitives, and thread suspend, implement AHCI timeout, kill readahead since it was desperetaly trying to murder me, fix doom sound x2.
2026-08-11 18:38:36 +02:00
rund.bat
add a realtime scheduler class and priority-inheritance mutexes with timeouts and abandonment, add an HDA audio driver and a SYS_AUDIO_* syscall family, flesh out kernel32 with Win32 threads, events, mutexes, critical sections, and condition variables, add SYS_RESUME_THREAD for suspended thread creation, add KeInitializeMemoryTypes to reprogram MTRRs and install a canonical PAT for WB/WC/UC control, rework the display pipeline with a pitched present path and console output flush, bring back disk.vhd with mtools since vvfat fucking sucks, harden AHCI with serialized cache flush, USB mass storage with SCSI sense-data decoding, and xHCI with cleaner DMA teardown, fix the last stray for(;;) in HalStopProcessor to while(true), pile on smoke tests for audio, win32 sync primitives, and thread suspend, implement AHCI timeout, kill readahead since it was desperetaly trying to murder me, fix doom sound x2.
2026-08-11 18:38:36 +02:00

readme.md

NT-Lite -- an x86-64 kernel

“Not only is UNIX dead, it’s starting to smell really bad.” - Rob Pike

“UNIX has three operations: read, write, and lie through ioctl.”

what is it?

NT-Lite is a 64-bit operating system kernel written from scratch.

It boots into a shell, launches programs, runs Doom, talks TCP/IP, and occasionally reminds you that it is still a hobby kernel.

features

  • UEFI bootloader
  • real SMP
  • VAD-based virtual memory, file-backed and anonymous mmap, CoW, reclaim
  • single address-space design with user/supervisor page permissions
  • preemptive priority scheduler
  • capability-style handles with rights checks, derivation, and revocation
  • rich synchronization primitives
  • IRQL, DPCs, kernel APCs, and user APCs
  • user exception handling with structured and vectored handlers
  • async file I/O with events, IOSBs, APC callbacks, and cancellation
  • capability-relative VFS with IRPs
  • refcounted mounted volumes with partition arrival/removal
  • page cache with dirty writeback and invalidation
  • USB bus, xHCI, mass storage, hubs, hotplug, and HID
  • audio
  • VMware SVGA display driver
  • dynamic driver loading
  • native BSD-ish socket syscalls
  • DNS resolver syscall
  • four-register syscall ABI with sized request structs for larger calls
  • partial Win32 personality
  • partial (microsoft-level) POSIX personality
  • Doom
  • video playback
  • fully GDPR-compliant
  • everything but the kitchen sink

paths

You thought it would be easy, would you?

"apps/shell_native.exe"             -> current working directory, resolved in userspace
"/SystemRoot/apps/shell_native.exe" -> system volume through the resource namespace
"/Device/HarddiskVolume1/boot.ini"  -> system volume through the resource namespace
"C:\apps\doom.exe"                  -> /SystemRoot/apps/doom.exe through win32.dll
"\apps\doom.exe"                    -> /SystemRoot/apps/doom.exe through win32.dll
"/apps/video.exe"                   -> /SystemRoot/apps/video.exe through posix.dll

Kernel filesystem syscalls are capability-relative; userspace owns the current working directory and resolves named resources through rssrv.

/SystemRoot is the configured boot volume. Other mounted volumes are discovered through the volume manager and opened by capability.

networking

The socket syscalls are BSD-shaped, not BSD-compatible. Same nouns (AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, IPPROTO_TCP), none of the baggage:
one fixed-size tagged address struct instead of the sockaddr_in/sockaddr_storage casting dance,
no htons/ntohl conversions, and DNS resolution is a syscall rather than a userspace library call.
That's right microkernel purists, cry some more. Ergonomics.
Async is first-class here too, same machinery as the filesystem. Except the DNS resolver. Ergonomics, am I right?

how to build

  • get mtools
  • open the VS x64 build tools
  • change into this directory
  • run build.bat
  • use one of:
    • run.bat — IDE
    • rund.bat — IDE, debug
    • runa.bat — AHCI
    • runad.bat — AHCI, debug

how it looks when built

The ESP is just the boot anchor:

efi/boot/
  bootx64.efi
efi/ntlite/fs/
  ...
boot.ini

The configured system volume carries the OS:

system/
  colonel.exe
  hal.dll
  init.exe
  rssrv.exe
  syscall.dll
  win32.dll
  posix.dll
  settings.ini
drivers/
  drivers.ini
  ahci.sys
  ata.sys
  fat.sys
  hda.sys
  lwip.sys
  ntfs.sys
  ext4.sys
  pci.sys
  ps2.sys
  rtl816x.sys
  rtl8139.sys
  cereal.sys
  usb.sys
  vmwaresvga.sys
apps/
  shell_native.exe
  shell_win32.exe
  shell_posix.exe
  doom.exe
  video.exe
  edit.exe
  httpget.exe
  tcpserve.exe
  udp.exe
  resolve.exe
  ping.exe
  memtop.exe

screenshots

video.exe running bink video 2

faq

Q: Is it secure? A: Don't connect to the internet with it.

Q: Who is this for? A: Me.

Q: What's next? A: Whatever I fixate on next.

Q: Does it run Doom?
A: doom.exe

Q: Can it play Crysis? A: Into the bucket list.

Q: Does USB work? A: It did for everything I threw at it.

Q: If I write a program now, will it run in the future? A: WE DO, in fact, BREAK USERSPACE.

Q: Can you read and write files?
A: As far as I'm aware.

Q: Does it have async I/O?
A: The best you'll get.

Q: Does the networking actually work? A: It didn't crash yet.

Q: Does it really have SMP? A: Watch out. It bites.

Q: Is the Win32 layer real?
A: API wise, yes. Binary compatibility wise, close but no.

Q: Are processes isolated?
A: No. But IPC is free. And you can't steal handles. Is this how a serious modern OS should isolate processes? No.
Are we a serious OS? No. Is it very convenient? Absolutely.

Q: How often does it crash?
A: It doesn't if you don't touch it.

Q: Can it recover from a crash?
A: Works on my machine.

Q: Is this finished?
A: Does it look finished?

Q: Will it corrupt my data?
A: It shouldn't.

Q: Why is the path syntax so weird?
A: It makes sense to me.

Q: Why are the logs so verbose?
A: Try debugging an interrupt path with vibes.

Q: What should I read first?
A: This document.

Q: How do I contribute? A: maksw@maksw.pl

Q: Can I use this in production?
A: Don't.

Project dedicated to the honorable, esteemed Professor Leszek Wójcik through whom I came to hate Unix.

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