Xv6, a simple Unix-like teaching operating system

Introduction

Xv6 is a teaching operating system developed in the summer of 2006 for MIT's operating systems course, 6.828: Operating System Engineering. In 2019, we ported xv6 to RISC-V for a new undergraduate class 6.S081.

Xv6 sources and text

The latest xv6 source and text are available via

git clone git://github.com/mit-pdos/xv6-riscv.git

and

git clone git://github.com/mit-pdos/xv6-riscv-book.git

Unix Version 6

xv6 is inspired by Unix V6 and by:

• Lions' Commentary on UNIX' 6th Edition, John Lions, Peer to Peer Communications; ISBN: 1-57398-013-7; 1st edition (June 14, 2000).
  • An on-line version of the Lions commentary, and the source code.
  • The v6 source code is also available online through The Unix Heritage Society.

The following are useful to read the original code:

• The PDP11/40 Processor Handbook, Digital Equipment Corporation, 1972.
  • A PDF (made from scanned images, and not text-searchable)
  • A web-based version that is indexed by instruction name.

Feedback

If you are interested in using xv6 or have used xv6 in a course, we would love to hear from you. If there's anything that we can do to make xv6 easier to adopt, we'd like to hear about it. We'd also be interested to hear what worked well and what didn't.

Russ Cox (rsc@swtch.com)
Frans Kaashoek (kaashoek@mit.edu)
Robert Morris (rtm@mit.edu)

You can reach all of us at 6.828-staff@pdos.csail.mit.edu.

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Questions or comments regarding 6.828? Send e-mail to the TAs at 6828-staff@lists.csail.mit.edu.

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