NarcOs

A simple hobby operating system. It can run as i386 or x86_64.

Requirements

• gcc
• ld
• nasm
• objcopy
• ar
• ranlib
• make for the vendored musl build
• ImageMagick magick
• genisoimage for ISO targets
• meson
• ninja
• qemu-system-i386
• qemu-system-x86_64

Configure once:

meson setup build

Run 32-bit

ninja -C build run-i386

Run with networking:

ninja -C build run-net-i386

Build and boot the 32-bit ISO:

ninja -C build iso-i386
ninja -C build run-iso-i386

Test the same ISO as a Rufus/DD USB image in QEMU:

ninja -C build run-iso-usb-i386

Build a 32-bit raw disk image explicitly:

ninja -C build usb-i386

Run 64-bit

ninja -C build run-x86_64

Run with networking:

ninja -C build run-x86_64-net

Build and boot the 64-bit ISO:

ninja -C build iso-x86_64
ninja -C build run-iso-x86_64

Test the same ISO as a Rufus/DD USB image in QEMU:

ninja -C build run-iso-usb-x86_64

Build a 64-bit raw disk image explicitly:

ninja -C build usb-x86_64

The ISO targets are hybrid images. They still boot as CD-ROM images in a VM, but the same .iso can also be written directly to a USB drive with Rufus or dd. If Rufus asks for write mode, choose DD Image mode. CD-ROM boot is read-only and uses a volatile RAM filesystem overlay; USB boot through Rufus/DD exposes the embedded NarcOs disk image as a writable partition, so filesystem writes persist on the USB drive.

Current boot support is BIOS/legacy or UEFI-CSM. UEFI-only boot requires an EFI bootloader and is not supported by this image yet.

Clean

ninja -C build clean-generated
ninja -C build clean