Persist the kernel boot log to the USB FAT volume

On a headless or real board nothing captures serial, so the boot log — the whole
diagnostic stream — is lost at power-off. This retains it in the kernel and copies
it to the boot USB volume as /mnt/usb/DANOS.LOG, the on-disk equivalent of QEMU's
`-serial file:`. Pull the stick, read DANOS.LOG on another machine.

How it fits together:
- Kernel RAM sink (log.zig): a fixed 256 KiB in-image buffer registered as a log
  sink in kmain, right after serial. Because userspace debug_write funnels through
  log.write, it captures the entire stream — kernel lines and every service's
  output — from the first line. Fills linearly and stops when full (earliest boot
  output, the most valuable, is kept); no allocation, so it is panic-safe.
- klog_read syscall (32): copies that buffer out to a user buffer, the mirror of
  debug_write — same overflow-safe user-half bounds check, kernel -> user copy,
  under the kernel lock so the snapshot can't grow mid-copy. Wrapped by
  runtime.system.klogRead.
- log-flush (new one-shot, in the initial-ramdisk): waits for the fat server to
  mount /mnt/usb, then copies the whole log to /mnt/usb/DANOS.LOG. init spawns it
  once the boot services are up (fire-and-forget; it polls the mount itself). If
  no volume is mounted — no stick, or the no-VFS ramdisk sweep — it exits silently.
- init shutdown flush: init repeats the copy inline at the top of shutDown(),
  BEFORE it tears down the storage services (the fat server is stopped first), so
  a clean poweroff captures the fullest log while /mnt/usb is still writable.
- unistd.writeAll: loops write() past the 224-byte VFS payload cap; both flush
  paths use it.

The filename is 8.3 (DANOS.LOG) at the mount root — the FAT short-name rule, and
there is no mkdir on the FAT path yet. Extend-only writes mean the two same-session
flushes never leave stale bytes (the shutdown log is a superset of the boot log);
a shorter log on a later boot of the same stick can leave a stale tail — a noted,
cosmetic limitation, not worth pulling O_TRUNC into the FAT write path for now.

Verified end to end under QEMU: a new `log-flush` case (reusing the orderly-shutdown
build) asserts both markers then S5, and DANOS.LOG is read back out of the image
afterwards (11804 bytes, containing the kernel init line, the FAT mount line, and
the boot flush marker). Regression stays green: zig build, zig build test, zig
build check-fat-image, and a sequential QEMU sweep — smoke, init, initial-ramdisk
(log-flush silent in the bare sweep), orderly-shutdown, fat-mount, usb-storage,
usb-hid, vfs, input, device-manager, process, signals, dma, fault-pf.
This commit is contained in:
Daniel Samson
2026-07-13 18:18:34 +01:00
parent 77d2e22ed1
commit f52c591f5e
10 changed files with 215 additions and 3 deletions
+62
View File
@@ -0,0 +1,62 @@
//! system/services/log-flush — a one-shot that copies the kernel's in-memory
//! diagnostic log to a file on the mounted USB FAT volume, so the boot log
//! survives to be read on another machine. On a headless or real board there is
//! no host capturing serial, so without this the log is lost at power-off; this
//! is the on-disk equivalent of QEMU's `-serial file:`.
//!
//! It reads the whole kernel log back through `klog_read` (the RAM sink in
//! system/kernel/log.zig) and writes it to /mnt/usb/DANOS.LOG. The name is 8.3
//! (FAT short-name rule: base <= 8, extension <= 3) and lives at the mount root
//! (there is no mkdir on the FAT path yet). init spawns this once the boot
//! services are up; init itself repeats the flush at shutdown for a fuller log.
//!
//! If no USB volume is mounted — no stick, or the initial-ramdisk sweep that
//! spawns every bundled binary bare with no VFS — it waits briefly, then exits
//! silently, deranging no other test's output.
const std = @import("std");
const runtime = @import("runtime");
const unistd = @import("posix").unistd;
const log_path = "/mnt/usb/DANOS.LOG";
/// Copy the whole kernel log to the open fd, looping klog_read -> write until the
/// log is exhausted. Returns the number of bytes written.
fn drainKernelLog(fd: i32) usize {
var chunk: [4096]u8 = undefined;
var offset: usize = 0;
while (true) {
const got = runtime.system.klogRead(offset, &chunk);
if (got == 0) break; // reached the end of the accumulated log
if (unistd.writeAll(fd, chunk[0..got]) < 0) break; // storage went away
offset += got;
}
return offset;
}
pub fn main() void {
// Wait for the fat server to mount /mnt/usb (it must bring up the whole USB
// storage chain first, so it races us at boot). Bounded: if the mount never
// appears — no volume, or the no-VFS ramdisk sweep — give up silently.
var dir: i32 = -1;
var tries: u32 = 0;
while (dir < 0 and tries < 1400) : (tries += 1) {
dir = unistd.opendir("/mnt/usb");
if (dir < 0) runtime.system.sleep(50);
}
if (dir < 0) return; // /mnt/usb never became available — nothing to persist to
unistd.closedir(dir);
const fd = unistd.open(log_path, unistd.O_CREAT);
if (fd < 0) return; // could not create the file — exit quietly
const written = drainKernelLog(fd);
unistd.close(fd);
var line: [96]u8 = undefined;
_ = runtime.system.write(std.fmt.bufPrint(&line, "log-flush: wrote {d} bytes to {s}\n", .{ written, log_path }) catch return);
}
pub const panic = runtime.panic;
comptime {
_ = &runtime.start._start; // pull the runtime entry shim into the image
}