Ymir: The Type-1 Hypervisor

Ymir is an Intel VT-x based baremetal hypervisor written in Zig. It is minimalistic but can boot latest Linux kernel (v6.9).

Features

• Supports Intel x64 architecture.
• Can boot latest Linux kernel with initramfs.
• Uses EPT (Extended Page Tables) for memory virtualization.
• Super thin (passthrough) and minimalistic hypervisor.
• No dependencty. Everything is written from scratch in Zig.

Limitations / Future Work

• No support of SMP.
• No support of APIC and other fundamental features.
• Can boot only Linux kernel with x86 boot protocol.
• Can host only one VM at a time.
• And many more...

Requirements

Install ovmf package to run UEFI firmware on QEMU:

sudo apt install ovmf

Development

zig build install-samples
zig build run -Dlog_level=info -Doptimize=ReleaseFast

If you want to use your own kernel image and initramfs, you can put your kernel image (bzImage) and initramfs (initramfs.cpio) to /zig-out/img. It is tested that Ymir can boot Linux kernel v6.9 that is compiled with defconfig of x86-64.