SchOS/docs/architecture/networking.md

# Networking

ARP, IPv4, ICMP, UDP, TCP and DHCP, over a driver-agnostic interface class,
reached through the same socket syscalls as Unix domain sockets.

Verified end to end rather than by inspection: `bootcheck -Net` starts a
listener and a UDP responder on the host, tells the guest to talk to them, and
asserts on **both** ends — one side alone cannot tell a working stack from one
that completes a handshake and drops every byte.

---

## The four layers

```
        socket() bind() connect() send() recv()        syscalls, one set
    ┌────────────────┴───────────────────┐
    │  AF_UNIX              AF_INET      │   socknew() dispatches on domain
    │  kernel/net/unix.c    kernel/net/inet.c
    └────────────────┬───────────────────┘
                     │  lwIP raw API
    ┌────────────────┴───────────────────┐
    │  lwIP 2.2.0, NO_SYS=1              │   ports/lwip, compiled into the kernel
    │  port layer: kernel/net/lwip/      │   ~400 lines: a lock, a clock, a netif
    └────────────────┬───────────────────┘
                     │  struct netdev_ops
    ┌────────────────┴───────────────────┐
    │  e1000, and any future NIC driver  │
    └────────────────────────────────────┘
```

## The netdev class

A driver publishes a [`struct netdev_ops`](../../include/netdev.h) and is then
finished with the network stack forever: it never mentions lwIP, and the stack
never mentions it.

```c
struct netdev_ops {
  int (*transmit)(struct device *, const void *frame, int len);
  int (*receive) (struct device *, void *out, int cap);
  const unsigned char *(*mac)(struct device *);
  int (*link_up) (struct device *);        // optional
};
```

`transmit` returning -1 is **congestion, not failure** — the ring is full and
the caller is expected to retry. `receive` never blocks; it returns 0 when
nothing is waiting, and the caller decides how to wait.

This class was added late, and the reason it had to be is instructive: the stack
had reached straight into the driver. `net.c` called `e1000_present()`, the lwIP
glue was named `netif_e1000.c`, and the e1000 shipped with `.ops = 0` and a
comment saying so. A second NIC driver would have meant editing the protocol
stack to add itself. lwIP now gets one netif per bound device, `/proc/netif`
lists them all, and the e1000 drives up to four cards rather than refusing the
second — verified with two attached, each with its own MAC and its own DHCP
lease.

### `netdev_selftest()`

`echo n > /proc/sysrq` sends a hand-built ARP request and waits for the reply.

It proves the whole driver path in one exchange — descriptor formats, the DD
handshake, tail bookkeeping, DMA addresses, the receive ring hand-back, and the
MAC filter, because an ARP reply is addressed to this station and does not
arrive if the filter is wrong.

It was written *before* there was any protocol stack, deliberately: a stack on
an unproven driver fails in ways indistinguishable from its own bugs. It belongs
to the class rather than to the e1000, because it is the check every new NIC
driver will want first.

## lwIP

lwIP 2.2.0, fetched by `ports/lwip` and **compiled into the kernel** — it is the
one port that installs nothing into the sysroot, because it is kernel code.

`NO_SYS=1`, so lwIP has no threads, mailboxes or semaphores of its own. The port
layer is `kernel/net/lwip/`: an architecture header, a lock, a clock, an
Ethernet netif, and a set of shim headers standing in for the libc lwIP expects.

### Why lwIP and not a BSD stack

The licence was not the deciding factor — FreeBSD's `sys/netinet` is BSD-3 too.
**It is that FreeBSD's stack is not a library.** `tcp_input.c` alone is 122 KB
and reaches into mbufs, `epoch(9)`, netisr, VNET, `uma(9)`, sockbufs and inpcb
hash tables. Taking it means porting FreeBSD's kernel infrastructure first and
finding the TCP somewhere underneath — the same conclusion already reached about
FreeBSD's USB stack.

NetBSD was ruled out on licence: its `tcp_input.c` and `tcp_output.c` carry the
WIDE Project's 4-clause advertising clause, which Berkeley's rescission does not
reach. See [../licensing.md](../licensing.md) §3.

lwIP was written for exactly the case SchOS is in: a small operating system with
a raw Ethernet driver and no infrastructure to speak of.

**The reason not to write one, kept because it is the reason to resist later
too:** it is not the packet formats that are hard. It is congestion control,
retransmission, window management and twenty years of corner cases that only
appear against a real peer.

## The network thread

`kernel/net/net.c`. One kernel thread, started by `netinit()`, feeds lwIP
received frames and runs its timers.

**A thread rather than the interrupt handler, and the reason is the lock:** a
call into lwIP can reach the driver, the driver can sleep, and an interrupt
handler cannot. So the frame is always *pulled*, by this thread, through
`.receive`.

The interrupt's only job is to end the thread's wait early. `netdev_rx_signal()`
is what a driver calls from its handler; it delivers no frame and reads no ring.
Without it a frame that arrived just after a poll sat there until the next clock
tick — up to 10 ms, and the largest fixed latency in the system.

**The wait stays on the timer tick rather than moving to a channel of its own**,
and that is the design rather than an accident. lwIP's timers must still run when
the link is silent, so the clock has to remain a floor under the wait, and
`sleep()` cannot wait on two things at once. Joining the tick's existing wakeup
costs nothing and leaves one wait with one predicate.

The flag lives under `tickslock` for the same reason it does not get a lock of
its own: `sleep()` releases `tickslock` atomically, so a driver setting the flag
and waking under that lock cannot lose the wakeup by arriving between the
predicate test and the sleep. A private lock would not be held across the sleep,
and that window would be back.

`/proc/netif` reports `wake_rx` and `wake_tick` so this is observable rather
than assumed — if `wake_rx` stays at zero while frames arrive, the interrupt is
not reaching the stack and the thread is running on the clock exactly as it used
to. Measured across three pings: `rx_frames` and `wake_rx` both went 2 → 6.

`netinit()` runs after `sinit()` because `kthread_create` needs a usable process
table, and it returns immediately: everything happens in that thread, which
cannot run until the scheduler is entered.

DHCP obtains an address at boot. `/proc/netif` reports each interface's address,
netmask, gateway, MAC and frame counts, taken at the lwIP seam.

The lease announcement goes to the **serial line only**, through `klog()` rather
than `cprintf()`. A lease arrives seconds *after* the shell prompt does, so on
the display it lands in the middle of whatever the user is doing — which is the
same rule that makes `cons_serial_only` start set: the display is the product,
the serial line is the diagnostics. Someone who wants to know their address
reads `/proc/netif`.

> It is `/proc/netif` and not `/proc/net` deliberately: on Linux `/proc/net` is a
> directory of many files, and a single file by that name would be a lie about a
> well-known path.

## Sockets

One set of syscalls, at their real Linux numbers. `socknew()` dispatches on the
domain, and **no syscall changes shape** between the two families.

### AF_UNIX

`kernel/net/unix.c`. `SOCK_STREAM`, `socketpair`, `shutdown`.

A connected pair is **two buffers, not one**: writing appends to the peer's
buffer and reading drains your own, which is what makes a socket bidirectional
where a pipe is not, without needing two of anything.

**One lock covers the whole table.** A pipe gets away with a lock per pipe
because every operation touches one object; a socket operation touches two, and
two-object locking needs an ordering rule every path obeys or it deadlocks.
Worse, the wakeup races are subtle — a reader testing `peer_closed` under its own
lock while the closer sets it under the peer's has no interlock at all.

**Names live in a table here, not in the filesystem.** Binding creates no
directory entry. The table gives the behaviour that matters — a client finds a
server by a name agreed in advance — and what is lost is `ls -l` showing an `s`,
and `unlink()` of a socket path working. Both want a VFS change rather than a
socket change.

### Descriptor passing

`sendmsg`/`recvmsg` with `SCM_RIGHTS`, which is the one thing a socket can carry
that a pipe cannot: a reference to an object the kernel already knows, rather
than a copy of its contents. Wayland's `wl_shm_create_pool` passes a descriptor
and has no integer-shaped alternative, and
[hybrid.md](../plan/hybrid.md)'s mechanism 1 is how a driver process is handed
the device it is allowed to touch. Both wanted the same primitive.

**A batch of descriptors is pinned to the stream position of the first byte of
the message that carried it.** That single rule is the whole delivery model, and
it has two halves that are easy to get half-right:

- a reader that arrives at that position is handed the descriptors, and
- a reader that has not reached it yet is **stopped short of it**.

Without the second half, a program that asked for 4096 bytes would swallow three
messages in one call and be handed one message's descriptors, with nothing in
the result saying which message they belonged to. `socktest` checks exactly
this: two messages, each one byte and one descriptor, read with an eight-byte
buffer, and the first read must return one byte.

The kernel holds a reference on every descriptor in flight, so a sender may
close its own copy the moment `sendmsg` returns. That reference is also the
thing that has to be given back, and there are three ways a message ends:

| | |
|---|---|
| received by `recvmsg` with room | installed in the receiver's table |
| received by `recvmsg` without room, or by plain `read(2)` | **closed**, and `MSG_CTRUNC` set for the first case |
| never received — the socket is closed | **closed** by `sockclose` |

The second row is the one that looks like a choice and is not. Holding kernel
references for a receiver that has already proved it is not looking is a leak
with extra steps, and it is what Linux does for the same reason.

Descriptors need at least one byte to ride on; `sendmsg` refuses a message of
pure ancillary data with `EINVAL` rather than accepting it and pinning the
descriptors to a position that never arrives.

**There is no garbage collector.** An AF_UNIX socket descriptor, sent over that
same socket and never received, holds a reference to the socket that holds the
reference to it, and neither close can reach zero. Linux carries several hundred
lines to break these cycles. Nothing on either plan passes a socket over a
socket — Wayland passes memory, the driver work passes devices — so this is a
known and bounded leak (thirty-two sockets) rather than a silent one.

### AF_INET

`kernel/net/inet.c`, on lwIP's **raw** API rather than lwIP's own sockets layer,
which would need `NO_SYS=0` and a second socket abstraction alongside this
kernel's own.

**Everything is protected by the lwIP lock and nothing else**, and that is not a
shortcut: lwIP's callbacks run in the network thread with that lock held and are
the only writers to a socket's receive buffer. A syscall reading it takes the
same lock. There is no second lock because there is no second writer.

#### How a blocking socket waits

Worth reading before touching, because the obvious implementation does not work.
A blocking call cannot `sleep(&socket, &lwip_lock)`: `sleep()` wants a spinlock
and the lwIP lock is a *sleeplock* — it has to be, because a call into lwIP can
reach the driver. And a waiter cannot hold that lock while sleeping, or the
network thread could never deliver the thing being waited for.

So the wait is on a **counter** with a spinlock of its own:

```
  reader:  lwip_lock; check condition; s = net_seq(); lwip_unlock; net_wait(s)
  waker:   (inside a callback, lwIP lock held) net_wake()
```

No wakeup can be lost. `s` is read while the reader still holds the lwIP lock,
so anything changing the condition must do so afterwards and therefore bumps the
counter after the read; `net_wait` re-checks under its own spinlock and does not
sleep.

One counter and one channel for **all** inet sockets rather than one each. At
this scale waking sixteen sockets costs a handful of instructions in the ones
with nothing to do, and a per-socket channel would need careful teardown in
`close()` against callbacks that can still arrive.

Before this, a blocked socket woke on every timer tick and looked — costing a
wakeup per socket per 10 ms and answering up to 10 ms late even when the data
was already there. `tcp_sent` had to be registered for it as well, or a write
blocked on a full send buffer slept with nobody left to wake it.

#### ICMP, and ping sockets

`socket(AF_INET, SOCK_DGRAM, IPPROTO_ICMP)` — Linux's *ping socket*, which gives
an unprivileged process the one thing raw sockets were used for. The caller
reads and writes the ICMP message alone; the kernel owns the IP header.

Built on lwIP's raw API: `raw_new(IP_PROTO_ICMP)`, with the receive callback
stripping the variable-length IP header before queueing the message on the same
datagram queue UDP uses.

**Only echo replies are consumed**, and that restriction is load-bearing.
`raw_input` runs *before* lwIP's own `icmp_input`, so a callback returning
"eaten" for every ICMP message would swallow the echo **requests** too and this
machine would silently stop answering pings from outside. Returning 0 leaves the
packet for lwIP, which is what should happen to every ICMP message nobody asked
for.

There is no per-socket echo-id filtering. Linux rewrites the id and matches on
it; here a reply goes to every open ICMP socket, which is invisible with one
ping running and means a second one may see a sequence number it never sent.

### AF_NETLINK, and why it exists

`getifaddrs(3)` is how every program asks *what interfaces does this machine
have, and what addresses do they carry* — and on Linux there is exactly one
answer: a `NETLINK_ROUTE` socket. musl implements the libc call over it, so what
looks like a syscall is really a small protocol conversation, and without this
side of it every caller fails identically.

`kernel/net/netlink.c` is a **responder**, not a general socket family. There is
no kernel-to-userspace event stream, no multicast groups, nothing subscribes to
link state. A request arrives, the whole answer is generated into the socket's
buffer, and reads drain it.

That shape is deliberate. `getifaddrs` sends a dump request and reads until
`NLMSG_DONE` with `MSG_DONTWAIT`, so generating the answer at send time means a
read never blocks and the non-blocking flag is honoured for free.

Two message types are served — `RTM_GETLINK` returns one `RTM_NEWLINK` per
interface (name, flags, MAC), `RTM_GETADDR` returns one `RTM_NEWADDR` per
address (address, prefix length, label). Anything else gets a bare `NLMSG_DONE`.

**The data is not netlink's.** Interfaces come from the netdev class and
addresses from lwIP's netifs, exactly as `/proc/netif` reads them. Nothing in
the file knows what an e1000 is.

Interface indices matter more than they look: `getifaddrs` matches address
records to link records *by index*, so the two dumps have to agree. Loopback is
1 and the netdevs follow from 2.

What it produces, read back through musl:

```
lo     flags=0x49    fam=-1
eth0   flags=0x1043  fam=17                    (AF_PACKET, the MAC)
lo     flags=0x49    fam=2  addr=127.0.0.1  mask=255.0.0.0
eth0   flags=0x1043  fam=2  addr=10.0.2.15  mask=255.255.255.0
```

### Loopback

`127.0.0.1` is a real destination: `LWIP_HAVE_LOOPIF` creates the interface and
`lwip_init()` brings it up. `LWIP_NETIF_LOOPBACK` is the half that is easy to
miss — without it, a packet addressed to an interface's *own* address goes out
of the wire and never comes back.

With `NO_SYS=1` there is no thread to drain the loopback queue, so the network
thread calls `netif_poll_all()` alongside `sys_check_timeouts()`.

### Datagrams

UDP has a **datagram queue**, not a byte ring. It shared TCP's ring at first, and
two datagrams arriving together came back as one — which is the bug that had to
be fixed before `recvfrom` could report a source address at all.

---

## What it does not do

- **`ping` is a first-party program**, `cmd/ping`, not toybox's. `recvmsg` now
  exists, so half of what stopped toybox's is gone; what remains is
  `IP_RECVTTL`, an `IPPROTO_IP` control message that would have to be generated
  on the receive path rather than merely carried. Ours has no `-I`, no flood
  mode and no TTL display.
- **`SCM_RIGHTS` is the only control message.** `SCM_CREDENTIALS` is refused
  with `EINVAL` rather than ignored: a caller told its credentials were passed
  would have the receiver read a uid out of uninitialised memory and act on it.
- **A message may carry eight descriptors, and a socket eight such messages.**
  Past that `sendmsg` answers `ENOBUFS`. The cap exists because the kernel holds
  a reference to each one until it is received; a sender eight unreceived
  messages ahead of its receiver is not rescued by a ninth slot.
- **No resolver reachable from userland.** lwIP's DNS client is compiled but
  nothing exposes it, so `ping` takes a dotted quad. `localhost` is special-cased
  in the program rather than resolved.
- **No routing table**, and no `/proc/net/route` to report one. With two
  interfaces up, the first is the default route and the second is reachable only
  by an address on its own subnet. That is a rule rather than an accident, and it
  is not routing. The missing *file* is the more immediately visible half: it is
  how a program asks which interface carries the default route, and without it
  anything that filters on "the default one" sees nothing.
- **Netlink serves two message types.** No `RTM_GETROUTE`, no `RTM_NEWROUTE`, no
  event stream, no multicast groups. A program that expects to *subscribe* to
  link changes gets a socket that answers dumps and never speaks again.
- **No `getsockname`/`getpeername`**, and `accept()` does not report the peer's
  address for an AF_INET socket. A server that wants to log who connected cannot.
- **`setsockopt` covers six options**, and refuses the rest with `ENOPROTOOPT`
  rather than pretending: `SO_REUSEADDR`, `SO_KEEPALIVE`, `SO_BROADCAST` and
  `TCP_NODELAY` reach lwIP's pcb; `SO_SNDBUF`/`SO_RCVBUF` are accepted and
  report the real size on read. Notably absent: `SO_RCVTIMEO`/`SO_SNDTIMEO`.
- **`SOCK_DGRAM` over AF_UNIX does not exist** — stream only.
- **AF_UNIX names are not filesystem paths**, so nothing can `stat()` or
  `unlink()` a socket.
- **One NIC driver exists.** The class is proven with two e1000 cards, not with
  two different drivers.
- **No IPv6**, no DNS resolver in the kernel (lwIP's is compiled but unused by
  anything), and no firewall or packet filter of any kind.