RoverOS

About

RoverOS is a hobby OS developed by one person that is certain to have some bugs and oversights.
The 'Rover' in RoverOS is taken from my dogs name, and that is where my username comes from as well. There is no specific goal of this OS/Kernel, it is just for fun and to learn more about OS internals.

Planned for next update

Things I will try to add in the next update

• Barebones XHCI support
• MSI/X support

Planned features

These are things I will likely add/do in the near future

• AHCI support
• Generic USB device drivers
• Reduced amount of C files

Unsupported hardware

• Non UEFI machines
• CSM only UEFI machines
• Non x64 (64 bit) CPUs
• Aarch32 only CPUs

---

Requirements

Things needed for both architectures

• gcc or an x86_64 cross compiler in /home/your_username/opt/cross/bin
• ld
• Make

x86_64 requirements

Tools needed for AMD64

• ovmf (I suggest looking up how to get ovmf for your distro)
• nasm
• mtools
• xorriso
• gnu-efi (https://github.com/vathpela/gnu-efi is the default repo)
• qemu-system-x86_64

ARM requirements

Tools needed for Aarch64

• arm-none-eabi-as
• arm-none-eabi-ld
• qemu-system-aarch64
• xorriso

Other make options

Add to the makefile arguments to use them make arch=<target_arch> <arg>=<value>

• kvm set to 1 to enable kvm emulator
• hdd set to 1 to enable copying to a real hdd
• gdb set to 1 to enable the use of gdb with qemu

---

Compiling

Setting vars

Do not include the '' or "" unless specified and avoid adding a space or / after a variable

Edit the config.mk file to set these vars

• set OVMF_PATH to where your OVMF.fd file is (This is likely to be in /usr/share/qemu)
  Example: OVMF_PATH = /use/share/qemu

RoverOS

1. Ensure all vars are set as required above
2. cd to the base of the RoverOS folder (where the Makefile is)
3. run make arch=<target_arch> to compile and run the EFI application

• Replace '<target_arch>' with either 'x86_64' or 'aarch64'. It is case sensitive

Real hardware (Empty FAT32 Partiton needed)

Requirements for AMD64

• GPT Formatted HDD
• 30 MB FAT32 Partition
• GRUB Bootloader

Requirements for Aarch64

• Unknown (I do not have a raspberrypi to test with yet)

Setting vars

• set HDD_PATH to a FAT32 partition and ensure the partition is mounted
  Example: HDD_PATH = /media/rover/C4D3-DC2C

Compiling

• run make arch=DESIRED_ARCH hdd=1

GRUB

• Put the following in your 40_custom grub file.
• set the root to your FAT32 partition
• hd# where # is the HDD/SSD number, gpt# where # is the partition number

menuentry "RoverOS" {
        set root='hd#,gpt#'
        chainloader /Polarboot.efi
}

This file is at /etc/grub.d/ for Ubuntu

1. update grub config via command (Search up how to do it for your distro)
2. Reboot and the option 'RoverOS' should be there

Misc

• make reset cleans the directory to the default state
• make check checks for compilers and OVMF