rowan.id.au — Piers Rowan

Built from
the metal up.

A place for the low-level things I make for the love of it — a native macOS network tool, an operating system written from scratch, and the language that scripts it. All real, all usable, all grown far past "toy".

Pick a plate.

MacBurger

Native macOS · SwiftUI
Download

Everything you reach for after "who's on my network?" — discover the LAN, keep a durable device inventory, fingerprint OS & service versions, and operate on hosts over SSH. Part nmap · part Postman · part nagios · part apt/yum.

  • Discover & inventory — ARP-backed host discovery that remembers devices by MAC across every network you visit.
  • Fingerprint — passive + deep OS/service detection with confidence and evidence.
  • Operate — per-host API console, SSH inventory, a metrics dashboard, firewall-drift baselines and one-package updates.
Open MacBurger → Universal · macOS 26+ · free .dmg

PiROS

Provable-runtime x86 OS
Releases

A from-scratch x86_64 operating system built on one rule: a program runs only if it can prove it is the exact, unmodified thing the authority signed. Grown from a kernel that boots echo into a small multi-user system.

  • Signed & sandboxed — every tool is a separate ring-3 ELF, verified (ed25519 + SHA-256) before it runs. Deny-by-default.
  • Multi-user & encrypted — isolated per-user /data sealed with ChaCha20 + HMAC; login, grants and services minted at runtime.
  • From-scratch net & SSH — its own TCP/IP + SSH-2 stack, background services, and in-place authority-signed HTTPS upgrades.
Open PiROS releases → Bootable image · QEMU / bare x86_64

Pequod

PiROS scripting · runs as psh
Manual

Pequod is the language that drives PiROS shell scripts — run as the psh command — and, served by the tintin web server, turns .psh files into dynamic, SQL-backed web pages. A PHP-flavoured interpreter living entirely in a signed, ring-3 program.

  • Script the shell — variables, functions, include libraries and file I/O, all through the PiROS syscall ABI.
  • Template the web — <?= ?> pages with $_GET/$_POST forms and safe HTML output.
  • Query with Queequeg — qq_query result arrays, writes, and injection-safe qq_quote.
Open the Pequod manual → Hand-written · 5 chapters · no build step

The PiROS service fleet

Root-managed daemons — aquatic-authors theme — that turn a PiROS box into a server. Each runs as its own no-login user with an isolated /data store.

charon

SSH · port 2222

Kernel-hosted SSH daemon with password and publickey auth. Auto-starts on boot; holds idle sessions with keepalives.

Read the docs →

tintin

HTTP · port 80

Web server for static files and dynamic .psh pages — the Pequod interpreter renders the response, with qq_query for SQL.

Read the docs →

nemo

FTP

File transfer in and out — STOR and RETR, PASV or active — serving each user's files/. The way you get binaries onto the box.

Read the docs →

queequeg

SQL engine

The database — qq-cli shell, qq-cmd admin (users, createdb, dump), and qq-query behind Pequod's qq_query.

Read the docs →
🛠️

Made for the craft. These are personal engineering projects — no drag-and-drop, no frameworks doing the hard part. MacBurger is for your own networks and hosts you're authorised to inspect; PiROS is a proof-of-concept OS you boot in QEMU. Kick the tyres.