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Building sanos from source

To build sanos from source you first need to download sanos-src-x.x.x.zip from the download page and unzip it into a directory (e.g. c:\sanos).

The source code for sanos is compiled under Windows. You need Microsoft Visual C version 7 (i.e. Visual Studio.NET 2002) in order to compile the source code. The boot sector is assembled using NASM. A copy of the NASM assembler is distributed with the source release of sanos (in the tools directory).

You can build sanos from a command line by running the build.cmd command file in the root directory of the sanos distribution. If your Visual Studio is not placed in its default location you need to have your path setup for Visual Studio. This is most easily done by running vsvars32.bat. This file is usually located in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET\Vc7\bin.

The build.cmd command file compiles and links all the code and builds a boot floppy image in img/sanos.flp. See here for booting and installing this image.

The build process

The build.cmd script first builds the sanos specific win32 based tools:

• mkdfs - File system creation tools
• mkfloppy - Raw floppy writer utility
• mkpart - Partition utility
• dbggw - Remote debugger gateway
• sow - Sanos-on-Windows library

These tools are placed in the tools directory. Next the all the sanos executable files are compiled, linked,  and placed in the bin directory. The following targets are built:

• boot - Boot sector
• osldr.dll - Secondary boot loader
• krnl.dll - Sanos kernel
• os.dll - OS API module
• 3c905c.sys - 3Com 3C905 network driver
• eepro100.sys - Intel EtherExpress Pro/100 network driver
• sis900.sys - SiS 900/7016 network driver
• ne2000.sys - Novell NE2000 network driver
• rtl8139.sys - RealTek RTL8129/RTL8139 network driver
• pcnet32.sys - AMD PCNet32 network driver
• tulip.sys - Digital "Tulip" Ethernet card network driver
• libc.lib - ANSI Standard C Library
• sh.exe - Shell
• setup.exe - Setup utility
• fdisk.exe - Partition utility
• edit.exe - Text editor
• ftpd.exe - FTP daemon
• telnetd.exe - Telnet daemon
• login.exe - User login utility
• httpd.dll - HTTP server
• jinit.exe - Java launcher
• msvcrt.dll - Win32 wrapper for msvcrt.dll
• kernel32.dll - Win32 wrapper for kernel32.dll
• advapi32.dll - Win32 wrapper for advapi32.dll
• wsock32.dll - Win32 wrapper for wsock32.dll
• winmm.dll - Win32 wrapper for winmm.dll
• user32.dll - Win32 wrapper for user32.dll

The only expected build warning is in osldr:

LINK : warning LNK4096: /BASE value '0x10000' is invalid for Windows 95 and Windows 98; image may not run

The last step in the build process is to make a floppy disk boot image using the mkdfs tool. The control file bootdisk.lst in the build directory is used to create the image. This image (sanos.flp) is placed in the img directory.

Building sanos using NMAKE

The root directory of the sanos source distribution contains a Makefile, that can be used to build sanos. After running vsvars32.bat you can build sanos by running:

c:\sanos> nmake sanos

This will build all the files in the bin directory. You can then build different install medias from these files:

• nmake bootdisk
  Builds a floppy boot disk image in the img directory (img\sanos.flp)
• nmake boothd
  Builds a 100 MB virtual harddisk boot disk image in the img directory (img\sanos.vmdk). This image can be used to boot from in PC emulators supporting vmdk format (VMware and Qemu).
• nmake bootcd
  Builds a ISO cd boot disk image in the img directory (img\sanos.iso). This requires mkisofs to be installed in the tools directory.
• nmake netbootimg
  Builds a network boot image in the img directory (img\sanos.0). This image can be used for making sanos boot over the network using PXE.

Building sanos from the Visual Studio IDE

You can also build sanos from within the Visual Studio IDE. Go to to the build directory and double click sanos.sln. After Visual Studio has started right click the image project and select 'Set as Startup Project'. 

Right click the sanos solution in the project pane and select 'Build Solution'. This will compile and link all the code and create a floppy image (sanos.flp) in the img subdirectory.