kern/docs/main.md

kern.

Kern is a 32-bit x86 based operating system.

What does that mean? Well, 32-bit means that it can access 2^{32} different memory addresses. x86 is the processor architecture it is built upon.

Command Line

Kern uses a command line (for now), so you'll have to type commands to do stuff. It is currently quite simple. It supports these commands:

• clear: Clears the screen
• echo : Prints msg to the screen
• exit: Shuts down the OS (QEMU only!)
• help: Prints all available commands
• ls: Prints all files
• reboot: Reboots the system

You can also print/run files by typing their filename (More in Filesystem)

Filesystem

Kern has a custom filesystem. This filesystem works as a simple filetable. It doesn't support directories at the moment. Here's a list of supported filetypes:

Type	Description	CLI Behaivour
.bin	Executable binary	Executes file
.txt	Raw ASCII text file	Prints out file content
.tab	Filetable format	Prints files in filetable
.dat	Data Binary	Prints HEX content of file
.asm	Assembly source code	Prints out file content

Filetable format

The filetable format (.tab) is a binary file containing

Byte(s)	Content
0-9	Filename
10-12	Filetype
13	Number of filetable entries
14	Starting sector
15	File Length (in sectors)