users June 2023

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14 discussions

Announcement: Genode OS Framework version 23.05 released
by Christian Helmuth 22 Aug '23

22 Aug '23

Today we released Genode 23.05 as a colorful bouquet of new features, improvements, and fixes. The most prominent change for developers is the update of our tool chain to GCC 12, binutils 2.40, and GDB 13.1. The new GCC version gave us the opportunity to switch from C++17 to C++20 as default setting and benefit from modern C++ language features. Another noteworthy addition falling into the same category is the release of the evolving Goa tool for Sculpt 23.04, which now enables the use of existing SDKs like Lomiri or Rust's cargo for Genode. Our Linux device-driver environment (DDE), which enables the use of Linux drivers as Genode components was upgraded to Linux 6.1.20. For example, the DDE now powers our cross-platform Wifi stack that works for the PC and ARM platforms as the PinePhone alike. Further, we integrated the initial use of our custom base-hw microkernel as x86 hypervisor, a profoundly reworked block-encryption stack, and updates of supported third-party software like the seL4 kernel and VirtualBox. Last but not least, we published our annual documentation update in form of "Genode Foundations" and "Genode Platforms" books. The current release contains the following changes and new features: - Goa tool updated to Sculpt OS 23.04 - Ubuntu-Touch-UI toolkit - Initial support for Rust cargo - New tool chain based on GCC 12.3 - C++20 enabled by default - Annual documentation update - Uniform Wifi stack across PC and ARM platforms - Revision of Genode's custom block-encryption infrastructure - Linux device-driver environment updated to Linux 6.1.20 - Improved USB, Intel display, and NVMe drivers - VirtualBox 6.1.44 - Initial x86 virtualization via the base-hw microkernel - Updated seL4 microkernel to version 12.1 - NetBSD rump kernel on RISC-V Read the complete release documentation for the version 23.05 here https://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/23.05 Best regards -- Christian Helmuth Genode Labs https://www.genode-labs.com/ · https://genode.org/ https://twitter.com/GenodeLabs · https://genodians.org/ Genode Labs GmbH · Amtsgericht Dresden · HRB 28424 · Sitz Dresden Geschäftsführer: Dr.-Ing. Norman Feske, Christian Helmuth

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Screensaver for the PinePhone
by Norman Feske 02 Aug '23

02 Aug '23

To all Sculpt-OS-on-the-PinePhone testers, I have just published a new Sculpt OS image for the PinePhone that includes a screensaver mode to increase battery time. You can download the image with version 2023-06-30 at [1], or use Sculpt's built-in system update feature, selecting me (nfeske) as image provider, and download and install the latest entry of my index. [1] https://depot.genode.org/nfeske/image/ The screensaver kicks in after ten seconds of user inactivity in the administrative user interface. It also can be manually activated by pressing the power button. While the screen is blanked, a press of the power button enables the display again. Under the hood, Sculpt completely removes the drivers for the display and the touchscreen while the screen is blanked, which considerably reduces the power draw. The system also switches the CPU to economic mode while the screen is blanked. Here are some illustrative data points: Max brightness in performance mode: 2.8 W Max brightness in economic mode: 2.6 W Low brightness in economic mode: 1.7 W Screensaver: 1.0 W As a caveat, I noticed that the screen-flickering issue, we sporadically observed in the past, occurs quite often when returning from the screensaver (aka after restarting the drivers). The flickering disappears after a while. However, maybe this way of reproducing the issue gives us the chance to eventually solve it. Have fun with trying out the new image! Norman -- Dr.-Ing. Norman Feske Genode Labs https://www.genode-labs.com · https://genode.org Genode Labs GmbH · Amtsgericht Dresden · HRB 28424 · Sitz Dresden Geschäftsführer: Dr.-Ing. Norman Feske, Christian Helmuth

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Couple minor notes after upgrading to 23.02
by ttcoder＠netcourrier.com 30 Jun '23

30 Jun '23

Dear Genodians, Here are two (very minor) notes after my upgrading to 23.02 (plus cherry-picking the patch from #4785), regarding two "bugs" I had found, which ended up being mistakes on my side, not on Genode's side. These two don't justify opening tickets, but they might deserve a quick mention here on the mailing-list: * vfs_pipe: components that use the "pipe" plug-in should make sure to enable RTC (<libc rtc="/dev/rtc"...>) as of 23.02 -- previously it would work without specifying an RTC path. This probably has zero impact since everyone properly configures their libc config (unlike me in the one scenario that brought this up..!) * FS "stalls" when a vfs-handle fails read()ing in a specific way: Found out that when writing a vfs plug-in, and vfs handles, I ought to make sure not to return READ_ERR in the read() hook, error cases should be detected earlier, at the open() stage (-> return a nil vfs-handle and error code, obviously). Once a valid vfs-handle is returned in open() it's not ok to say "sorry, my bad, the file cannot actually be read and should not have been opened in the first place" every time read() is called... Otherwise this entails a bunch of consequences, the most visible of which is big red "packet operation failed" error messages in the LOG ! Again, others seem more careful, but I stumbled into making that mistake and thought I should post a cautionary tale about it ;-) Cédric P.S. If one is in need of a quick temporary hack before vfs-handle usage is cleaned up, it seems there is an alternative way for the stalls to be kept at bay or mitigated by modifying Genode's fs_file_system.h, adding a forced call to wakeup_vfs_user() (I'm still investigating... hopefully won't have to dig much though, fixing my code to fail earlier at the open() stage should do the trick).

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Announcement: Sculpt OS 23.04 released
by Christian Helmuth 30 Jun '23

30 Jun '23

Hello Genodians, I'm proud to announce the release of Genode-based Sculpt OS 23.04. https://genode.org/news/sculpt-os-release-23.04 Today's release marks the first-time PinePhone support in addition to the PC version. We added two key features to Genode during the past months, which are the phone-oriented Sculpt user-interface variant and the system-update functionality. With these tools at hand, Sculpt versions can be switched by three easy steps directly in the integrated user interface: downloading system images to the software depot, install the desired version on the boot medium, and reboot the device. Further, the release supports so-called presets in the system menu UI, which are entire runtime scenarios. The user can load and switch between presets by just one click. Presets currently available in Sculpt are a simple GUI demo (nano3d), a simple desktop including background picture and window manager, and a ready to use Falkon web browser. Still, components can be integrated into the system (or the currently running preset) by the + menu of the component graph. As usual, the starting point is a ready-to-use disk image at the Sculpt download page. https://genode.org/download/sculpt Documentation including use and build instructions for Sculpt is available at the following pages. https://genode.org/documentation/articles/sculpt-23-04 https://genode.org/documentation/sculpt-23-04.pdf Happy sculpting -- Christian Helmuth Genode Labs https://www.genode-labs.com/ · https://genode.org/ https://twitter.com/GenodeLabs · https://genodians.org/ Genode Labs GmbH · Amtsgericht Dresden · HRB 28424 · Sitz Dresden Geschäftsführer: Dr.-Ing. Norman Feske, Christian Helmuth

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Setting up Child Policy explicitly for a child PD which will announce a service.
by Sid Agrawal 29 Jun '23

29 Jun '23

Hi, I am trying to setup a scenario where the parent starts a child PD in the C code, i.e., there is no <start> node for the child in the config file. It is similar to the rm_nested test example [1]. But in my scenario, I would like to start a server in the child and have the parent make RPC calls to it, and I need some help setting that up. I think the answer should be in some configuration of the ChildPolicy used to start the child, but I am missing something. My code is here [2,3] and is a hybrid of the hello_tutorial and the rm_nested test case. Like rm_nested, the parent starts a child with the same binary and uses the failure to reach the RM service to indicate that it is in the child. But then, in my scenario, I start a HelloServer in the child, and the parent tries to establish a connection to this service. I am seeing two errors: 1. An error that Genode complains that it wasn't expecting the child to announce a service. I tried fixing that by defining announce_service() in the Test_Child before starting the child, but that didn't fix it. TBH, I am wondering what to add to that function. 2. The parent cannot find the "Hello" service to connect to. I think that fixing (1) would fix two as well. Any help pointing me in the right direction would be very helpful. Thanks as always! Best, Sid sid-agrawal.ca [1] https://github.com/genodelabs/genode/blob/master/repos/base/src/test/rm_nes… [2] https://github.com/sid-agrawal/genode/blob/76af718937e9723ae6cf2212a4ae549e… [3] https://github.com/sid-agrawal/genode/blob/76af718937e9723ae6cf2212a4ae549e…

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Customizing the Goa run-stage
by Duss Pirmin 27 Jun '23

27 Jun '23

Hello Genodians The direction Goa is evolving is really cool! The new and upcoming features address topics that are perfectly aligned with how we currently use, or plan to use Goa. In addition to what is already addressed in issue #44 [1], in order to run or test some more complex projects we use: - a source for random (this can be achieved using jitter_sponge) - accessing externally provided ROM modules - multiple Nic/uplink interfaces and a nic_router For the random source I have a working commit, that I will have to update to cleanly apply on top of staging. This will start jitter_sponge if <requires> <terminal label="random"/> is found. To make this available in general, the jitter_sponge binary would have to be published by genodelabs. Do you think this approach is reasonable? For accessing externally provided ROM modules I already have a patch that enables this feature. It uses a fs_rom and a lx_fs to access ROM modules listed in <requires> <rom label=""/>. If you think this could be a commonly useful feature, I can contribute it. Providing multiple Nic/Uplink interfaces and a nic_router will require some more engineering to do right. Our workaround instantiates a fixed configuration which matches what we need. This is obviously not usable in general. I see the following points that need to be considered: - number and names of interfaces? Probably each listed in <requires> by label. - when to start nic_router? Probably not as easy as start it when multiple interfaces are configured. - how should the nic_router config be provided? Here I don not see yet a satisfying and practical solution. Best regards, Pirmin [1] https://github.com/genodelabs/goa/issues/44

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ath9k usb Wi-Fi driver
by Colin Parker 23 Jun '23

23 Jun '23

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Intel MPK | ARM MTE
by Sid Agrawal 12 Jun '23

12 Jun '23

Hi Both ARM[1] and Intel[2] have features to hide parts of the address space from the rest of the program. The motivation of these hardware features is typically to hide the data of the app from a library or vice-versa. Both of them use unused bits in the PageTableEntry to store news (about 4 bits) in size. ARM's feature is called MTE and there is no hardware yet which supports this, Intel has been shipping chips with MPK for a few years. Has the Genode community thought about how such a feature could be implemented in Genode? If not, I will start digging in and reach out as I run into issues. I would suspect it would affect the RM and DS cap types. Best, Sid [1] https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/arm64/memory-tagging-extension.html [2] https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/core-api/protection-keys.html

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Running SQLite
by Sid Agrawal 11 Jun '23

11 Jun '23

Hi, I would like to run SQLite inside a Genode process. I could not find a run recipe or a dir in libports. Has someone tried in the past? If so, can you please point me in the right direction? Best, Sid PhD UBC sid-agrawal.ca

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Re: PinePhone Sculpt SD Card Problem (was: Re: Announcement: Sculpt OS 23.04 released)
by ttcoder＠netcourrier.com 09 Jun '23

09 Jun '23

My test result FWIW, > > I had a similar, but not identical, situation on my 3GB version. In my > > case, anything involving writing (expand, default, etc.) would never > > complete, but slow the system to a crawl in the process. > > > > […] > > could you both please try out my debug image [1]. We already got a similar > report from someone on the PinePhone forum [2] where changing the MMC > clocking back to previous setting did the trick. > > [1] https://genode.org/files/sculpt-pinephone-23.04-2023-05-09.img.xz > [2] https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=14780&pid=117253#pid117253 No change for me -- boot-up takes a couple additional seconds (probably debugging/tracing enabled?) and the battery indicator says "AC" for a few seconds before displaying the percentage. I then proceeded to the setup steps, - Expand... Confirm... still returns immediately - Tapping "default" results in message "relabelling in progress" displayed for about a third of a second, i.e. it returns immediately too. FWIW, I have a bunch of SD cards/packages associated with this phone, EMTEC, Verbatim, etc. It seems the one I'm dd'ing the SculptOS image to is a 16 GB "Verbatim premium 80MB/s-read 533x (cl.1)" or some such. Later on I'll try to make a "swap" with another card, i.e. write LuneOS on that SD card, and write ScultpOS on the (ex) LuneOS card, in case the latter sd-card is more compatible than the former. Cedric

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users June 2023