DByteOS Kernel Direction & Architecture (v10.4.0)

[!WARNING] DByteOS Kernel Lab is a Bare-Metal Experiment. It is not a bootable full OS nor a real production kernel. It is a freestanding sandbox prototype containing no memory allocator, process scheduler, interrupt controllers, or standard driver sets.

This document describes the architectural direction and research roadmap for the DByteOS Kernel Lab. It establishes a clear boundary between the production-grade host-runnable personal environment (DByteOS Userland) and the bare-metal kernel prototype experiments (Kernel Lab).

Core Philosophy§

1. Pragmatic Sandboxing: The kernel is designed as a standalone bootable laboratory environment. It is NOT integrated into the main dbyteos command shell runtime.
2. Pedagogical Prototype: We make zero claims of bare-metal production readiness. The Kernel Lab is a bootstrap system designed to run in virtualized environments like QEMU.
3. No Bootloader Bloat: We utilize the standard Multiboot specification, allowing modern virtualization engines (QEMU, VirtualBox) to boot the ELF kernel binary directly.

Boot Pipeline§

graph TD
    A[QEMU Emulator / Host PC] -->|Launches Multiboot loader| B[Multiboot Header Validation]
    B -->|Enters 32-bit Protected Mode| C[Assembly Bootstrap Entry _start]
    C -->|Sets Stack Pointer esp| D[Rust Freestanding kernel_main]
    D -->|Initializes VGA buffer| E[Direct Screen Output]
    E -->|Enters HLT Loop| F[System Idle State]

Memory Layout§

• 0x00000000 - 0x000FFFFF: Real Mode IVT, BIOS Data Area, and VGA Framebuffer (0x000B8000).
• 0x00100000 (1MB): Kernel entry point (_start) and .multiboot_header.
• 0x00101000 - ...: Read-only segments (.text, .rodata).
• 0x... - 0x00500000: Read-write segments (.data, .bss) and the 256 KiB execution stack.

SOURCE: DBYTEOS_KERNEL.md