FTL v0.1.0: Better Linux compatibility, and multi-threaded Tokio

FTL operating system v0.1.0 is released. This release brings async Rust support (multi-thread Tokio runtime) to FTL.

Changes

v0.1.0 adds lots of missing pieces in Linux compatibility layer:

• Linux threads, futex, epoll, signals, tty, brk, mmap, dup3, pipe, eventfd, and more.
• Console system calls (serial ports) to allow shell access.
• Wall-clock time API.
• virtio-mmio and QEMU microVM support.
• Anonymous memory pages are now allocated lazily.
• Blocking Linux system calls are not interruptible by signals.
• Hardening improvements such as x86-64 SMEP/SMAP.

New website

ftl-os.org has a new look with a fresh design. It is now powered by a tokio-based HTTP server on FTL on Google Compute Engine. The FTL development is on track, and I think this blog can be migrated to FTL soon.

How to try

Follow instructions in the README to try FTL. On macOS:

brew install rustup qemu
git clone https://github.com/nuta/ftl.git && cd ftl
./run.sh

What’s next?

The next November release will include file system optimized for stateless workloads like Kubernetes’ ephemeral volumes, dynamic Linux container (userspace OS) creation, and a better sandboxing concept to allow running untrusted code.