Your universal root toolbox

Illustration of a floating toolbox with three items representing the u-root features.

In use by

Powerful tools at your fingertips

  • One binary

    A way to compile many Go programs into a single binary with busybox mode.

  • Unix tools

    Go versions of many standard Linux tools, such as ls, cp, or shutdown.

  • Bootloader

    Set of implementations that use kexec to boot Linux or multiboot kernels such as ESXi, Xen, or tboot.

Facts about u‑root:

  • Deployed at scale in Google data centers
  • Almost 200 Unix commands written in Go
  • Build many Go programs into one
  • Builds an initramfs in 20 seconds
  • Include any Go program and other utilities

Get started

wget https://github.com/u-root/u-root-distro/releases/download/v0.0.3/kernel-x86_64

git clone https://github.com/u-root/u-root

(cd u-root && go build . && GOOS=linux GOARCH=amd64 ./u-root -o initramfs)

qemu-system-x86_64 -nographic -kernel kernel-x86_64 -initrd u-root/initramfs

# you can exit qemu with the poweroff command

Tackle your challenges at the root

Clone the repo and begin your u‑root journey right now.

Get started

Crafting success

Take root in our community

Contribute on GitHub Join our Slack channel

Recent talk: Experts insights

Open System Firmware in practice Experiences deploying LinuxBoot and coreboot at Google – OCP Global Summit 2021To the video
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