News

Apr 8 2000
0.8.7 release

Mar 18 2000
Roadrunner loads and runs its first ELF executable from floppy disk

Mar 9 2000
First release of documentation for the upcoming 0.8.7 release

Feb 9 2000
Roadrunner and pk projects combined and web site redesigned

Roadrunner/pk

Roadrunner/pk is a general-purpose operating system built on a protected-memory, POSIX real-time kernel. Roadrunner/pk is a new operating system design and implementation targeted at systems ranging from embedded systems to PDAs to information appliances to the desktop. Roadrunner/pk currently runs on x86 PCs but is designed to be easily portable to other CPU architectures. Roadrunner/pk is available under the GNU General Public License (GPL) and is distributed with full source code. The Roadrunner/pk system has the following attributes:

• Single-user: This means no user accounts, no groups, no super-user.

• Multi-threaded: The system does many things at once, and it's fully preemptive. The kernel is based on the POSIX Threads standard.

• Real-time: Scheduling is priority based, among other things.

• Memory protection: A single, physical memory address space with page-based MMU enforced memory protection yields the best of both worlds, isolated application execution and the simplicity of one-to-one virtual-to-physical address mappings.

• Streaming I/O: An I/O system designed specifically for high-speed, concurrent transfers between devices.

Screenshots

Mailing Lists

Announcements: roadrunner-announce

Development discussions: roadrunner-devel

Documentation

Roadrunner/pk 0.8.7 documentation lists the system call interface:

• The Roadrunner/pk Operating System [Postscript]

• Roadrunner/pk Installation [Postscript]

Documentation generated for the pk kernel is still available and applicable to the pk 0.9.2 release. Roadrunner/pk is based on the pk kernel but has evolved from the 0.9.2 release.

• Detailed kernel documentation, generated from the pk noweb source files: pk: An Open-Source POSIX Threads Kernel [gzip'd Postscript]

• A short paper that accompanied a presentation made to the FREENIX track of the 1999 Usenix Technical Conference: pk: A POSIX Threads Kernel [Postscript]

Downloads

Source code

• Roadrunner/pk current snapshot: roadrunner.tgz
  (Updated Tue Apr 11 22:16:53 EDT 2000 )

• Roadrunner 0.8.7 distribution: roadrunner-0.8.7.tgz

• pk 0.9.2 distribution: pk-0.9.2.tgz (available under a BSD-style copyright)

Bootable floppy images

• Roadrunner/pk current (requires 386): rrfloppy.gz
  (Updated Tue Apr 11 22:16:53 EDT 2000 )

• Roadrunner 0.8.7 (requires 386): rrfloppy-0.8.7.gz

• pk 0.9.2 (requires 386): pkfloppy-0.9.2.gz

Roadrunner/pk Contributors

These people have contributed, directly or indirectly, to development of the Roadrunner/pk system over the course of time. This list is roughly in chronological order, Doug Jones was the first, many years ago (1989):

Doug Jones, Univ. of Iowa
Ken Westerfeld, NASA/JSC
Nancy Hadley Miller
Satish Tripathi, Univ. of Maryland, College Park
George Apostolopoulos, Univ. of Maryland, College Park
CMSC 415 students, Fall 1996, Univ. of Maryland, College Park
Pete Keleher, Univ. of Maryland, College Park
Tom Evans, Tennyson Technologies Pty. Ltd., Australia.
Erwin Rol
David Decotigny
Qazi Sami ur Rahman
Joel Vallier

About Cornfed Systems

Cornfed Systems was founded by Frank W. Miller to design and implement operating systems. The corporation is located at:

Cornfed Systems Inc
3621 Macalpine Road
Ellicott City Maryland 21042 USA
410 480 2485