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Asterinas Kernel

Overview

Asterinas is a secure, fast, and general-purpose OS kernel that provides an Linux-compatible ABI. It can serve as a seamless replacement for Linux while enhancing memory safety and developer friendliness.

  • Asterinas prioritizes memory safety by employing Rust as its sole programming language and limiting the use of unsafe Rust to a clearly defined and minimal Trusted Computing Base (TCB). This innovative approach, known as the framekernel architecture, establishes Asterinas as a more secure and dependable kernel option.

  • Asterinas surpasses Linux in terms of developer friendliness. It empowers kernel developers to (1) utilize the more productive Rust programming language, (2) leverage a purpose-built toolkit called OSDK to streamline their workflows, and (3) choose between releasing their kernel modules as open source or keeping them proprietary, thanks to the flexibility offered by MPL.

While the journey towards a production-grade OS kernel can be challenging, we are steadfastly progressing towards our goal.

Supported CPU Architectures

Asterinas targets modern, 64-bit platforms only.

A development platform is where you build and test Asterinas (i.e., the host machine running the Docker-based development environment).

Development Platform
x86-64

A deployment platform is a CPU architecture that Asterinas can run on as an OS kernel.

Deployment PlatformTier
x86-64Tier 1
x86-64 (Intel TDX)Tier 2
RISC-V 64Tier 2
LoongArch 64Tier 3
  • Tier 1: Fully supported and tested. CI runs the full test suite on every PR.
  • Tier 2: Actively developed with basic functionality working. CI runs build checks and basic tests on a regular basis (per PR for RISC-V and nightly for Intel TDX), but the full test suite is not yet covered.
  • Tier 3: Early-stage or experimental. The kernel can boot and perform basic operations, but CI coverage is limited and may not include automated runtime tests for every pull request.

Getting Started

Get yourself an x86-64 Linux machine with Docker installed. Follow the three simple steps below to get Asterinas up and running.

  1. Download the latest source code.

    git clone https://github.com/asterinas/asterinas

  2. Run a Docker container as the development environment.

    docker run -it --privileged \
            --network=host \
            -v /dev:/dev \
            -v $(pwd)/asterinas:/root/asterinas \
            asterinas/asterinas:0.17.1-20260305

  3. Inside the container, go to the project folder to build and run Asterinas.

    make kernel
make run_kernel

If everything goes well, Asterinas is now up and running inside a VM.