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The goal of this project is to make Darwin more usable by providing an installation ISO, documentation, and add-on software. You are welcome to join #puredarwin on irc.freenode.net if you would like to join PureDarwin development and to add to this site.

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XNU, the kernel

This page is about the XNU kernel.
Both Apple vanilla mach_kernel and Voodoo xnu-dev are available and functional in PureDarwin.
It is a work in progress. Please contribute.

What is XNU

XNU is the kernel used by Darwin and Mac OS X (similar to what GNU/Linux kernel is in a Linux distro).
XNU acronym stands for "X is Not Unix" (although Mac OS X has been Unix certified in 2007).

Common myths about XNU

(please add some text)
  • Not a microkernel (although using parts of the Mach microkernel)
  • Not 64-bit (although able to run 64-bit binaries)
  • Not so hard to recompile
See here why the term kernel is used somewhat differently than you might expect.

Common parts of XNU

  • Mach 3.0
  • BSD
  • I/O Kit

Creating a prelinked mach_kernel

XNU cannot boot by itself, since it always needs a certain set of kernel extensions (kexts) to be present. However, you can create a mach_kernel file that not only contains XNU itself, but also a defined set of kexts:
kextcache -a i386 -K  /Volumes/PureDarwin/mach_kernel \
-c /tmp/mach_kernel.prelinked /Volumes/PureDarwin/System/Library/Extensions
The result is that you should have a file in /tmp/mach_kernel_prelinked that contains both XNU and the kexts.

Another example, fast boot and kext autoloaded:

kextcache -a i386 -s -l -n -c "$MOUNT/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.kernelcaches/kernelcache.DEADBEEF" -k -K "$MOUNT/mach_kernel" -m "$MOUNT/System/Library/Extensions.mkext" "$MOUNT/System/Library/Extensions"

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