Nanos is a new kernel designed to run one and only one application in a virtualized environment. It has several constraints on it compared to a general purpose operating system such as Windows or Linux - namely it's a single process system with no support for running multiple programs nor does it have the concept of users or remote administration via ssh.

Read more about the Nanos Charter here.

1. Getting Started
2. Documentation
3. Support

Please use the ops build tool to run your applications with Nanos unless you plan on hacking on Nanos itself. Many ready-to-use examples for running applications on Nanos using ops are available here.

Install ops && nanos:

curl https://ops.city/get.sh -sSfL | sh

It is highly encouraged to use ops to build and run your applications using Nanos unless you are planning on modifying Nanos. ops provides sensible defaults for most users and incorporates our understanding of how to appropriately best use Nanos. It is also currently highly coupled to Nanos.

If you are running in a vm already (which is a bad idea) you'll need to specify that you don't want hardware acceleration. For instance you can run Nanos in virtualbox on a mac but it will be slow and hard to configure.

You can build and run on mac and linux. Nanos supports KVM on linux and HVF on osx currently for acceleration. ops has facilities to deploy to public clouds (AWS, GCE, Azure, and many others).

Note: This is only recommended for those that wish to make code changes to Nanos itself.

Install Homebrew:

/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

Grab Dependencies:

This installs the correct toolchain and will install an up-to-date qemu. It is highly recommended to be running the latest qemu otherwise you might run into issues.

For Intel-based Macs:

brew update && brew install nasm go wget ent
brew tap nanovms/homebrew-toolchains
brew install x86_64-elf-binutils
brew tap nanovms/homebrew-qemu
brew install nanovms/homebrew-qemu/qemu

(note: go is only needed for certain examples, but not for building the kernel)

For ARM-based Macs (M1/M2):

brew update && brew install go wget ent qemu aarch64-elf-binutils

brew tap nanovms/homebrew-toolchains
brew install aarch64-linux-binutils

Create a Chroot: (this isn't absolutely necessary)

For Intel-based Macs:

mkdir target-root && cd target-root && wget
https://storage.googleapis.com/testmisc/target-root.tar.gz && tar xzf target-root.tar.gz

For ARM-based Macs (M1/M2):

mkdir target-root && cd target-root && wget
https://storage.googleapis.com/testmisc/arm64-target-root-new.tar.gz && tar xzf arm64-target-root-new.tar.gz

You should also set the environment variable NANOS_TARGET_ROOT to the path of target-root created above in order to create the example and test images.

Note: This is only recommended for those that wish to make code changes to Nanos itself.

Nanos doesn't need too many dependencies on Linux.

To build you need to install nasm, qemu and go:

sudo apt-get install qemu-system-x86 nasm golang-go

(note: go is only needed for certain examples, but not for building the kernel)

For tests you'll also need the following installed:

sudo apt-get install ent ruby

Ops:

curl https://ops.city/get.sh -sSfL | sh

Rust:

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

If you wish to use FUSE you'll also want to install

sudo apt-get install libfuse-dev fuse

make kernel

To run an example program from the test/runtime folder:

With hardware acceleration:

make run

Without hardware acceleration:

make run-noaccel

Set TARGET to run a specific example:

make TARGET=<example> run

Check out test/runtime for a list of examples. Certain examples require go to be built.

More examples can be found in docs/examples#examples.

You can find more documentation on the ops docs site

In an effort for transparency and to collect, categorize, and document benchmarks we will start listing them here. The aims should be to be as reproducible and contain as much information as possible:

Go on GCloud: 18k req/sec

Rust on GCloud: 22k req/sec

Node.JS on AWS: 2k req/sec

Node.JS on GCloud: 4k req/sec

To run tests:

make test-noaccel

For Nanos try running the first example first:

make run

To try a different target currently found in test/runtime/ you can:

1. cp the manifest file to target.manifest
2. add your code and set a target in test/runtime/Makefile

make TARGET=mynewtarget run

You may also wish to use ops to develop locally. If that's the case a commonly used idiom is to simply copy the 3 required files to an appropriate release:

cp output/tools/bin/mkfs ~/.ops/0.1.47/.
cp output/platform/pc/boot/boot.img ~/.ops/0.1.47/.
cp output/platform/pc/bin/kernel.img ~/.ops/0.1.47/.

We accept pull requests as long as it conforms to our style and stated goals. We may reject prs if they violate either of these conditions.

If you are planning on spending more than a day to fix something it's probably wise to approach the topic in an issue with your planned fix before commiting to work.

Also, NanoVMs has paid kernel engineers with internal roadmaps so it's wise to check in with us first before grabbing a tkt. Tickets tagged 'low-priority' have a lower probability of collision.

Please scan the issue list first to see if we are already tracking the bug.

Please do not create a new issue on a closed issue. If you think you are experiencing the same problem (is the error message the same?) you can open a new issue and link to it if you think it's the same.

Please try to provide the most basic reproducible example you can. If you have an error message or dump please include that.

Please try using the latest/nightly build first before reporting.

Please attach debugging output (--trace in ops). Please provide the config.json and anything else that allows us to reproduce the issue.

TFS is the current filesystem utilized by Nanos.

thread tracing:

futex_trace: t

syscall tracing:

debugsyscalls: t

Read more about Security here.

Architecture

Debugging Help

Manual Networking Setup

Build Envs

Reference Materials

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Feedback Form

If you are using Nanos for a project at your company or organization feel free to open up a PR and list your project/company below.

If you need help using nanos or ops the the discussion forum is your best route for general questions. You may feel free to report a bug noting the bug reporting section ahead or open an issue for a feature request.

Note: Nanos is open source, Apache2, however the builds that NanoVMs provides are not. Those using binary builds with over 50 employees must get a commercial subscription or you may freely build from source.

Similarily if you need something done now or want immediate attention to an issue NanoVMs offers paid support plans.

If you need email or drift support you will need to sign up for a support plan.

If you'd like more in-depth help reach out to the nanovms folks via drift or email engineering.