zipwith / llp-labs

Languages and Low-Level Programming: Lab Exercises and Sample Programs

Languages and Low-Level Programming: Lab Exercises and Sample Programs

This repository contains the source code for the Languages and Low Level Programming (LLP) sample programs and lab exercises. These materials were developed for and used in the courses on Languages and Low-Level Programming that were taught at Portland State University in Spring 2015, Spring 2016, and Fall 2017. Further details about the LLP course may be found at http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~mpj/llp/.

Acknowledgements:

The development of the materials in this repository was supported in part by funding from the National Science Foundation, Award No. CNS-1422979.

Overview:

The llp folder provides the source materials for the series of seven LLP labs as they were presented to students. Further details are included in the README.md file for that folder.

The remaining folders in this repository contain the source code for the demos and starting points for the full set of labs. For those who wish to use these materials independently (i.e., without using the files in LABS), we would suggest working through them in the following order:

• vram - A video RAM simulation, providing an introduction to low-level programming that runs in a conventional Linux desktop environment.

• hello - A simple bare metal demo that will boot and run, displaying a colorful "hello" greeting, on standard PC hardware, or in a virtual machine using a tool like QEMU or VirtualBox.

• simpleio - A library for simple I/O, including output to the screen (via video RAM) or a serial port, and input from the keyboard.

• bootinfo - A simple bare metal program that accesses and displays information that is passed in to it by the GRUB bootloader.

• mimg - Memory image boot tools, providing an extra layer of flexibility and control over Grub. The mimgmake tool allows a developer to combine the contents of multiple executable or other files in a single image, including details of the addresses where the files should be loaded. The mimgload tool uses the resulting image files to ensure that memory is appropriately initialized at boot-time before handing control to the appropriate kernel code.

• example-mimg - A simple bare metal program that is desiged to be booted and executed using mimgload. This program displays details from the boot data that are passed on to it by mimgload.

• example-gdt - A variant of example-mimg that includes code to initialize a global descriptor table (GDT) for controlling segmentation on the x86 platform.

• example-idt - An extension of example-gdt that includes code to initialize an interrupt descriptor table (IDT), and then uses interrupts to support switching between user and kernel (protected) mode programs.

• switching - An near copy of the example-idt demo that serves as the starting point for the context switching lab.

• winio - An expanded version of the simpleio library that implements support for using multiple (nonoverlapping) video RAM "window"s for character output.

• paging - An expanded version of switching that includes extra code and prompts for working through the paging and processes labs.

• pork - An implementation of a small, L4-like microkernel for the x86 platform that demonstrates techniques for memory and thread management, interprocess communication (IPC), etc..

• caps - A simple capability-based operating system that demonstrates key aspects of the capability abstraction in microkernels like seL4 but in a simpler setting that is suitable for a first introduction to the topic. The files in this folder are used as the starting point for the LLP capabilities lab.