tinylinux

This project is heavily inspired by Nir Lichtman's awesome YouTube video about hacking your own tiny Linux kernel with a static init userspace.

Dependencies

For Ubuntu on WSL 2:

sudo apt install make build-essential flex bison libncurses-dev libelf-dev cpio syslinux isolinux genisoimage

Building the kernel

Use the tinyconfig option along with the other config options shown in the video.

Building the userspace

gcc -c userspace.c

as sys.S

ld -o init userspace.o a.out --entry main -z noexecstack

echo init | cpio -H newc -o > init.cpio

Packaging the kernel and userspace

make isoimage FDARGS="initrd=/init.cpio" FDINITRD="~/tinylinux/init.cpio"