Muli Ben-Yehuda's journal

[root@xenbox ~]# vm-build.linux 1 los0-image "xxx"
...
[root@xenbox ~]# vm-pause -u 1
(XEN) Domain 1 (vcpu#0) crashed on cpu#0:
(XEN) CPU:    0
(XEN) EIP:    e019:[]
(XEN) EFLAGS: 00000202   CONTEXT: guest
(XEN) eax: 00000000   ebx: 00000000   ecx: 00000000   edx: 00000000
(XEN) esi: 001e1000   edi: 00000000   ebp: 001e3ffc   esp: 001e3fe8
(XEN) cr0: 8005003b   cr3: 09383000
(XEN) ds: e021   es: e021   fs: e021   gs: e021   ss: e021   cs: e019
(XEN) Guest stack trace from esp=001e3fe8:
(XEN)    00000000 001002dc 0001e019 00000202 001e1000 00000000

This may not look like much, but it means that Xen is
loading a movitz
image and launching into it. Score!

(can
you tell it’s exam week?)

There was an excellent Haifux meeting last night. 8 people gave lightning talks on various subjects, with a mostly-common theme of retro computing. I gave my “world’s smallest kernel” aka “here’s how to write a bootsector” talk, which went ok, I guess. (tarball with the code). I particularly enjoyed Oron’s talk (various old Unixes running on a pdp11 simulator…), guy’s “ascii art” talk and Alon and Boaz’s talks (almost full talk list available here).

It was also nice being in Haifux again after a long time and mostly listening. I forgot how much I enjoy the geeky atmosphere and conversations.

Amazon was kind enough to inform me this morning that Dan Simmons has a sequel to llium coming out. Now to wait for the paperback…

I’ve had a pretty productive day today, for a change. First I finally finished reviewing the papers for August Penguin 2005, and then I wrote the code for “the world’s smallest kernel”, the lightning talk I’ll give at the upcoming Haifux meeting. I don’t want to elaborate on the subject until after the talk, but there’s a hint if you look closely.

Productivity needs to be rewarded. Today’s loot: Marine Rifleman: Forty-Three Years in the Corps by Wesley L. Fox and Currahee!: A Screaming Eagle at Normandy, by Donald R. Burgett.

Creating the Innocent Killer: Ender’s Game, Intention, and Morality.

If you’ve read Ender’s Game, and wondered why you like it so much… this paper is certainly thought provoking.

Currently reading: the presentations from Fast-OS 2005.

Excellent work out this morning. What a difference loading the ipod with trance and house music makes.

Bare Metal Emacs. Awesome.

Are Virtual Machine Monitors Microkernels Done Right? by Steven Hand, Andrew Warfield, Keir Fraser, Evangelos Kotsovinos, Dan Magenheimer.

(The rest of the conference program for HotOS05 looks pretty good too).

Baruch Even is full of planet goodness lately. Witness planet (former) advogato and planet FOSS-IL.

“I watched good TV last night”[1].

An episode of Friends(!) that had some subtlety, an episode of Law & Order that was excellent as usual, as episode of ER that actually made me shiver[2] and the first episode of Nip / Tuck, which really was as good as it’s claimed to be. Reflecting about it now, I realize that the shows felt *real* and made me care, if only for a few moments.

[1] in my defense, I was after very little sleep, a long day of military reserve duty, and my wrists hurt when I type. Doesn’t leave too many options.

[2] Spoiler alert: it’s the one where the ER is quiet all night, and Benton rips Gant the surgical intern a new one because he messes up. Carter sides with Benton and lets Gant down. At the end of the night a terribly mauled patient arrives after having jumped or tripped in front of the train. Everyone is happy to finally have some work and feel sorry for the patient who has no face left. Benton asks for Gant to be paged. The patient’s pager beeps… the looks on Benton and Carter’s faces as they realize they’re working on Gant are haunting.