xv6-unix-on-windows

This is a guide on how to build and boot xv6 on Windows.

Prerequisites

• QEMU for Windows

Getting Started

There are two ways to get the necessary files to run xv6.

Option 1: Use Pre-compiled Binaries (Recommended)

You can download the precompiled kernel and fs.img from this repository.

Using git:

git clone https://github.com/EN10/xv6-unix-on-windows.git

Using curl:

curl -L -o kernel https://github.com/EN10/xv6-unix-on-windows/raw/main/kernel
curl -L -o fs.img https://github.com/EN10/xv6-unix-on-windows/raw/main/fs.img

Using wget:

wget -O kernel https://github.com/EN10/xv6-unix-on-windows/raw/main/kernel
wget -O fs.img https://github.com/EN10/xv6-unix-on-windows/raw/main/fs.img

Option 2: Build from Source

If you want to build the kernel yourself, follow these steps.

1. Install Build Dependencies

sudo apt install binutils-riscv64-linux-gnu qemu-system-misc gcc-riscv64-linux-gnu

2. Build

make qemu

Run on Windows

Once you have the kernel and fs.img files, you can run xv6 using QEMU:

qemu-system-riscv64 -machine virt -bios none -kernel kernel -nographic -global virtio-mmio.force-legacy=false -drive file=fs.img,if=none,format=raw,id=x0 -device virtio-blk-device,drive=x0,bus=virtio-mmio-bus.0

After running the command, you should see the xv6 kernel booting:

xv6 kernel is booting

hart 2 starting
hart 1 starting
init: starting sh
$

If you type ls at the prompt, you should see output similar to the following:

$ ls
.              1 1 1024
..             1 1 1024
README         2 2 2227
xargstest.sh   2 3 93
cat            2 4 32864
echo           2 5 31720
forktest       2 6 15856
grep           2 7 36240
init           2 8 32216
kill           2 9 31680
ln             2 10 31504
ls             2 11 34808
mkdir          2 12 31736
rm             2 13 31720
sh             2 14 54168
stressfs       2 15 32608
usertests      2 16 178800
grind          2 17 47528
wc             2 18 33816
zombie         2 19 31080
console        3 20 0

Resources

• xv6 GitHub Repository: https://github.com/mit-pdos/xv6-riscv
• MIT 6.1810 Course: https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.1810/2024/schedule.html