- Anonymous memory can be reserved without being backed: large mappings,
MAP_NORESERVE and PROT_NONE are recorded and each page appears, zeroed,
on first touch -- from trap() for the program, from uva2ka() for the
kernel on its behalf. WebKit reserves 4 GB at start and touches a sliver;
backing it all failed with ENOMEM and Epiphany aborted.
- r8169: the 8168G generation and later (the laptop's 8168H, XID 541) are
taken from the firmware's out-of-band mode, get their PLL powered, the
receive gate opened, and their PHY reached through the OCP window. The
PHY's power-down bit is cleared; the old code kept it while restarting
autonegotiation. Untested on the hardware so far.
- The network thread follows each device's link into lwIP. The link was
read once at attach, 0.02 s into boot; real autonegotiation takes
seconds, so on hardware the interface stayed down for good.
- Twelve terminals, switched with Ctrl+Alt+F1..F12 by default: the keys X
uses, so the console and the desktop agree. AltGr+F-key is gone from
the defaults (chvt -c altgr+F brings it back).
- SO_PASSCRED on Unix sockets, with SCM_CREDENTIALS delivered by recvmsg.
WebKit sets it on its IPC sockets and aborted when refused.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01S1giNvrHTrPMPw7V6x1kQ4
What installing and starting Epiphany ran into:
- inotify: inotify_init/init1, add_watch, rm_watch, as a new kind of event
descriptor. The filesystem reports creates, deletes, renames (with a
cookie pairing MOVED_FROM and MOVED_TO), writes, close-after-write,
truncation and attribute changes, to watches on the inode and on its
directory with the name. ONESHOT, MASK_ADD, MASK_CREATE, ONLYDIR,
DONT_FOLLOW, IGNORED on removal, Q_OVERFLOW, and Linux's coalescing of
repeated events. The hooks cost one load when nothing is watched. Without
it GLib found no file monitor and GNOME programs aborted.
- FIONREAD on inotify descriptors and pipes (inotifywait sizes its buffer
by it).
- fsync and fdatasync had no Linux numbers since the first commit: GLib's
atomic writes, gtk-update-icon-cache and dbus-uuidgen all got ENOSYS.
- faccessat2, the flags-taking faccessat musl uses for any flags.
- sendmsg accepts SCM_CREDENTIALS when they are the sender's own, as Linux
checks; GDBus sends them in every handshake and was refused with EINVAL.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01S1giNvrHTrPMPw7V6x1kQ4
NetSurf (GTK 3) now starts under X and loads pages over HTTPS. Every icon
GTK draws goes gdk-pixbuf -> glycin -> a loader process -> a sealed memfd
-> GMappedFile, and each hop found something missing:
- mkaroot runs Alpine's package triggers in the root under bubblewrap.
--no-scripts had skipped them, so there was no MIME cache, pixbuf loader
list, compiled GSettings schemas, GIO module cache, font cache or busybox
applet links.
- /usr/bin/bwrap is a stand-in that parses bubblewrap's options and runs
the program with no sandbox: glycin starts its loaders only through bwrap,
and real bwrap needs namespaces. schos-base replaces bubblewrap for it.
- ioctl: FIOCLEX, FIONCLEX, FIONBIO and FIOASYNC on any descriptor (Rust's
std uses them; pipes and sockets answered ENOTTY).
- capget/capset: root has every capability, others none.
- socketpair accepts SOCK_DGRAM and SOCK_SEQPACKET, carried as a stream.
- waitpid and setpgid match children against the thread group leader, so a
thread can wait for the process it spawned (ECHILD before).
- memfd: fstat reports the ftruncate length, not the page-rounded one; file
seals (F_ADD_SEALS, F_GET_SEALS, MFD_ALLOW_SEALING) are recorded and
enforced on later writes, truncation and writable mappings; MFD_CLOEXEC
is honoured; read-only MAP_PRIVATE maps are allowed.
- recvfrom honours O_NONBLOCK and MSG_DONTWAIT. musl's resolver reads its
socket until EAGAIN and blocked for ever after the first DNS answer.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01S1giNvrHTrPMPw7V6x1kQ4
A thread is a struct proc that shares three counted objects with others of
its group: the address space (struct mm: page tables, heap top, VMAs and a
lock for changing them), the descriptor table, and the signal dispositions.
clone() shares what its flags say and fork() copies.
- clone(): pthread_create's shape (VM, FILES, SIGHAND, THREAD, SETTLS,
PARENT_SETTID, CHILD_CLEARTID) and posix_spawn's (VM, VFORK, a stack).
- futex: WAIT, WAIT_BITSET with timeouts, WAKE, REQUEUE, CMP_REQUEUE, keyed
by the word's kernel address so shared pages meet. set_tid_address keeps
the word that exit zeroes and wakes, for pthread_join.
- exit ends a thread; exit_group, a fatal signal, or the leader exiting ends
them all. reapd frees exited threads; the leader is reaped by its parent
once the rest are gone. getpid is the group, gettid the thread.
- Stops and resumes reach every thread; other process signals the leader.
- exec kills the other threads and unshares the dispositions.
- No TLB shootdown, so pages unmapped from a shared address space are freed
only once every CPU has reloaded CR3 or is idle.
- procfs: /proc lists processes, task/ lists threads, comm, Threads:, Tgid.
- The console honours VMIN 0 / VTIME (btop's input drain hung on it).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01S1giNvrHTrPMPw7V6x1kQ4
There were none: fcntl answered F_SETLK with EINVAL and flock was not a
system call. Alpine's apk, which runs unmodified on SchOS through
Alpine's own musl, locks its database before reading it and stopped
there.
kernel/fs/lock.c keeps one table of advisory locks keyed by (dev, inum):
flock() for the whole file, owned by the open file description;
F_SETLK/F_SETLKW/F_GETLK for byte ranges, owned by the process and
released when it closes any descriptor on the file or exits; and the
F_OFD_* forms, ranges owned by the description. flock and record locks
do not see each other, as on Linux. Waiters sleep until any release and
are interrupted by a signal.
cmd/locktest checks each between a parent and a child, including range
splitting, F_GETLK's report, and a blocked waiter being woken.
shell.nix gains pkg-config, meson, ninja, m4, bison, flex and xz, for
the X ports.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01S1giNvrHTrPMPw7V6x1kQ4
Xorg on a framebuffer -- the fbdev video driver, the evdev input driver,
libpciaccess -- asks the kernel a fixed set of questions before it draws
anything, and gives up on the first wrong answer. These are those
answers.
evdev: EVIOCGVERSION, GID, GNAME, GPHYS, GUNIQ, GPROP, GBIT, GKEY, GABS,
GREP and the accepted setters. Xorg and libinput decide what a device
*is* from the capability bitmaps; /dev/input/eventN answered only
EVIOCGRAB, which reads as no device at all. Each device's bitmaps are
its defaults plus whatever it has reported, so a USB tablet makes the
pointer absolute.
fbdev: FBIOPUT_VSCREENINFO succeeds for the mode already set, as on
Linux -- the fbdev driver sets it every time it starts -- and still
refuses any other. FBIOPAN_DISPLAY to the origin; FBIOBLANK.
The console: KDSETMODE(KD_GRAPHICS) stops it drawing on a terminal,
KDSKBMODE(K_OFF) stops keys reaching its tty, and VT_PROCESS now does
the switch handshake: leaving the terminal sends relsig and waits for
VT_RELDISP, arriving sends acqsig. A terminal whose owner has died goes
back to the kernel whole, so a crashed X cannot leave the console dead.
/sys: boot_vga, a writable enable, and graphics/fb0 under the display
device, which is how the fbdev driver pairs a card with /dev/fb0.
ports/linux-headers: <linux/*.h> into musl's prefix, from sabotage-
linux's kernel-headers 4.19.88-2. Its checksum is recorded from the
first download; upstream publishes none.
cmd/xready makes each call and checks the answer, including the switch
handshake on tty2 and an owner that dies holding it.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01S1giNvrHTrPMPw7V6x1kQ4
Sixty-five headers sat side by side in include/, so `#include "irq.h"`
said nothing about where irq.h was or what it belonged to, and errno.h,
stat.h and fcntl.h at the top shadowed the system's for any host tool
built with -I./include. They are in folders now -- arch/ core/ fs/
dev/ gfx/ net/ uapi/ (and ldls/ for the Linux driver layer) -- and
every include names the folder, as Linux's do: "core/proc.h".
Done mechanically and checked the hard way: the kernel built from this
tree disassembles identically to the one built from the tree before
it. The full image boots, and userland is the same set of programs.
Paths in docs and comments follow; docs/guides/layout.md has a table
of what is where, and tools/fix-includes.py rewrites old-style
includes from the folders in the tree, for code written before this.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01S1giNvrHTrPMPw7V6x1kQ4
