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Installation

MirageOS consists of a set of OCaml libraries that link with a runtime to form either a standalone unikernel or a normal UNIX binary. These libraries are managed via the OPAM tool. After describing MirageOS's system requirements, we will introduce the basics of OPAM and setting up for MirageOS.

Requirements

MirageOS has been tested on many modern Linux distributions, MacOS X 10.10+ and FreeBSD 11+.

You will need OPAM 1.2.2 or later and OCaml 4.03.0 or later.

Some backends have specific requirements for the host system:

ukvm: To compile the ukvm backend you must have a Linux host.
virtio: To compile the virtio backend you must have a Linux or FreeBSD host.
xen: To compile the xen backend, you must have a 64-bit Linux host. 32-bit is not supported at this time.

MacOS X-specific notes

10.10: No special requirements beyond Homebrew or MacPorts to get OCaml and OPAM.
10.9 or lower: You will also need the tuntap kernel module if you want to use the MirageOS network stack from userspace. Note that we do not test older versions of OSX beyond 10.10.

If you are using Homebrew, run

brew install opam
opam init
opam install mirage

Linux-specific notes

Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial) or higher

This has the latest packages required in the base distribution, so just run:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install opam
opam init
opam install mirage

Ubuntu 15.10 (Vivid) or lower

The version of OPAM in older Ubuntus is not high enough to run Mirage (which requires OPAM 1.2.2 or higher), so you will need to add a custom PPA for the latest packages:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:avsm/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ocaml ocaml-native-compilers camlp4-extra opam
opam init
opam install mirage

Debian Stable (Jessie)

Debian Jessie only packages OPAM 1.2.0, but Mirage needs OPAM 1.2.2 or higher. You can use 0install to get the right version of OPAM:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ca-certificates curl 0install-core --no-install-recommends -y
0install add opam http://tools.ocaml.org/opam.xml
opam init
opam install mirage

Debian Testing (Stretch) or Unstable (Sid)

These distributions include everything you need to run Mirage in the base distribution, so just do:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ocaml ocaml-native-compilers camlp4-extra opam
opam init
opam install mirage

FreeBSD-specific notes

You will need ports or pkg set up. To install OPAM use the ocaml-opam port/package. FreeBSD currently packages OCaml 4.02.3, so you will need to install a newer compiler using OPAM.

MirageOS Package Management with OPAM

We use OPAM to manage OCaml compiler and library installations. It tracks library versions across upgrades and will recompile dependencies automatically if they get out of date. Please refer to OPAM documentation if you want to know more, but we will cover the basics to get you started here. There is a Quick Install Guide if the above instructions don't cover your operating system.

Note that you require OPAM 1.2.2 or greater to use with MirageOS. Some distribution packages provide earlier versions and must be updated; check with

$ opam --version ## response should be at least 1.2.2 viz.
1.2.2

All the OPAM state is held in the .opam directory in your home directory, including compiler installations. You should never need to switch to a root user to install packages. Package listings are obtained through remote sources, which defaults to the contents of github.com/ocaml/opam-repository.

After installation, opam update -u refreshes the package list and recompiles packages to the latest versions. You should run this regularly to get the latest packages.

$ opam init
# list of your remotes, which should include opam.ocaml.org
$ opam remote

Next, make sure you have at least OCaml 4.03.0 or higher as your active compiler. This is generally the case on MacOS X, though Debian only has it in the testing distribution at present. But don't worry: if your compiler is out of date, just run opam switch to have it locally install the right version for you.

$ ocaml -version
# if it is not 4.03.0 or higher, then run this
$ opam switch 4.03.0

Once you've got the right version, set up your shell environment to point to the current compiler switch.

$ eval `opam config env`
# add the above line to your startup shell profile

This updates the variables in your shell to match the current OPAM installation, mainly by altering your system PATH. You can see the shell fragment by running opam config env at any time. If you add the eval line to your login shell (usually ~/.bash_profile), it will automatically import the correct PATH on every subsequent login.

Check that the base packages are installed correctly:

$ opam list
Installed packages for system:
base-bigarray         base  Bigarray library distributed with the OCaml compiler
base-threads          base  Threads library distributed with the OCaml compiler
base-unix             base  Unix library distributed with the OCaml compiler
[ possibly other installed packages ]

Finally, install the MirageOS command-line tool.

$ opam install mirage
$ mirage --help

That's it. You now have everything required to start developing MirageOS unikernels that will run either as POSIX processes or as standalone unikernels. Next, why not try building a MirageOS hello world?

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