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2342 discussions

About Genode
by Pramod Herath 26 Feb '16

26 Feb '16

Hello Genode Community! I'm Pramod, a student in Computer Engineering. As a project assignment, we were asked to search for new developments in software/hardware used for embedded applications and do a presentation on it to the class. I was searching for a topic when I stumbled upon Genode. I read through some of the documentation and I think I do understand a little bit. But I still have some confusion about it. Therefore I decided to contact you for help. Here are few questions I have to raise: Genode is an OS framework. It is not an OS on it's own accord but could just supply a bare minimum kernel functionality for some OS you would develop. Am I correct here? Please correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I understood, other microkernels such as L4 do a similar thing. How is Genode different? Also, can you run a mainstream OS such as Ubuntu on top of Genode with or without modifications ? Genode can also run virtually on top of another OS and the developers run it this way for development purposes. Is this correct? And the most importantly, what tasks Genode good for ? And what is it not suitable for? Please understand that I'm just starting on learning OSes. So please bear with my dumb questions. Thank you, Regards, Pramod

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software time controller
by Menno Valkema 25 Feb '16

25 Feb '16

Hi Everyone, We're porting the Genode timer to the riscv architecture. We've created a prototype which works, however we have some concerns regarding the integration with Genode, and whether timer features may or may not work correctly. Looking at the examples from other architectures the common way to port the timer is through a hardware time controller which is available through memio. The riscv core does not have a time controller available in its default configuration. (riscv offers a register based approach, however those registers are not accessible by the timer process since it does not run with the right cpu privileges). In order to get the the timer working on riscv we created a software time controller which works via memio. The time operations are performed by the scheduler which does have the right privileges to access the riscv core's timer registers. This is the approach we took: - Declare a region of normal memory as io-memory (our virtual/software time controller). ( through modification of base-hw/src/core/spec/riscv/platform_support.cc ) - Give the timer process MEM_IO and IRQ access, and access the memory region, to 1) read the time from a specific address, 2) set the alarm time and sleep waiting for a signal to be woken up by setting the timer process to wait for an unused irq with number IRQ#. - Modify the scheduling function which is executing with Supervisor privileges, to perform the following tasks whenever the job scheduler is called: 1) read the time from the register write it to the io-memory region 2) read the alarm value from another address in the io-memory region, and if it's set: compare this to the current time and and if the alarm time has expired signal User_irq with number IRQ#. ( through modifications in base-hw/src/core/kernel/cpu.cc ) - Timer wakes up and continues to-do whatever timers do. This approach works in the spike simulator: We can run the run/hello target, where the process blocks for a while, and wakes up by the timer again. Our concern is with the following items: - Will this support all the features a timer needs? Did we take the right approach here? - Can we be sure the memory we now allocated for our software time controller, won't be allocated for other uses later? - We've made some riscv-specific changes in non risc-v source code. Is the scheduler the best place to make these changes? Is there a possibility to move these changes to a riscv specific directory and call these with a callback, so that the code still works for other platforms. Regards, Menno

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Porting applications strategy
by Tomasz Gajewski 25 Feb '16

25 Feb '16

I made an attempt to port libunistring (needed for guile) trying to follow porting guide. I didn't go far but feel that what I've done did not go in the right direction and would like to ask for opinions about my feelings. Short story I would like to be able to do: ./configure --host=genode-x86 && make Longer story List of compiled sources in libunistring depends on results of running configure and there is more than 500 source files. Even if I would prepare list of files to compile probably it would be different in next revision so it would have to be at least updated during upgrade. I feel it would be waste of resources. >From different perspective as on of the goals of Genode for this year is to have more software packages ported I think the procedure to port should be as straightforward as possible. Probably most of the ported software will be based on libc (I think that packages that will not be linked against libc mostly will constitute base of genode not userspace programs) and to be able to quickly port libc based libraries and applications build system should not replaced but reused. My feeling is that current Genode build system is great for Genode specific components but for porting general purpose requires too much maintenance. I don't know detailes underneath current makefiles based build system but I imagine steps to compile using configure could look somehow like this: 1. Prepare spec with dependencies containing libc - just like it is right now 2. make deps - build dependencies and install headers somewhere - this is probably done right now in current build system 3. Run configure in this prepared environment. Running it without prepared environment fails when testing if genode-x86-gcc can create binaries - so quite quickly :-) 4. make - real porting work - hopefully not much 5. make install - to some prepared place? 6. from installed files take headers in case of libraries and binaries - this somehow works right now Firstly I'd like to hear what you think about the idea in general. Eventually could you provide some technical informations where are the most important parts of build system where I should look to be able to make such changes? -- Tomasz Gajewski

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Slow networking on NOVA-vbox
by Igor 23 Feb '16

23 Feb '16

Hi list! I normally have 100 Mbps Internet, but on Nova-vbox it was initially about 10 Mbps. I revisited all network chain from iPXE Intel driver up to vbox/network.cpp. Ripped some (unneccessary for me) code from nic_drv, increased vbox prioprity to -1 (works great), use virtio instead of Intel PRO/1000, disable UART logging (on low level though). As a result, the best speed I've seen was about 25 Mbps while on my base Windows 7 I have exactly 100 Mbps in vbox for any guest. So I have a question: is it Genode/NOVA architectural feature or I doing something wrong? Thanks.

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Problem with startx and TinyCore linux version 6.4 and soeul-fancy
by arthur low 23 Feb '16

23 Feb '16

Hi, I am using a Lenovo T520 laptop and Genode version 15-11. If I run seoul-fancy.run with the the bzImage-3.1 and tc-browser.gz (downloaded by the script from genode.org), I succeed in booting into an X environment after clicking on the init button when Genode's window manager comes up. Therefore, I know I have compiled the tools and enabled my build environment correctly. Then I replaced the kernel: bzImage-3.1 and initrd: tc-browser.gz with a custom-compiled bzImage ( I need to enable an additional kernel feature), and the standard core.gz. I modified the run script so they would download from my web server running on localhost. I am then loading the minimal TC extensions (after booting to the shell) to load the X windows environment: tce-load -wi Xvesa.tcz tce-load -wi Xlibs.tcz tce-load -wi Xprogs.tcz tce-load -wi aterm.tcz tce-load -wi flwm_topside.tcz tce-load -wi wbar.tcz Using the standard cmdline in the seoul-fancy.run script, the network would not start, so I added init=linuxrc to the cmdline, which made the network work. However some values of vga=xxx break the network (no IP address). No matter what is the issue with the network, I can find no way to make startx to work, regardless of which values for vga I use from this table ( the standard seoul-fancy.run script used 0x314 = 791 in the table below. Color 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x1024 256 8 bit 769 771 773 775 32000 15 bit 784 787 790 793 65000 16 bit 785 788 791 794 16.7M 24 bit 786 789 792 795 Does anyone have a working solution? Arthur Low

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Fiasco.OC thread execution time
by Georg Guba 23 Feb '16

23 Feb '16

I'm trying to implement Platform_thread::execution_time() for Fiasco.OC. However, when using the code below, I'm getting a null pointer error when trying to read the UTCB's message register: Possible null pointer READ at 0 IP 704c0d7c unsigned long long Platform_thread::execution_time() const { unsigned long long time = 0; if (_utcb) { l4_thread_stats_time(_thread.local.dst()); time = *(l4_kernel_clock_t*)l4_utcb_mr()->mr[0]; } return time; } The doc for l4_thread_stats_time(...) says /** * \brief Get consumed timed of thread in µs. * \ingroup l4_thread_api * \param thread Thread to get the consumed time from. * * The consumed time is returned as l4_kernel_clock_t at UTCB message * register 0. */ L4_INLINE l4_msgtag_t l4_thread_stats_time(l4_cap_idx_t thread) L4_NOTHROW; So my usage should be about right. What am I missing?

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[ANN] Muen development version 0.7 released
by Reto Buerki 22 Feb '16

22 Feb '16

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256 Hi, We are proud to announce the availability of Muen version 0.7. The following major features and improvements have been implemented since the last announcement: === Support for Genode VM subjects Through the close collaboration with Genodelabs in Dresden [1], the Genode OS framework has been ported to run as subject on top of the Muen separation kernel. This allows the robust combination of the static, low-complexity Muen SK with the feature-rich and extensive Genode ecosystem. The result is a flexible platform for the construction of component-based high-assurance systems. For more information about our work in this area see the Genode release notes [2]. === Subject time mechanism Giving untrusted subjects access to high-resolution time sources is often problematic from a security perspective as it makes way to measure subtle timing differences in execution behavior, enabling side-channel attacks. One mechanism to make such attacks harder is to provide only coarse grained time sources to untrusted code. To this end we implemented a time virtualization mechanism by providing a timeserver component in SPARK 2014, which exports time information with microsecond granularity via shared memory. Only the timeserver has access to the TSC high-resolution timer of the CPU and the Real-Time Clock (CMOS/RTC). Other subjects derive the absolute and relative time from the exported values without the need to access hardware time sources. For Linux, we implemented a paravirtualized TSC driver and CMOS/RTC emulation in the associated subject monitor (SM). === Hardware and platform policy abstractions The XML system policy has been augmented with hardware resource and platform description abstractions. The hardware section describes the hardware resources provided by the target machine and can be automatically generated using the mugenhwcfg [3] tool. By providing an automated mechanism for hardware information collection, the process of supporting new target hardware has been greatly simplified. Using the platform layer, an unified view of the hardware resources across different physical machines can be achieved. This enables integrators to deploy the same system policy across a wide range of hardware targets. === Linux virtual filesystem and network interface drivers The muenfs [4] Linux kernel module implements a virtual file system that facilitates user-space access to inter-subject memory channels. Filesystem operations are used to exchange data with other subjects. The muennet [5] Linux kernel module implements a virtual network interface driver which sends and receives data via shared memory channels. From the perspective of a Linux user-space application, a network interface created using the muennet kernel module behaves just like an ordinary network interface. These new modules enable applications running on Linux to conveniently communicate and interact with other subjects of a component-based system running on Muen. Further changes and improvements include: * Support for Message Signaled Interrupts (MSI) * Debugserver subject written in Ada 2012 * VT subject written in Ada 2012 * Various toolchain improvements and optimizations One particularly exciting aspect of our work related to the aforementioned Genode framework is that we were able to utilize the base-hw x86_64_muen kernel port to execute 32-bit Windows (7-10) guest VMs using the Genode VirtualBox support on top of Muen. To achieve this, we implemented a VirtualBox hardware execution layer for hw_x86_64_muen. We plan to pursue this line of work in order to properly integrate Windows VM support as a feature of Muen. The mugenhwcfg tool for automated generation of hardware configuration is the result of a 12-week internship by Chen Chin Jieh, a student from the Nanyang Technological University Singapore. We are very happy with the result and would like to thank him for his contribution to the Muen project. Further information about Muen is available on the project website [6] and the git repository can be found at [7]. Please feel free to give the latest development version of Muen a try. Feedback is much appreciated! Kind regards, - - reto [1] - http://genode-labs.com/ [2] - http://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/15.08 [3] - http://git.codelabs.ch/?p=muen/mugenhwcfg.git [4] - http://git.codelabs.ch/?p=muen/linux/muenfs.git [5] - http://git.codelabs.ch/?p=muen/linux/muennet.git [6] - http://muen.codelabs.ch/ [7] - http://git.codelabs.ch/?p=muen.git -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2 iQIcBAEBCAAGBQJWyvKGAAoJEKSefDzePM5mUhQP/jJMZR9xG6ADSwlxDy+PZvyi BjxcOGDNp3TKb/RZhuxwPLRDWQZpRW0HpzpDLEAY0wUFinlpROSlYbtDufCS1ZY+ Rjr9ENx6uGhoL2MqQ/d9UFDllMkIPh996Ete7RlsswjfT1k1fUxKpysjz6mLsNkz LwYCVolVtiAzBPhxdlDemlM/mZ+pvsSqZZjl8qadPJ4959sWBBYcLEBP7z3FGMS7 YFsHLjOSWo1XfkQdQEkyMPDhFUUbE2nlkGQrM95AJOTe+TWBuEzU1Pn4QVyb420r BQJb/Fv1tpX22mB5NgkkEjQN+gDBo7OHUni9EKzhYg6q2h7yEHL+2GdT19r36c3c eZqPEKNUQYa6d9CrZmOZ6un+X2/d3qKv1/bM2pf4szPxVaRCW2DJrxGOwXxodaIB sRnm4PBSxGURsFV67twAlXs2g7DVy4ptpBBCMnaFWpj6B1SrxB0AIo/YB0ptun2h q5+g5UvuSIzPJIlHEYuX4hjLkJI0sgtFlZYf22uJiyVp6wocU3obxZnCdDm1AIpi zxsGr0dqSxrBzmdaOVBr3NYWUmbOWoXK7hW+MMWXso6r/+IX5U8VFbkKw/raRnMR kRalzxth4biEYKaol0rB5H5o5d0WJ67oSW+bMddEJh+Do1sfnDkL8s4hA1uZ8Abz yCt0+FKB6guRY8fc8V7L =luYd -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Turmvilla scenario keyboard input stuck in a subsystem
by Duss Pirmin 14 Feb '16

14 Feb '16

Hello I'm playing around with the Turmvilla scenario as Norman provides it. Sometimes the keyboard input will be stuck in one of the started subsystems. Mostly this is the case with the linux subsystem (I only recognize this when I shut down linux and want to close the nit_fb), but I also had the case where it was stuck in the noux subsystem. Is there a way to unstuck the keyboard, or a way how I could debug what happens? Best Regards Pirmin

2 2

/dev/blkdev
by Igor 12 Feb '16

12 Feb '16

Hi list! I've found traces of the subject in libports, but can't see actual libc_blkdev plugin or whatever it's called. Was it removed by some reasons? It would be useful to provide raw disk access for VirtualBox guests. Thanks in advance.

2 1

Test to read files from the elf image and a USB. Configure file system.
by Humberto López León 11 Feb '16

11 Feb '16

Hello Genode community, I'm working on porting an application on Genode where I need to upload files from the elf image and from a storage device , such as a USB . Currently I can read the file of the USB using the libffat library and the server/ffat_fs, but in this case I can not load the file from elf image. I think the problem lies in the configuration of < vfs > . Any ideas to solve my problem ? Thank you This is my run script set build_components { core init drivers/timer server/ffat_fs test/libc_ffat_usb } source ${genode_dir}/repos/base/run/platform_drv.inc append_platform_drv_build_components build $build_components create_boot_directory # # Generate config # set config { <config verbose="yes"> <parent-provides> <service name="ROM"/> <service name="RAM"/> <service name="IRQ"/> <service name="IO_MEM"/> <service name="IO_PORT"/> <service name="CAP"/> <service name="PD"/> <service name="RM"/> <service name="CPU"/> <service name="LOG"/> <service name="SIGNAL"/> </parent-provides> <default-route> <any-service> <parent/> <any-child/> </any-service> </default-route> } append_platform_drv_config append config { <start name="timer"> <resource name="RAM" quantum="1M"/> <provides><service name="Timer"/></provides> </start> } append_if [have_spec gpio] config { <start name="gpio_drv"> <resource name="RAM" quantum="4M"/> <provides><service name="Gpio"/></provides> <config/> </start>} append config { <start name="usb_drv"> <resource name="RAM" quantum="12M"/> <provides> <service name="Block"/> </provides> <config uhci="yes" ehci="yes" xhci="yes"> <storage /></config> </start> <start name="ffat_fs"> <resource name="RAM" quantum="4M"/> <provides> <service name="File_system"/> </provides> <config> <policy label="" root="/" writeable="yes" /> </config> </start> <start name="test-libc_ffat_usb"> <resource name="RAM" quantum="10M"/> <config> <libc stdout="/dev/log" stderr="/dev/log"> <vfs> <rom name="test.txt" /> <dir name="dev"> <log/> </dir> <fs/> </vfs> </libc> </config> </start> </config> } install_config $config set boot_modules { core init timer ld.lib.so libc.lib.so ffat_fs test-libc_ffat_usb test2.txt } lappend_if [have_spec usb] boot_modules usb_drv lappend_if [have_spec gpio] boot_modules gpio_drv append_platform_drv_boot_modules build_boot_image $boot_modules run_genode_until forever

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