[HN Gopher] Show HN: A 10KiB kernel for cloud apps
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Show HN: A 10KiB kernel for cloud apps
Author : ianseyler
Score : 57 points
Date : 2026-01-14 16:04 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| bflesch wrote:
| Sorry this might be an extremely stupid question, but can you
| please explain the benefits of this and what other (larger?)
| alternatives are?
|
| I understand that this "exokernel" provides more performant
| hardware access for software and it seems to be written from
| scratch in assembler.
|
| Does this mean that one should expect a lot of security and
| robustness issues, which means it should only be used for
| internal services and never be exposed to untrusted networks?
| heliumtera wrote:
| If one decides to boot an arbitrary system, pointing at
| whatever would be the latest version of exec.asm, it doesn't
| even matter what the project is today and whatever the setup
| script is doing. If one chooses to use this, one decides to
| handover the virtual machine ownership. Your system is whatever
| OP decides, now or in the future.
|
| Edit: made a clear mistake here. One would clearly not be
| booting on lates version of exec.asm. It would be
| libBareMetal.asm instead.
|
| Sorry for confusion guys, totally safe and effective
|
| if [ -x "$(command -v curl)" ]; then curl -s -o
| libBareMetal.asm
| https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ReturnInfinity/BareMetal/m...
| else wget -q
| https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ReturnInfinity/BareMetal/m...
| fi
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Given that this is (AFAICT) a way to efficiently run exactly one
| program on a machine (probably a VM), I would have liked to see
| more time spent on the particulars of getting a program running
| on it. Like, can you easily run existing software on BareMetal?
| Could you compile nginx to run on it? Or does software have to be
| written specifically for this environment? And either way, how
| exactly do you actually build your software for/into(?) the
| image?
| cestith wrote:
| You can't run most Unix/Linux apps without porting.
|
| https://github.com/ReturnInfinity/BareMetal-Examples/blob/ma...
| ianseyler wrote:
| The plan is to get existing *nix programs ported over, yes.
| That will require some more work (ideally a compatibility
| layer/library).
| tracker1 wrote:
| I would think that with a bit of work, it should be possible to
| implement a baseline for a language like Rust or Go to target
| that environment with a "bare" application that may or may not
| have a direct filesystem interface to use.
|
| Which could be pretty nice. Just Enough OS, so to speak.
| messe wrote:
| Wow, that's some nostalgia for me. I remember encountering
| BareMetalOS and its bootloader Pure64 back when I still lurked
| the OSDev.org forums, probably more than 15 years ago at this
| point. Glad to see you're still at it!
| gforce_de wrote:
| Does look alien. When Going to
| http://baremetal.returninfinity.com/ one can only see some b0rken
| plaintext in the browser: GET / HTTP/1HTTP/1.0
| 404 Not Found Server: BareMetal Content-type:
| text/html <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head>
| <title>404</title> </head> <body> <p>404 -
| Not found</p> </boGET / HTTP/1
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(page generated 2026-01-14 23:01 UTC)