cloudxtreme / nodeos

Lightweight operating system using Node.js as userspace

NodeOS

Lightweight operating system using Node.js as userspace.

NodeOS is an operating system build entirely in Javascript and managed by npm. Any package in npm is a NodeOS package, which at last count was 134,872 packages. The goal of NodeOS is to provide just enough to let npm provide the rest. Since anyone can contribute to npm, anyone can create NodeOS packages.

Roadmap

find us

• Web: please use github issues for discussion
• IRC: join #node-os on Freenode

introduction

NodeOS is a Node.js based operating system, built-off of the Linux kernel. The eventual goal of NodeOS is to produce images that can be run on

• real hardware like desktop PCs, servers or Raspberry Pi
• cloud providers like Joyent, Amazon or Rackspace
• virtual machines like QEmu, VirtualBox, VMWare and KVM
• PaaS providers like Heroku or Joyent's Manta
• container providers like Docker

Core development is being done in layers. There could be some differences to adjust better to each target platform, but the general structure is:

• barebones custom Linux kernel with an initramfs that boots to a Node.js REPL
• initramfs Initram environment to mount the users partition & root filesystem
• rootfs Read-only partition image to host Linux kernel and initramfs files
• usersfs multi-user environment with the same behaviour of traditional OSes

Booting process

All the layers are bootable, leading barebones to a Node.js REPL prompt. initramfs (and by extension rootfs) lead to a Node.js REPL by default if not using a custom one. In all the cases, it will be used an initramfs as root filesystem and all the changes will be lost when powered-off.

If a users partition is being set at boot time, it will be mounted and the system will considerate each one of the folders there as the home folder for a valid user on the system and executing a init file in the root of each of them. If found, root user will be the first to be considerated and will have access to all the home directories.

Hacking

If you are hacking on NodeOS as a somewhat production server, you are likely building usersfs images since each user is isolated of others, but you can be able to customize all layers. For example, you could be able to modify initramfs to login the users and mount their home folders from a cloud service or craft a system without global services (no root user) or also dedicate a full NodeOS instance to a single application.

Pre-build images

Ready to use pre-build images are automatically generated after each commit in master branch that sucessfully pass the tests. To exec them, you'll need to have QEmu installed on your system.

The iso can be written to a CD-R or flashed to an USB pendrive, but will only provide the read-only rootfs and the changes will be done in memory loosing them after reboot, so you'll need to set manually a read-write usersfs partition if you want to persist them. On the other hand, if you want to flash it to an USB pendrive, it's recomended to so it by using bin/istallUSB command so it will create automatically a read-write usersfs partition to fill the remaining space so your changes will persist.

Build NodeOS in three steps

NodeOS require to have first installed some build tools, on a Ubuntu based system you can install them by executing the file bin/install-dependencies

1. Download the project source code and build NodeOS for QEmu:

   git clone [email protected]:NodeOS/NodeOS.git
   cd NodeOS
   npm install

By default it generate some files that can be used with QEmu, compiled for your current architecture. You can be able to configure the build process by passing some environment variables. For example, to force to build for 32 bits, use PLATFORM=qemu_32 npm install instead.

2. Pick some microwave pop-corn and go to see a movie. No, really, do it.

3. Exec your fresh compiled NodeOS image:

   npm start

It will automatically detect what CPU architecture will need to be used on QEmu.

...and profit! :-D

If you encounter an error when building NodeOS, take a look at the wiki or open an issue.

NodeOS on Docker

Currently Docker support is unmaintained. There are some NodeOS images on Docker Hub, but they are outdated. If you are interested on help or testing, you can build them from source code.

Quick Start

1. Install Docker

2. One Liner

   sudo docker run -t -i nodeos/nodeos

or learn how to make a Custom Build

Build from Source

Warning: the build process is hairy, it probably won't work the first time. I'm working on that.

git clone [email protected]:NodeOS/NodeOS.git
cd NodeOS
PLATFORM=docker npm install