o3one, is a VMS-like hobby operating system with some UNIX features currently in development. It includes VMS version control in the filesystem dfs, as well as both stream and “mailbox” style pipes. Development is currently headed towards an Alpha port, and a GUI is in development.
o3one: The Object Oriented Operating System
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Do you know which UNIX features are currently in development (there is knowthing about this on the website, as far as I have seen)?
Maybe some sort of emulation layer?
Or is it just what is described as “best parts of UNIX”?
“best parts of UNIX” such as stream based pipes, and he is using a UNIX style toolchain. Also it seems that BSD style sockets will be used for networking.
Thank god it boots, I’m tired of OSes with pages of concepts that have little more code then a bootloader.
The website has an awfull bug at least of firebird. It displays an intolerable yellow!!
Gein
* * EXPECT it to FAIL when someone’s HeALTh or PROpeRTy is at RISktm * *
I don’t think it’s intolerable; but maybe my LCD just displays colors different, like the green on my website (currently down).
The piece about stegonographic filesystems is interesting. http://www.o3one.org/stego.html
The implications of such a filesystem are enormous.
OpenVMS has some nice features that Linux does not (yet) have. What comes to mind is
1. The resource locking service (sys$enq). It has been ported by IBM to Linux under the name DLM (Distributed Lock Manager) but is not yet included in the official kernel.
2. The commandline interpreter (DCL). It’s extensive and well structured as the rest of OpenVMS. Bash is a mess in comparison – at least at first glance.
3. Structured return/exit code handling. Programs on OpenVMS do not return 0, 1 or -1 or something as in Linux but rather a symbolic code that indicates who, what, how bad. With a nice stack dump on the spot if desired. OpenVMS has no concept of a core file as in Linux.
The closests equivalent in Linux to logical names are symlinks. Environment vars are in OpenVMS called symbols. ASTs are what Windows call APCs and what is setup using sigaction() in Linux. Event flags are what are signals in Linux.
All OpenVMS doc is on the web at http://h71000.www7.hp.com/doc/index.html
(and the native system calls – as for example sys$enq() – are not a secret as in Windows).
A good place to start a study is the OpenVMS Programming Concepts Manual at
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/doc/731FINAL/5841/5841PRO.HTML.
There has been other attempts on porting OpenVMS as for example
http://freevms.free.fr/indexGB.html
but progress has been slow.
Coming from OpenVMS I’ve gotten used to Linux, even started to appreciate some of its features and I’m not sure that what is needed now is yet another OS. I think the focus should be on improving Linux with the best parts from other OSes.
I agree with your post, but I would like to add a couple of features that are quite important to VMS:
1. Access control lists, sure you can hack and sort of do it in Linux/Unix, but it is rather elegantly done in VMS
2. True clustering, from a few revisions VMS has been cluster aware. And the clustering is rather awesome IMHO, not geared towards HPC per se, but rather redundancy and reource sharing.
I think it is interesting to see people picking up on VMS as a research OS!
It’s a VMS-based OS. And it’s GPL. And got a bochs hdimage!
O3ONE, here I come!
Have to agree and disagree with Claus:
1) Cluster Resource locking is great. My server uses native VMS filesystem across nodes for data access (DB like) and synch-ing.
2) I personally dislike DCL. I find it cumbersome and non-intuitive.
3) As a developer, numeric exit code is preferable for a number of reasons (portability first). But core-dump on VMS is really good. It takes x10 times less time to get the point of crash from customer site with VMS than Tru64.
More Likes:
1) Clustering. Simply the best.
2) Reliability. Not a single reboot for 2 years on development cluster.
More Dislikes:
1) Cumbersome filesystem (path syntax,extenstions,file limitations, etc)
2) Over-complicated compilation approach
3) Libraries and executables both have .EXE extenstion, which is misleading
4) Cross-dynamic-linking of binaries impossible
There are patches for Linux to do so.
http://www.mcdonald.org.uk/StegFS/
It runs on top of Ext2FS.
Want a patch for Linux 2.4? You got the source
according to the site they’re gonna port it to 2.6 and in the end even Windows.
Besides, there’s CryptoFS. When unmounted, it is an image.