KERNEL CHANGES:
- The kernel only knows about privileges of kernel tasks and the root system
process (now RS).
- Kernel tasks and the root system process are the only processes that are made
schedulable by the kernel at startup. All the other processes in the boot image
don't get their privileges set at startup and are inhibited from running by the
RTS_NO_PRIV flag.
- Removed the assumption on the ordering of processes in the boot image table.
System processes can now appear in any order in the boot image table.
- Privilege ids can now be assigned both statically or dynamically. The kernel
assigns static privilege ids to kernel tasks and the root system process. Each
id is directly derived from the process number.
- User processes now all share the static privilege id of the root user
process (now INIT).
- sys_privctl split: we have more calls now to let RS set privileges for system
processes. SYS_PRIV_ALLOW / SYS_PRIV_DISALLOW are only used to flip the
RTS_NO_PRIV flag and allow / disallow a process from running. SYS_PRIV_SET_SYS /
SYS_PRIV_SET_USER are used to set privileges for a system / user process.
- boot image table flags split: PROC_FULLVM is the only flag that has been
moved out of the privilege flags and is still maintained in the boot image
table. All the other privilege flags are out of the kernel now.
RS CHANGES:
- RS is the only user-space process who gets to run right after in-kernel
startup.
- RS uses the boot image table from the kernel and three additional boot image
info table (priv table, sys table, dev table) to complete the initialization
of the system.
- RS checks that the entries in the priv table match the entries in the boot
image table to make sure that every process in the boot image gets schedulable.
- RS only uses static privilege ids to set privileges for system services in
the boot image.
- RS includes basic memory management support to allocate the boot image buffer
dynamically during initialization. The buffer shall contain the executable
image of all the system services we would like to restart after a crash.
- First step towards decoupling between resource provisioning and resource
requirements in RS: RS must know what resources it needs to restart a process
and what resources it has currently available. This is useful to tradeoff
reliability and resource consumption. When required resources are missing, the
process cannot be restarted. In that case, in the future, a system flag will
tell RS what to do. For example, if CORE_PROC is set, RS should trigger a
system-wide panic because the system can no longer function correctly without
a core system process.
PM CHANGES:
- The process tree built at initialization time is changed to have INIT as root
with pid 0, RS child of INIT and all the system services children of RS. This
is required to make RS in control of all the system services.
- PM no longer registers labels for system services in the boot image. This is
now part of RS's initialization process.
- an asmconv based tool for conversion from GNU ia32 assembly to ACK assembly
- in contrast to asmconv it is a one way tool only
- as the GNU assembly in Minix does not prefix global C symbols with _ gas2ack
detects such symbols and prefixes them to be compliant with the ACK convention
- gas2ack preserves comments and unexpanded macros
- bunch of fixes to the asmconv GNU->ACK direction
- support of more instructions that ACK does not know but are in use in Minix
- it is meant as a temporary solution as long as ACK will be a supported
compiler for the core system
- MFS and mkfs(1) now perform extra sanity checks
- fsck(1) can now deal with inode tables extending beyond the file
system's first 4GB
- badblocks(8) no longer writes out the superblock for no reason
- mkfs(1) no longer crashes when given no parameters
- more(1) no longer crashes when standard output is redirected
It removes the no more existing marcos (XPIPE XPOPEN XDOPEN XLOCK XSELECT) and
replaces them with the new ones from servers/vfs/const.h No more dependency on
NR_TASKS macro.
for each symbol, usually answering those "why is does my binary have
such a lot of BSS" questions.
- stop binpackage looking in /var/spool for package files.
- let makewhatis recognize .Sh as heading name
- setup, fsck, df: allow >4kB block sizes painlessly
- mkfs: new #-of-inodes heuristic that depends on kb, not
on blocks; i've run out of inodes on my /usr
- asmconv: don't silently truncate .aligns to 16 bytes
- ipc* commands for shared memory support
- Modified the setup script to use the netconf script for the network
configuration:
- Moved step 2 to step 8 and renamed the steps in between.
- Autopart adapted to print step 3 instead of step 4.
bin_img=1 in the boot monitor will make sure that during the boot procedure the
mfs binary that is part of the boot image is the only binary that is used to
mount partitions. This is useful when for some reason the mfs binary on disk
malfunctions, rendering Minix unable to boot. By setting bin_img=1, the binary
on disk is ignored and the binary in the boot image is used instead.
- 'service' now accepts an additional flag -r. -r implies -c. -r instructs RS
to first look in memory if the binary has already been copied to memory and
execute that version, instead of loading the binary from disk. For example,
the first time a MFS is being started it is copied (-c) to memory and
executed from there. The second time MFS is being started this way, RS will
look in memory for a previously copied MFS binary and reuse it if it exists.
- The mount and newroot commands now accept an additional flag -i, which
instructs them to set the MS_REUSE flag in the mount flags.
- The mount system call now supports the MS_REUSE flag and invokes 'service'
with the -r flag when MS_REUSE is set.
- /etc/rc and the rc script that's included in the boot image check for the
existence of the bin_img flag in the boot monitor, and invoke mount and
newroot with the -i flag accordingly.
- Prepared mount system call to accept multiple mount flags
instead of just read_only (however, it remains backwards
compatible).
- Updated the man mount(2) to reflect new header file usage.
- Updated badblocks, newroot, mount, and umount commands to use the
new header file.
Kernel:
o Remove s_ipc_sendrec, instead using s_ipc_to for all send primitives
o Centralize s_ipc_to bit manipulation,
- disallowing assignment of bits pointing to unused priv structs;
- preventing send-to-self by not setting bit for own priv struct;
- preserving send mask matrix symmetry in all cases
o Add IPC send mask checks to SENDA, which were missing entirely somehow
o Slightly improve IPC stats accounting for SENDA
o Remove SYSTEM from user processes' send mask
o Half-fix the dependency between boot image order and process numbers,
- correcting the table order of the boot processes;
- documenting the order requirement needed for proper send masks;
- warning at boot time if the order is violated
RS:
o Add support in /etc/drivers.conf for servers that talk to user processes,
- disallowing IPC to user processes if no "ipc" field is present
- adding a special "USER" label to explicitly allow IPC to user processes
o Always apply IPC masks when specified; remove -i flag from service(8)
o Use kernel send mask symmetry to delay adding IPC permissions for labels
that do not exist yet, adding them to that label's process upon creation
o Add VM to ipc permissions list for rtl8139 and fxp in drivers.conf
Left to future fixes:
o Removal of the table order vs process numbers dependency altogether,
possibly using per-process send list structures as used for SYSTEM calls
o Proper assignment of send masks to boot processes;
some of the assigned (~0) masks are much wider than necessary
o Proper assignment of IPC send masks for many more servers in drivers.conf
o Removal of the debugging warning about the now legitimate case where RS's
add_forward_ipc cannot find the IPC destination's label yet
