In contrast to the previous patchset that was reverted, this time we use
a "special" method to access a file with block size of 512 bytes (like
a harddrive essentially).
This commit adds a basic implementation of
the ptrace syscall, which allows one process
(the tracer) to control another process (the tracee).
While a process is being traced, it is stopped whenever a signal is
received (other than SIGCONT).
The tracer can start tracing another thread with PT_ATTACH,
which causes the tracee to stop.
From there, the tracer can use PT_CONTINUE
to continue the execution of the tracee,
or use other request codes (which haven't been implemented yet)
to modify the state of the tracee.
Additional request codes are PT_SYSCALL, which causes the tracee to
continue exection but stop at the next entry or exit from a syscall,
and PT_GETREGS which fethces the last saved register set of the tracee
(can be used to inspect syscall arguments and return value).
A special request code is PT_TRACE_ME, which is issued by the tracee
and causes it to stop when it calls execve and wait for the
tracer to attach.
FlyString is a flyweight string class that wraps a RefPtr<StringImpl>
known to be unique among the set of FlyStrings. The class is very
unoptimized at the moment.
When to use FlyString:
- When you want O(1) string comparison
- When you want to deduplicate a lot of identical strings
When not to use FlyString:
- For strings that don't need either of the above features
- For strings that are likely to be unique
This new subsystem includes better abstractions of how time will be
handled in the OS. We take advantage of the existing RTC timer to aid
in keeping time synchronized. This is standing in contrast to how we
handled time-keeping in the kernel, where the PIT was responsible for
that function in addition to update the scheduler about ticks.
With that new advantage, we can easily change the ticking dynamically
and still keep the time synchronized.
In the process context, we no longer use a fixed declaration of
TICKS_PER_SECOND, but we call the TimeManagement singleton class to
provide us the right value. This allows us to use dynamic ticking in
the future, a feature known as tickless kernel.
The scheduler no longer does by himself the calculation of real time
(Unix time), and just calls the TimeManagment singleton class to provide
the value.
Also, we can use 2 new boot arguments:
- the "time" boot argument accpets either the value "modern", or
"legacy". If "modern" is specified, the time management subsystem will
try to setup HPET. Otherwise, for "legacy" value, the time subsystem
will revert to use the PIT & RTC, leaving HPET disabled.
If this boot argument is not specified, the default pattern is to try
to setup HPET.
- the "hpet" boot argumet accepts either the value "periodic" or
"nonperiodic". If "periodic" is specified, the HPET will scan for
periodic timers, and will assert if none are found. If only one is
found, that timer will be assigned for the time-keeping task. If more
than one is found, both time-keeping task & scheduler-ticking task
will be assigned to periodic timers.
If this boot argument is not specified, the default pattern is to try
to scan for HPET periodic timers. This boot argument has no effect if
HPET is disabled.
In hardware context, PIT & RealTimeClock classes are merely inheriting
from the HardwareTimer class, and they allow to use the old i8254 (PIT)
and RTC devices, managing them via IO ports. By default, the RTC will be
programmed to a frequency of 1024Hz. The PIT will be programmed to a
frequency close to 1000Hz.
About HPET, depending if we need to scan for periodic timers or not,
we try to set a frequency close to 1000Hz for the time-keeping timer
and scheduler-ticking timer. Also, if possible, we try to enable the
Legacy replacement feature of the HPET. This feature if exists,
instructs the chipset to disconnect both i8254 (PIT) and RTC.
This behavior is observable on QEMU, and was verified against the source
code:
ce967e2f33
The HPETComparator class is inheriting from HardwareTimer class, and is
responsible for an individual HPET comparator, which is essentially a
timer. Therefore, it needs to call the singleton HPET class to perform
HPET-related operations.
The new abstraction of Hardware timers brings an opportunity of more new
features in the foreseeable future. For example, we can change the
callback function of each hardware timer, thus it makes it possible to
swap missions between hardware timers, or to allow to use a hardware
timer for other temporary missions (e.g. calibrating the LAPIC timer,
measuring the CPU frequency, etc).
We now have PrivateInodeVMObject and SharedInodeVMObject, corresponding
to MAP_PRIVATE and MAP_SHARED respectively.
Note that PrivateInodeVMObject is not used yet.
We add this feature together with the VMWareBackdoor class.
VMWareBackdoor class is responsible for enabling the vmmouse, and then
controlling it from the PS2 mouse IRQ handler.
This patch introduces sys$perf_event() with two event types:
- PERF_EVENT_MALLOC
- PERF_EVENT_FREE
After the first call to sys$perf_event(), a process will begin keeping
these events in a buffer. When the process dies, that buffer will be
written out to "perfcore" in the current directory unless that filename
is already taken.
This is probably not the best way to do this, but it's a start and will
make it possible to start doing memory allocation profiling. :^)
System components that need an IRQ handling are now inheriting the
InterruptHandler class.
In addition to that, the initialization process of PATAChannel was
changed to fit the changes.
PATAChannel, E1000NetworkAdapter and RTL8139NetworkAdapter are now
inheriting from PCI::Device instead of InterruptHandler directly.
The kernel and its static data structures are no longer identity-mapped
in the bottom 8MB of the address space, but instead move above 3GB.
The first 8MB above 3GB are pseudo-identity-mapped to the bottom 8MB of
the physical address space. But things don't have to stay this way!
Thanks to Jesse who made an earlier attempt at this, it was really easy
to get device drivers working once the page tables were in place! :^)
Fixes#734.
Introduce the 'debug-kernel' script to allow developers to
quickly attach a debugger to the QEMU debug remote. The
setting (-s) is already enabled by ./run today when using
QEMU for virtualisation.
If the system is running under QEMU, the debugger
will break in when the script is run. If you add
the -S option to QEMU it will wait for the debugger
to connect before booting the kernel. This allows
you to debug the init/boot process.
Personally I use cgdb instead of gdb, so I opted
to make the debugger used by the script customizable
via an environment variable.
This change also adds -g3 to the kernel build so that
rich debug symbols are available in the kernel binary.
We now have these API's in <Kernel/Random.h>:
- get_fast_random_bytes(u8* buffer, size_t buffer_size)
- get_good_random_bytes(u8* buffer, size_t buffer_size)
- get_fast_random<T>()
- get_good_random<T>()
Internally they both use x86 RDRAND if available, otherwise they fall
back to the same LCG we had in RandomDevice all along.
The main purpose of this patch is to give kernel code a way to better
express its needs for random data.
Randomness is something that will require a lot more work, but this is
hopefully a step in the right direction.
This code never worked, as was never used for anything. We can build
a much better SHM implementation on top of TmpFS or similar when we
get to the point when we need one.
The new PCI subsystem is initialized during runtime.
PCI::Initializer is supposed to be called during early boot, to
perform a few tests, and initialize the proper configuration space
access mechanism. Kernel boot parameters can be specified by a user to
determine what tests will occur, to aid debugging on problematic
machines.
After that, PCI::Initializer should be dismissed.
PCI::IOAccess is a class that is derived from PCI::Access
class and implements PCI configuration space access mechanism via x86
IO ports.
PCI::MMIOAccess is a class that is derived from PCI::Access
and implements PCI configurtaion space access mechanism via memory
access.
The new PCI subsystem also supports determination of IO/MMIO space
needed by a device by checking a given BAR.
In addition, Every device or component that use the PCI subsystem has
changed to match the last changes.
PR #591 defines the rationale for kernel-level timers. They're most
immediately useful for TCP retransmission, but will most likely see use
in many other areas as well.
Allow everything to be built from the top level directory with just
'make', cleaned with 'make clean', and installed with 'make
install'. Also support these in any particular subdirectory.
Specifying 'make VERBOSE=1' will print each ld/g++/etc. command as
it runs.
Kernel and early host tools (IPCCompiler, etc.) are built as
object.host.o so that they don't conflict with other things built
with the cross-compiler.
Toolchain build makes git repo out of toolchain to allow patching
Fix Makefiles to use new libstdc++
Parameterize BuildIt with default TARGET of i686 but arm is experimental
The kernel now supports basic profiling of all the threads in a process
by calling profiling_enable(pid_t). You finish the profiling by calling
profiling_disable(pid_t).
This all works by recording thread stacks when the timer interrupt
fires and the current thread is in a process being profiled.
Note that symbolication is deferred until profiling_disable() to avoid
adding more noise than necessary to the profile.
A simple "/bin/profile" command is included here that can be used to
start/stop profiling like so:
$ profile 10 on
... wait ...
$ profile 10 off
After a profile has been recorded, it can be fetched in /proc/profile
There are various limits (or "bugs") on this mechanism at the moment:
- Only one process can be profiled at a time.
- We allocate 8MB for the samples, if you use more space, things will
not work, and probably break a bit.
- Things will probably fall apart if the profiled process dies during
profiling, or while extracing /proc/profile
It's now possible to get purgeable memory by using mmap(MAP_PURGEABLE).
Purgeable memory has a "volatile" flag that can be set using madvise():
- madvise(..., MADV_SET_VOLATILE)
- madvise(..., MADV_SET_NONVOLATILE)
When in the "volatile" state, the kernel may take away the underlying
physical memory pages at any time, without notifying the owner.
This gives you a guilt discount when caching very large things. :^)
Setting a purgeable region to non-volatile will return whether or not
the memory has been taken away by the kernel while being volatile.
Basically, if madvise(..., MADV_SET_NONVOLATILE) returns 1, that means
the memory was purged while volatile, and whatever was in that piece
of memory needs to be reconstructed before use.
The kernel's Lock class now uses a proper wait queue internally instead
of just having everyone wake up regularly to try to acquire the lock.
We also keep the donation mechanism, so that whenever someone tries to
take the lock and fails, that thread donates the remainder of its
timeslice to the current lock holder.
After unlocking a Lock, the unlocking thread calls WaitQueue::wake_one,
which unblocks the next thread in queue.
It's now possible to load a .o file into the kernel via a syscall.
The kernel will perform all the necessary ELF relocations, and then
call the "module_init" symbol in the loaded module.
Turns out we can use abi::__cxa_demangle() for this, and all we need to
provide is sprintf(), realloc() and free(), so this patch exposes them.
We now have fully demangled C++ backtraces :^)
The kernel is now no longer identity mapped to the bottom 8MiB of
memory, and is now mapped at the higher address of `0xc0000000`.
The lower ~1MiB of memory (from GRUB's mmap), however is still
identity mapped to provide an easy way for the kernel to get
physical pages for things such as DMA etc. These could later be
mapped to the higher address too, as I'm not too sure how to
go about doing this elegantly without a lot of address subtractions.
