| Filename | Latest commit message | Latest commit date |
|---|---|---|
9ab8a7a426
Two things.
**The F8 resolution now applies to the other displays as well.** It already
reached them once vgpud started -- that was the last commit but one -- but not
before: choosing 1024x768 changed the screen it was chosen on and left the
other at 1280x800, so the menu and then the splash appeared on it as a small
rectangle in the middle of a larger black one. Which is a fair reading of "the
resolution change is not changing resolution".
The resolution offered in that menu is a statement about the machine's display,
not about one adapter of it, so both stages before vgpud now follow it:
the loader mirrors_match() puts every mirror GOP into the primary's mode,
called from mirrors_show() so it cannot be forgotten at a new
call site. Two integer comparisons in the common case.
the kernel setup_scanout() takes gfx's dimensions over GET_DISPLAY_INFO's.
Same argument as vgpud's bring_up(): the host window's size is
a fact about QEMU, and the console's mode is the one somebody
chose.
**And the greeting is no longer a race.** "Welcome to SchOS!" was printed after
every job had been started, including the shell on the console -- so which of
the two reached the screen first was up to the scheduler, and it went both ways
about evenly. A boot that sometimes greets you above the prompt and sometimes
below it does not read as two orderings of one boot; it reads as a line printed
by mistake.
schinitd now holds back the job that owns the console -- `own_tty`, which is
exactly the job whose output lands there -- until after the greeting is
written. That is enough to settle it: this process writes the line, and only
then asks PID 1 to spawn the shell, so the fork has not happened yet. Nothing
waits on it that was not already waiting.
Verified: F8 -> Resolution -> 1024x768 -> boot, with the virtio head
screendumped over QMP at three points during startup and once at the prompt --
1024x768 throughout, and byte-identical to the stdvga head. Three consecutive
boots put the greeting at the same offset, ahead of the prompt every time.
Both supported configurations: one boot each, no traps, no panics, socktest and
memfdtest green.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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| .. | ||
| common | ||
| uefi | ||
| README.md | ||
Booting SchOS
One firmware path:
boot/
uefi/ the loader: a 64-bit PE application
common/ the user interface, shared with nothing else now
There were two. boot/bios/ held an MBR, an El Torito CD stub and a real-mode
stage 2, and it was a separate directory rather than #ifdefs because the two
shared almost nothing: a BIOS loader lives in 16-bit real mode and talks to the
firmware through software interrupts, while UEFI hands a loader long mode with
paging already on and a table of function pointers to call.
That asymmetry is what removed it. Everything since roughly 2012 boots UEFI,
CSM — the firmware-side BIOS emulation that let legacy loaders run at all — has
been going away since Intel dropped support for it in 2020, and the cost of the
second path was not the code but the tax on everything that touched it: stage 2
had a 65-sector ceiling that it silently overflowed, and the resolution menu
could not be shared because VBE mode setting is INT 10h and needs real mode.
The contract below survives it. It was written to let a second loader exist, and it is worth keeping in that shape: it is what the kernel expects, stated once, rather than a description of whoever happens to be calling.
What the loader must hand the kernel
Whichever path runs, the kernel expects the same things. This is the contract; a second loader is correct exactly when it satisfies it.
| Where | Notes | |
|---|---|---|
| Kernel image | loaded per its ELF program headers | entry at entry64 |
| CPU state | see below -- the two paths differ here | |
| Memory map | E820_MAP_ADDR, 24-byte entries, count at E820_COUNT_ADDR |
kernel/arch/x86_64/e820.c reads it |
| Framebuffer | VBE_INFO_ADDR |
address, pitch, width, height, depth |
| Verbose flag | BOOT_VERBOSE_FLAG_ADDR |
set by the F8 menu |
The addresses are defined once, in include/memlayout.h and include/schboot.h.
The kernel does not care which firmware produced them.
The entry point
UEFI hands a loader long mode with paging already on. Dropping back to
protected mode only to climb out again is a mode switch whose failure mode is a
triple fault with no console, so the kernel publishes an entry that takes the
machine as it already is.
kernel/arch/x86_64/entry.S carries a sch64_header — magic SCH64BOO,
8-byte aligned within the first 16 KB, followed by a 64-bit physical address —
found by scanning. include/schboot.h holds the magic so loader and kernel
cannot disagree.
The 32-bit multiboot entry is still in entry.S and now has no caller: the
BIOS loader was the only thing that used it. It is left in place rather than
removed in the same change that removed the loader, because deleting kernel
entry code is its own piece of work with its own way of failing silently.
What that entry expects:
- long mode, interrupts off
- CR3 pointing at tables that identity-map the low 4 GB and map the same
4 GB at
0xffff800000000000.entry64low's first instruction is amovabsto a high address, so identity alone triple faults immediately. - RBX = the framebuffer physical address, and never 1 — that value marks an
application processor in
entry64high.
The kernel loads its own GDT at that entry (entry64uefi), rather than the
loader doing it. A loader arriving in long mode is still on the firmware's
descriptors, and the first thing the kernel does that depends on its own
selectors takes a #GP against a GDT the firmware no longer owns — it
surfaced as unexpected trap 13 ... cs=38, a long way from the cause.
e820.c reads a BIOS memory map. UEFI hands out a different structure
(EFI_MEMORY_DESCRIPTOR, from GetMemoryMap), so the UEFI loader has to
translate it into the same 24-byte entries rather than inventing a second
format for the kernel to learn.
What booting looks like now
make esp stages EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI and schos/kernel, and QEMU is
pointed at OVMF with that directory as a virtual FAT volume — make qemu.
make iso builds a disc with a single El Torito entry pointing at a FAT image
holding the same two files.
Neither is an installable disk. A real GPT image with a real FAT partition is the installer's job, and until it exists there is nothing here that writes to a disk a machine could boot from unaided.
Secure Boot is not addressed either: the loader is unsigned, so a machine enforcing it will refuse to run this.