Build a User Mode Linux kernel with your current toolchain. Get current kernel source, configure (I'm using miniconfig), build UML: wget http://kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/linux-2.6.17.tar.bz2 tar xjvf linux-2.6.17.tar.bz2 patch -p1 -i ../miniconfig.patch make miniconfig MINICONFIG=../linux-miniconfig-uml ARCH=um optional: make ARCH=um menuconfig (general setup->small systems->load all) make ARCH=um note: CONFIG_HZ error means it's distclean time. You have leftover ARCH=i386 symlinks in your build directory. Try again. Boot User Mode Linux with hostfs, demonstrate basic User Mode Linux. ./linux rootfstype=hostfs rw init=/bin/sh whoami mount -t procfs /proc /proc cat /proc/cpuinfo ps cat/proc/mounts exit - panics the kernel when PID 1 exits, but who cares?