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Gokrazy: a pure-Go userland for Raspberry Pi 3 appliances

92 points by panic 7y ago

farleykr 7y ago
I’ve been looking for a new Raspberry Pi project since I devoted my last one to being a Pi-hole. I might have to try this one out!
Pfhreak 7y ago
An unfortunate name. I've seen more and more folks trying to reduce their use of 'crazy' in recent years and I'm starting to come around to the idea that using 'crazy' as shorthand might not be helpful in a society that already struggles with helping those with mental health issues.
- tomcam 7y ago
  Maybe change it to something less controversial, like GoCockroach
- gingabriska 7y ago
  But we all go crazy regardless of mental health issues, once in a while, isn't it?
2bitencryption 7y ago
I'll admit I'm a little confused by the "pure-Go userland" aspect. At first I thought this meant a userland consisting of common utilities (ls, grep, the usual GNU suspects) written in Go, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Instead, it seems to be, if you can compile your Go program for AMD64, and it can build without glibc (or any c runtime), then it can be hosted by Gokrazy? Is that right?
- IshKebab 7y ago
  They mean the whole userland. Like, init onwards. It's a great idea because the Linux userland is kind of a hacky mess, and takes active maintenance - not something you really want on an embedded device. This makes it more like a microcontroller, where basically the only process you have to worry about is your own. My only question is does it work with WiFi? I was under the impression that quite a lot of the Linux WiFi stack was implemented in userland (wpa_supplicant).
  - xyzzy_plugh 7y ago
    Distros are where the mess lives, to be honest. You can do a lot with BusyBox.
  - steevdave 7y ago
    wpa_supplicant just does the heavy lifting of connecting to the WiFi network. The WiFi device itself is handled by the kernel's brcmfmac driver, and there is the usual firmware (also requires a .txt file) or you can use something like nexmon, which tweeks the firmware (and a patched driver to use it) for using monitor mode, injection and a few other misc things people have done with the firmware.
dang 7y ago
A thread from 2018: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16672866 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16672866

92 points by panic 7y ago

I’ve been looking for a new Raspberry Pi project since I devoted my last one to being a Pi-hole. I might have to try this one out!

Pfhreak 7y ago

An unfortunate name. I've seen more and more folks trying to reduce their use of 'crazy' in recent years and I'm starting to come around to the idea that using 'crazy' as shorthand might not be helpful in a society that already struggles with helping those with mental health issues.

tomcam 7y ago
Maybe change it to something less controversial, like GoCockroach
gingabriska 7y ago
But we all go crazy regardless of mental health issues, once in a while, isn't it?

2bitencryption 7y ago

I'll admit I'm a little confused by the "pure-Go userland" aspect. At first I thought this meant a userland consisting of common utilities (ls, grep, the usual GNU suspects) written in Go, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Instead, it seems to be, if you can compile your Go program for AMD64, and it can build without glibc (or any c runtime), then it can be hosted by Gokrazy? Is that right?

IshKebab 7y ago
They mean the whole userland. Like, init onwards. It's a great idea because the Linux userland is kind of a hacky mess, and takes active maintenance - not something you really want on an embedded device. This makes it more like a microcontroller, where basically the only process you have to worry about is your own. My only question is does it work with WiFi? I was under the impression that quite a lot of the Linux WiFi stack was implemented in userland (wpa_supplicant).
- xyzzy_plugh 7y ago
  Distros are where the mess lives, to be honest. You can do a lot with BusyBox.
- steevdave 7y ago
  wpa_supplicant just does the heavy lifting of connecting to the WiFi network. The WiFi device itself is handled by the kernel's brcmfmac driver, and there is the usual firmware (also requires a .txt file) or you can use something like nexmon, which tweeks the firmware (and a patched driver to use it) for using monitor mode, injection and a few other misc things people have done with the firmware.

dang 7y ago

A thread from 2018: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16672866 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16672866