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.
-Convert the include directory over to using bsdmake
syntax
-Update/add mkfiles
-Modify install(1) so that it can create symlinks
-Update makefiles to use new install(1) options
-Rename /usr/include/ibm to /usr/include/i386
-Create /usr/include/machine symlink to arch header files
-Move vm_i386.h to its new home in the /usr/include/i386
-Update source files to #include the header files at their
new homes.
-Add new gnu-includes target for building GCC headers
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.
have malloc/free, alloc_contig/free_contig and mmap/munmap nicely
paired up.
memory uses malloc/free instead of mmap/munmap as it doesn't have
to be contiguous for the ramdisks (and it might help if it doesn't!).
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.
remembering the origin and cursor position as that feature didn't
really work properly anyway
- tty: map in video and font memory using a vm call, access it from C,
thereby eliminating pesky weird segment calls and assembly to access it,
and unbreaks loadfont (Roman Ignatov)
- bios_wini: fix bios_wini by allocating a <1MB buffers for it
- memory: preallocate ramdisk, makes it a bit faster (and doesn't
fail halfway if you allocate a huge one)
- floppy: use <1MB buffer
- ramdisk proto: because of the 2x1 page reservations, binaries
got a little fatter and didn't fit on the ramdisk any more.
increase it.
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.
. memory maps in physical memory (for /dev/mem) with new vm interface
. pci complete_bars() seems to be buggy behaviour sometimes
. startup script opens its own stdout, stderr and stdin so init doesn't
have to do it
. vfs: 64-bit offset support for character device i/o
(also remove unused dev_bio function)
. memory: /dev/null and /dev/zero are infinitely large, don't stop
reading/writing at 4GB
one page at a time, and use safecopies to copy it to the requesting
process.
This lets /dev/mem access the entire physical address space, as the minix
page tables only allow access by default to physical RAM, which breaks
e.g. the VESA X driver in some cases.
. include c1* nodes in std in MAKEDEV
. this requires a slightly larger shell
. this requires a larger blocksize on the boot ramdisk (to fit
/dev/ in direct blocks for mkfs with a proto file)
. also more inodes and kB's on the boot ramdisk
libdriver. at_wini now queues messages it can't handle it receives when
waiting for an interrupt. this way it can do receive(ANY) and timeouts
should be working again (were broken for VFS, as with the advent of VFS,
at_wini could get requests from a filesystem while it was waiting for an
interrupt - as a hack, the receive() was changed to receive(HARDWARE)).
Added mq.c to libdriver, and made libdriver an actual library that
drivers link with -L../libdriver -ldriver. (So adding files, if
necessary, is easier next time.)
mainly in the kernel and headers. This split based on work by
Ingmar Alting <iaalting@cs.vu.nl> done for his Minix PowerPC architecture
port.
. kernel does not program the interrupt controller directly, do any
other architecture-dependent operations, or contain assembly any more,
but uses architecture-dependent functions in arch/$(ARCH)/.
. architecture-dependent constants and types defined in arch/$(ARCH)/include.
. <ibm/portio.h> moved to <minix/portio.h>, as they have become, for now,
architecture-independent functions.
. int86, sdevio, readbios, and iopenable are now i386-specific kernel calls
and live in arch/i386/do_* now.
. i386 arch now supports even less 86 code; e.g. mpx86.s and klib86.s have
gone, and 'machine.protected' is gone (and always taken to be 1 in i386).
If 86 support is to return, it should be a new architecture.
. prototypes for the architecture-dependent functions defined in
kernel/arch/$(ARCH)/*.c but used in kernel/ are in kernel/proto.h
. /etc/make.conf included in makefiles and shell scripts that need to
know the building architecture; it defines ARCH=<arch>, currently only
i386.
. some basic per-architecture build support outside of the kernel (lib)
. in clock.c, only dequeue a process if it was ready
. fixes for new include files
files deleted:
. mpx/klib.s - only for choosing between mpx/klib86 and -386
. klib86.s - only for 86
i386-specific files files moved (or arch-dependent stuff moved) to arch/i386/:
. mpx386.s (entry point)
. klib386.s
. sconst.h
. exception.c
. protect.c
. protect.h
. i8269.c
form. Subscriptions are regular expressions.
. different types are stored per key; currently u32 and/or string.
the same key can be referenced (publish, subscribe, check) as any type.
. notify()s are sent when subscriptions are triggered (publishing or
updating of matching keys); optionally, a subscribe flag sends
updates for all matching keys at subscription time, instead of only
after updates after subscribing
. all interfacing to ds is in /usr/src/lib/syslib/ds.c.
. subscribe is ds_subscribe
publish functions are ds_publish_<type>
retrieve functions are ds_retrieve_<type> (one-time retrieval of a value)
check functions are ds_check_<type> (check for updated key caller
subscribes to not yet checked for, or ESRCH for none)
. ramdisk driver updated with new ds interface
library to the memory driver. Always put output from within TTY directly on
the console. Removed second include of driver.h from tty.c. Made tty_inrepcode
bigger. First step to move PM and FS calls that are not regular (API)
system calls out of callnr.h (renumbered them, and removed them from the
table.c files). Imported the Minix-vmd uname implementation. This provides
a more stable ABI than the current implementation. Added a bit of security
checking. Unfortunately not nearly enough to get a secure system. Fixed a
bug related to the sizes of the programs in the image (in PM patch_mem_chunks).
