RS CHANGES:
- Crash recovery is now implemented like live update. Two instances are kept
side by side and the dead version is live updated into the new one. The endpoint
doesn't change and the failure is not exposed (by default) to other system
services.
- The new instance can be created reactively (when a crash is detected) or
proactively. In the latter case, RS can be instructed to keep a replica of
the system service to perform a hot swap when the service fails. The flag
SF_USE_REPL is set in that case.
- The new flag SF_USE_REPL is supported for services in the boot image and
dynamically started services through the RS interface (i.e. -p option in the
service utility).
- Fixed a free unallocated memory bug for core system services.
VFS CHANGES:
- dmap table no longer statically initialized in VFS
- Dropped FSSIGNON svrctl call no longer used by INET
INET CHANGES:
- INET announces its presence to VFS just like any other driver
RS CHANGES:
- The boot image dev table contains all the data to initialize VFS' dmap table
- RS interface supports asynchronous up and update operations now
- RS interface extended to support driver style and flags
SYSLIB CHANGES:
- DS calls to publish / retrieve labels consider endpoints instead of u32_t.
VFS CHANGES:
- mapdriver() only adds an entry in the dmap table in VFS.
- dev_up() is only executed upon reception of a driver up event.
INET CHANGES:
- INET no longer searches for existing drivers instances at startup.
- A newtwork driver is (re)initialized upon reception of a driver up event.
- Networking startup is now race-free by design. No need to waste 5 seconds
at startup any more.
DRIVER CHANGES:
- Every driver publishes driver up events when starting for the first time or
in case of restart when recovery actions must be taken in the upper layers.
- Driver up events are published by drivers through DS.
- For regular drivers, VFS is normally the only subscriber, but not necessarily.
For instance, when the filter driver is in use, it must subscribe to driver
up events to initiate recovery.
- For network drivers, inet is the only subscriber for now.
- Every VFS driver is statically linked with libdriver, every network driver
is statically linked with libnetdriver.
DRIVER LIBRARIES CHANGES:
- Libdriver is extended to provide generic receive() and ds_publish() interfaces
for VFS drivers.
- driver_receive() is a wrapper for sef_receive() also used in driver_task()
to discard spurious messages that were meant to be delivered to a previous
version of the driver.
- driver_receive_mq() is the same as driver_receive() but integrates support
for queued messages.
- driver_announce() publishes a driver up event for VFS drivers and marks
the driver as initialized and expecting a DEV_OPEN message.
- Libnetdriver is introduced to provide similar receive() and ds_publish()
interfaces for network drivers (netdriver_announce() and netdriver_receive()).
- Network drivers all support live update with no state transfer now.
KERNEL CHANGES:
- Added kernel call statectl for state management. Used by driver_announce() to
unblock eventual callers sendrecing to the driver.
UPDATING INFO:
20100317:
/usr/src/etc/system.conf updated to ignore default kernel calls: copy
it (or merge it) to /etc/system.conf.
The hello driver (/dev/hello) added to the distribution:
# cd /usr/src/commands/scripts && make clean install
# cd /dev && MAKEDEV hello
KERNEL CHANGES:
- Generic signal handling support. The kernel no longer assumes PM as a signal
manager for every process. The signal manager of a given process can now be
specified in its privilege slot. When a signal has to be delivered, the kernel
performs the lookup and forwards the signal to the appropriate signal manager.
PM is the default signal manager for user processes, RS is the default signal
manager for system processes. To enable ptrace()ing for system processes, it
is sufficient to change the default signal manager to PM. This will temporarily
disable crash recovery, though.
- sys_exit() is now split into sys_exit() (i.e. exit() for system processes,
which generates a self-termination signal), and sys_clear() (i.e. used by PM
to ask the kernel to clear a process slot when a process exits).
- Added a new kernel call (i.e. sys_update()) to swap two process slots and
implement live update.
PM CHANGES:
- Posix signal handling is no longer allowed for system processes. System
signals are split into two fixed categories: termination and non-termination
signals. When a non-termination signaled is processed, PM transforms the signal
into an IPC message and delivers the message to the system process. When a
termination signal is processed, PM terminates the process.
- PM no longer assumes itself as the signal manager for system processes. It now
makes sure that every system signal goes through the kernel before being
actually processes. The kernel will then dispatch the signal to the appropriate
signal manager which may or may not be PM.
SYSLIB CHANGES:
- Simplified SEF init and LU callbacks.
- Added additional predefined SEF callbacks to debug crash recovery and
live update.
- Fixed a temporary ack in the SEF init protocol. SEF init reply is now
completely synchronous.
- Added SEF signal event type to provide a uniform interface for system
processes to deal with signals. A sef_cb_signal_handler() callback is
available for system processes to handle every received signal. A
sef_cb_signal_manager() callback is used by signal managers to process
system signals on behalf of the kernel.
- Fixed a few bugs with memory mapping and DS.
VM CHANGES:
- Page faults and memory requests coming from the kernel are now implemented
using signals.
- Added a new VM call to swap two process slots and implement live update.
- The call is used by RS at update time and in turn invokes the kernel call
sys_update().
RS CHANGES:
- RS has been reworked with a better functional decomposition.
- Better kernel call masks. com.h now defines the set of very basic kernel calls
every system service is allowed to use. This makes system.conf simpler and
easier to maintain. In addition, this guarantees a higher level of isolation
for system libraries that use one or more kernel calls internally (e.g. printf).
- RS is the default signal manager for system processes. By default, RS
intercepts every signal delivered to every system process. This makes crash
recovery possible before bringing PM and friends in the loop.
- RS now supports fast rollback when something goes wrong while initializing
the new version during a live update.
- Live update is now implemented by keeping the two versions side-by-side and
swapping the process slots when the old version is ready to update.
- Crash recovery is now implemented by keeping the two versions side-by-side
and cleaning up the old version only when the recovery process is complete.
DS CHANGES:
- Fixed a bug when the process doing ds_publish() or ds_delete() is not known
by DS.
- Fixed the completely broken support for strings. String publishing is now
implemented in the system library and simply wraps publishing of memory ranges.
Ideally, we should adopt a similar approach for other data types as well.
- Test suite fixed.
DRIVER CHANGES:
- The hello driver has been added to the Minix distribution to demonstrate basic
live update and crash recovery functionalities.
- Other drivers have been adapted to conform the new SEF interface.
this change
- makes panic() variadic, doing full printf() formatting -
no more NO_NUM, and no more separate printf() statements
needed to print extra info (or something in hex) before panicing
- unifies panic() - same panic() name and usage for everyone -
vm, kernel and rest have different names/syntax currently
in order to implement their own luxuries, but no longer
- throws out the 1st argument, to make source less noisy.
the panic() in syslib retrieves the server name from the kernel
so it should be clear enough who is panicing; e.g.
panic("sigaction failed: %d", errno);
looks like:
at_wini(73130): panic: sigaction failed: 0
syslib:panic.c: stacktrace: 0x74dc 0x2025 0x100a
- throws out report() - printf() is more convenient and powerful
- harmonizes/fixes the use of panic() - there were a few places
that used printf-style formatting (didn't work) and newlines
(messes up the formatting) in panic()
- throws out a few per-server panic() functions
- cleans up a tie-in of tty with panic()
merging printf() and panic() statements to be done incrementally.
Some cases were fixed by declaring the function void, others were fixed
by adding a return <value> statement, thereby avoiding potentially
incorrect behavior (usually in error handling).
Some enum correctness in boot.c.
SYSLIB CHANGES:
- SEF framework now supports a new SEF Init request type from RS. 3 different
callbacks are available (init_fresh, init_lu, init_restart) to specify
initialization code when a service starts fresh, starts after a live update,
or restarts.
SYSTEM SERVICE CHANGES:
- Initialization code for system services is now enclosed in a callback SEF will
automatically call at init time. The return code of the callback will
tell RS whether the initialization completed successfully.
- Each init callback can access information passed by RS to initialize. As of
now, each system service has access to the public entries of RS's system process
table to gather all the information required to initialize. This design
eliminates many existing or potential races at boot time and provides a uniform
initialization interface to system services. The same interface will be reused
for the upcoming publish/subscribe model to handle dynamic
registration / deregistration of system services.
VM CHANGES:
- Uniform privilege management for all system services. Every service uses the
same call mask format. For boot services, VM copies the call mask from init
data. For dynamic services, VM still receives the call mask via rs_set_priv
call that will be soon replaced by the upcoming publish/subscribe model.
RS CHANGES:
- The system process table has been reorganized and split into private entries
and public entries. Only the latter ones are exposed to system services.
- VM call masks are now entirely configured in rs/table.c
- RS has now its own slot in the system process table. Only kernel tasks and
user processes not included in the boot image are now left out from the system
process table.
- RS implements the initialization protocol for system services.
- For services in the boot image, RS blocks till initialization is complete and
panics when failure is reported back. Services are initialized in their order of
appearance in the boot image priv table and RS blocks to implements synchronous
initialization for every system service having the flag SF_SYNCH_BOOT set.
- For services started dynamically, the initialization protocol is implemented
as though it were the first ping for the service. In this case, if the
system service fails to report back (or reports failure), RS brings the service
down rather than trying to restart it.
- clean up kernel section of minix/com.h somewhat
- remove ALLOCMEM and VM_ALLOCMEM calls
- remove non-safecopy and minix-vmd support from Inet
- remove SYS_VIRVCOPY and SYS_PHYSVCOPY calls
- remove obsolete segment encoding in SYS_SAFECOPY*
- remove DEVCTL call, svrctl(FSDEVUNMAP), map_driverX
- remove declarations of unimplemented svrctl requests
- remove everything related to swapping to disk
- remove floppysetup.sh
- remove traces of rescue device
- update DESCRIBE.sh with new devices
- some other small changes
RS CHANGES:
- RS retains information on both labels and process names now. Labels for boot
processes are configured in the boot image priv table. Process names are
inherited from the in-kernel boot image table.
- When RS_REUSE is specified in do_up, RS looks for an existing slot having the
same process name as the one we are about to start. If one is found with
an in-memory copy of its executable image, the image is then shared between
the two processes, rather than copying it again. This behavior can be specified
by using 'service -r' when starting a system service from the command line.
SYSLIB CHANGES:
- SEF must be used by every system process and is thereby part of the system
library.
- The framework provides a receive() interface (sef_receive) for system
processes to automatically catch known system even messages and process them.
- SEF provides a default behavior for each type of system event, but allows
system processes to register callbacks to override the default behavior.
- Custom (local to the process) or predefined (provided by SEF) callback
implementations can be registered to SEF.
- SEF currently includes support for 2 types of system events:
1. SEF Ping. The event occurs every time RS sends a ping to figure out
whether a system process is still alive. The default callback implementation
provided by SEF is to notify RS back to let it know the process is alive
and kicking.
2. SEF Live update. The event occurs every time RS sends a prepare to update
message to let a system process know an update is available and to prepare
for it. The live update support is very basic for now. SEF only deals with
verifying if the prepare state can be supported by the process, dumping the
state for debugging purposes, and providing an event-driven programming
model to the process to react to state changes check-in when ready to update.
- SEF should be extended in the future to integrate support for more types of
system events. Ideally, all the cross-cutting concerns should be integrated into
SEF to avoid duplicating code and ease extensibility. Examples include:
* PM notify messages primarily used at shutdown.
* SYSTEM notify messages primarily used for signals.
* CLOCK notify messages used for system alarms.
* Debug messages. IS could still be in charge of fkey handling but would
forward the debug message to the target process (e.g. PM, if the user
requested debug information about PM). SEF would then catch the message and
do nothing unless the process has registered an appropriate callback to
deal with the event. This simplifies the programming model to print debug
information, avoids duplicating code, and reduces the effort to print
debug information.
SYSTEM PROCESSES CHANGES:
- Every system process registers SEF callbacks it needs to override the default
system behavior and calls sef_startup() right after being started.
- sef_startup() does almost nothing now, but will be extended in the future to
support callbacks of its own to let RS control and synchronize with every
system process at initialization time.
- Every system process calls sef_receive() now rather than receive() directly,
to let SEF handle predefined system events.
RS CHANGES:
- RS supports a basic single-component live update protocol now, as follows:
* When an update command is issued (via "service update *"), RS notifies the
target system process to prepare for a specific update state.
* If the process doesn't respond back in time, the update is aborted.
* When the process responds back, RS kills it and marks it for refreshing.
* The process is then automatically restarted as for a buggy process and can
start running again.
* Live update is currently prototyped as a controlled failure.
/etc CHANGES:
- /etc/drivers.conf has been renamed to /etc/system.conf. Every entry in
the file is now marked as "service" rather than driver.
- user "service" has been added to password file /etc/passwd.
- docs/UPDATING updated accordingly, as well as every other mention to the old
drivers.conf in the system.
RS CHANGES:
- No more distinction between servers and drivers.
- RS_START has been renamed to RS_UP and the old legacy RS_UP and RS_UP_COPY
dropped.
- RS asks PCI to set / remove ACL entries only for services whose ACL properties
have been set. This change eliminates unnecessary warnings.
- Temporarily minimize the risk of potential races at boot time or when starting
a new service. Upcoming changes will eliminate races completely.
- General cleanup.
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.
- add new "control" config directive, to let drivers restart drivers
(by Jorrit Herder)
- fix bug causing system processes to be started twice sometimes
- fix resource leak (PCI ACLs) when child fails right after exec
- fix resource leak (memory) when child exec fails at all
- fix race condition setting VM call privileges for new child
- make dev_execve() return a proper result, and check this result
- remove RS_EXECFAILED, as it should behave exactly like RS_EXITING
- add more clarifying comments about starting servers
o Support for ptrace T_ATTACH/T_DETACH and T_SYSCALL
o PM signal handling logic should now work properly, even with debuggers
being present
o Asynchronous PM/VFS protocol, full IPC support for senda(), and
AMF_NOREPLY senda() flag
DETAILS
Process stop and delay call handling of PM:
o Added sys_runctl() kernel call with sys_stop() and sys_resume()
aliases, for PM to stop and resume a process
o Added exception for sending/syscall-traced processes to sys_runctl(),
and matching SIGKREADY pseudo-signal to PM
o Fixed PM signal logic to deal with requests from a process after
stopping it (so-called "delay calls"), using the SIGKREADY facility
o Fixed various PM panics due to race conditions with delay calls versus
VFS calls
o Removed special PRIO_STOP priority value
o Added SYS_LOCK RTS kernel flag, to stop an individual process from
running while modifying its process structure
Signal and debugger handling in PM:
o Fixed debugger signals being dropped if a second signal arrives when
the debugger has not retrieved the first one
o Fixed debugger signals being sent to the debugger more than once
o Fixed debugger signals unpausing process in VFS; removed PM_UNPAUSE_TR
protocol message
o Detached debugger signals from general signal logic and from being
blocked on VFS calls, meaning that even VFS can now be traced
o Fixed debugger being unable to receive more than one pending signal in
one process stop
o Fixed signal delivery being delayed needlessly when multiple signals
are pending
o Fixed wait test for tracer, which was returning for children that were
not waited for
o Removed second parallel pending call from PM to VFS for any process
o Fixed process becoming runnable between exec() and debugger trap
o Added support for notifying the debugger before the parent when a
debugged child exits
o Fixed debugger death causing child to remain stopped forever
o Fixed consistently incorrect use of _NSIG
Extensions to ptrace():
o Added T_ATTACH and T_DETACH ptrace request, to attach and detach a
debugger to and from a process
o Added T_SYSCALL ptrace request, to trace system calls
o Added T_SETOPT ptrace request, to set trace options
o Added TO_TRACEFORK trace option, to attach automatically to children
of a traced process
o Added TO_ALTEXEC trace option, to send SIGSTOP instead of SIGTRAP upon
a successful exec() of the tracee
o Extended T_GETUSER ptrace support to allow retrieving a process's priv
structure
o Removed T_STOP ptrace request again, as it does not help implementing
debuggers properly
o Added MINIX3-specific ptrace test (test42)
o Added proper manual page for ptrace(2)
Asynchronous PM/VFS interface:
o Fixed asynchronous messages not being checked when receive() is called
with an endpoint other than ANY
o Added AMF_NOREPLY senda() flag, preventing such messages from
satisfying the receive part of a sendrec()
o Added asynsend3() that takes optional flags; asynsend() is now a
#define passing in 0 as third parameter
o Made PM/VFS protocol asynchronous; reintroduced tell_fs()
o Made PM_BASE request/reply number range unique
o Hacked in a horrible temporary workaround into RS to deal with newly
revealed RS-PM-VFS race condition triangle until VFS is asynchronous
System signal handling:
o Fixed shutdown logic of device drivers; removed old SIGKSTOP signal
o Removed is-superuser check from PM's do_procstat() (aka getsigset())
o Added sigset macros to allow system processes to deal with the full
signal set, rather than just the POSIX subset
Miscellaneous PM fixes:
o Split do_getset into do_get and do_set, merging common code and making
structure clearer
o Fixed setpriority() being able to put to sleep processes using an
invalid parameter, or revive zombie processes
o Made find_proc() global; removed obsolete proc_from_pid()
o Cleanup here and there
Also included:
o Fixed false-positive boot order kernel warning
o Removed last traces of old NOTIFY_FROM code
THINGS OF POSSIBLE INTEREST
o It should now be possible to run PM at any priority, even lower than
user processes
o No assumptions are made about communication speed between PM and VFS,
although communication must be FIFO
o A debugger will now receive incoming debuggee signals at kill time
only; the process may not yet be fully stopped
o A first step has been made towards making the SYSTEM task preemptible
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.
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
now used for printing diagnostic messages through the kernel message
buffer. this lets processes print diagnostics without sending messages
to tty and log directly, simplifying the message protocol a lot and
reducing difficulties with deadlocks and other situations in which
diagnostics are blackholed (e.g. grants don't work). this makes
DIAGNOSTICS(_S), ASYN_DIAGNOSTICS and DIAG_REPL obsolete, although tty
and log still accept the codes for 'old' binaries. This also simplifies
diagnostics in several servers and drivers - only tty needs its own
kputc() now.
. simplifications in vfs, and some effort to get the vnode references
right (consistent) even during shutdown. m_mounted_on is now NULL
for root filesystems (!) (the original and new root), a less awkward
special case than 'm_mounted_on == m_root_node'. root now has exactly
one reference, to root, if no files are open, just like all other
filesystems. m_driver_e is unused.
