CSE 536: Getting Started

In ASU's Advanced Operating System course (CSE 536), we are using the xv6 Operating System for programming assignments. xv6 is a teaching-focused OS designed by some incredible folks at MIT (link). This README explains how to setup QEMU and a GNU RISC-V toolchain, needed for running xv6, as well how to boot up a QEMU VM with xv6.

A. Installing xv6 pre-requisites

Please reach out to the TAs if you have any installation issues.

Linux/WSL

Navigate to the install/linux-wsl folder
Install RISC-V QEMU: ./linux-qemu.sh
Install RISC-V toolchain:./linux-toolchain.sh
Add installed binaries to path: source .add-linux-paths

MacOS

Navigate to the install/mac folder
Install RISC-V QEMU: ./mac-qemu.sh
Install RISC-V toolchain: ./mac-toolchain.sh
Add installed binaries to path: source .add-mac-paths

B. Running the xv6 OS

Navigate back to main folder and clone the xv6 OS using

 git clone https://github.com/mit-pdos/xv6-riscv.git

Navigate to xv6-riscv and run make qemu

C. FAQs

While running linux-qemu.sh, if you run into ERROR: glib-2.48 gthread-2.0 is required to compile QEMU, then :

Run this command in the terminal. sudo apt install libglib2.0-dev. This is caused due to a newer version of your linux distro(link).

linux-qemu.sh : ../meson.build:328:2: ERROR: Dependency "pixman-1" not found, tried pkgconfig

Can be resolved by running sudo apt install libpixman-1-dev (link)

Acknowledgement

We remain thankful to the xv6 team at MIT for their open-source codebase.