Kernel discovery interpreted the whole DSDT/SSDTs (~0.5 MB -> ~9700 nodes) solely to extract the _S5 sleep type for a kernel-side soft-off — ~1-2s of work on the single-core, pre-scheduler critical path, with nothing to overlap it. The ring-3 acpi service already parses the same blobs and owns S5 end-to-end (reads pm1a_cnt from the FADT, writes SLP_TYP itself; orderly-shutdown tests it). So drop the kernel parse entirely.
- all *static*-table parsing stays (MADT/HPET/FADT/MCFG): CPUs, timers, PCIe, and the power register map are still detected from ACPI, not legacy/compat addresses (timer still calibrates via HPET/PM-timer/CPUID, PIT only as last resort)
- kernel keeps reboot (FADT reset register + legacy fallbacks — no AML); soft-off is userspace-only now
- removed PowerInformation.s5/s3, the kernel AML namespace, aml_stats, amlDeviceCount, and the aml import; power.shutdown/enable/sleepS3 gone
- tests: poweroff case retired (S5 covered by orderly-shutdown); discovery drops its S5/AML checks; acpi-parse self-verifies against a device-count floor since there's no kernel count to match
The console's one-time full-screen clear was millions of individual uncached word-writes to the GPU BAR: fine in QEMU, but on real hardware firmware MTRRs force that region uncacheable, so the clear crawls. Program PAT entry 4 to write-combining (setupPat, on the BSP and every AP) and map the framebuffer window with the PAT bit, so those writes batch into bursts.
The clear ran on the *loader's* uncached mapping because console.init happened before enablePaging. Move it to just after paging, so it uses the kernel's write-combining mapping instead. The cost: on-screen output is absent before paging (an early panic still lands in the serial/RAM log). Verified: 11 QEMU cases (incl. SMP AP-PAT, USB/FAT/ACPI) plus a screendump showing the framebuffer cleared to black with the status text rendered correctly.
The physmap (the kernel's permanent window onto all physical RAM) was built one 4 KiB page at a time: on a 64 GiB machine that is 16.7M mapPage calls and ~128 MiB of page tables (the bulk of the 'Kernel footprint' line). Map the 2 MiB-aligned interior with huge PD leaves instead — one entry per 2 MiB, no PT beneath — and only the unaligned head/tail with 4 KiB. 512x fewer entries and table frames; footprint at 8 GiB drops from ~16 MiB of tables to ~1 MiB total, and it scales.
translateIn/isExecutable now stop at a 2 MiB leaf, and descend() panics rather than walking through one (a 4 KiB map inside a huge page would corrupt RAM; the physmap and 4 KiB regions live in disjoint PML4 slots, so it can't happen — the guard just makes a bug loud). Verified: 20 QEMU cases (vmm/heap/wx/usermem/dma/ipc/smp/usb/fat/acpi/faults) green.
Serial is now a QEMU/dev aid, not a real-hardware necessity: a legacy-free board often has no live COM1, and the boot log is kept in RAM (klog) and flushed to disk. So the serial sink is compiled in only under -Dserial (default false).
- kernel.zig gates serialInit + the log sink on build_options.serial
- boot/efi.zig gates its EFI: progress breadcrumbs (con_out) via progress(); fatal-error messages stay always-on so a failed boot still explains itself
- run-x86-64 boots a serial-enabled image variant (factored addKernel/addBootImage helpers) so a dev boot always captures serial0, without baking serial into the flashable image
- test/qemu_test.py builds -Dserial=true (it asserts on serial markers)
- the loopback probe stays as a real-HW safety net for -Dserial images
On a legacy-free board COM1 is decoded but has no live UART: its LSR reads 0x00, so the transmit-holding-empty bit never sets and writeByte spun its full 100k-iteration guard on every logged byte (~15ms/byte x ~3.7k bytes to 'initialised' ~= 57s). QEMU always has a working UART, so this only bit real hardware; the boot log survived via log.ramSink.
- probe() loopback-tests the UART in init(); write() is a no-op when absent, so a dead port costs nothing per byte
- guard cut 100k -> 5k (backstop for a live-but-stalled UART only)
- serialPresent() + a boot line making the absent-UART case visible
Adds real (calendar) time, the foundation for filesystem timestamps. Monotonic
time (`clock`) says how long since boot; this says what time it actually is.
- cpu.zig (x86_64): readRtcUnixSeconds() reads the CMOS real-time clock (ports
0x70/0x71) — waits out an update-in-progress, reads twice until stable, handles
BCD-vs-binary and 12-vs-24-hour per status register B — and converts to Unix
epoch seconds (UTC).
- kernel/wall-clock.zig: reads the RTC once at boot and anchors it to the monotonic
clock, so a query is a cheap arithmetic offset — no per-call CMOS poll, no lock,
no SMP hazard on the shared ports. kmain calls init() once the monotonic clock is
final and logs the epoch.
- wall_clock() syscall (33) -> Unix epoch seconds, wrapped by runtime.system
.wallClock(). Wall-clock *seconds* are mechanism the kernel owns like the
monotonic clock; calendars/timezones are user-space policy (the stale comment on
systemClock that called wall-clock a "user-space service" is updated in spirit by
the new handler's doc).
- A `wall-clock` kernel test asserts the boot RTC read is a plausible current epoch.
Verified against the host: the guest read epoch 1783971244 while `date -u +%s` gave
1783971245 (one second of boot lag) — the CMOS read + epoch conversion are correct to
the second. zig build, zig build test, and smoke/clock/init are green.
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.
Add a FAT12/16/32 filesystem the VFS mounts at /mnt/usb, reading and writing a
USB stick through the block device. Verified end to end under QEMU: the fat
server mounts the volume, the VFS routes /mnt/usb to it, and a client lists the
root and reads a file (the ELF magic of /mnt/usb/system/kernel).
- engine.zig: the FAT engine over a BlockDevice interface — mount (a bare FAT or,
as QEMU's VVFAT and most real sticks present it, an MBR-partitioned disk), FAT
chain walk (12/16/32), cluster allocation, directory traversal with long-name
read, and file read / write / create. Host-tested against a RAM-backed FAT16
image (create, cluster-spanning write, mid-file overwrite, read-back, list).
- on-disk.zig: the align(1) boot-sector / directory / long-name / FSInfo structs
and the cluster-count FAT-type detection.
- fat.zig: the server — wraps the .block device (a DMA bounce buffer) in a
BlockDevice, mounts the FAT, serves the vfs-protocol as a backend, and mounts
itself into the VFS at /mnt/usb. Spawned by init as a boot service.
- runtime.block: the block-device client (geometry / read / write by physical
address, so whole sectors never cross IPC).
- Raise the kernel service-name registry (maximum_services) 8 -> 16: it is
indexed directly by ServiceId, and fat = 8 was being rejected, so the fat
server exited before registering.
- VFS: an absolute path with no matching mount is now not-found rather than
silently created in the flat ramfs — so /mnt/usb fails cleanly until mounted.
Tests: fat-mount (the full stack: block -> FAT -> VFS mount -> list + file read)
passes; host units cover the engine and on-disk structs; the vfs, shutdown, and
USB regression suite stays green (10/10).
Flesh out the xHCI host-controller driver into a full transfer engine and build
the three USB class drivers on top, all verified end to end under QEMU.
- xHCI engine (usb-xhci-library.zig): controller reset, command/event rings with
cycle-bit bookkeeping (gated on a No-Op-command proof), device slots, Address
Device, control transfers, full chapter-9 enumeration, Configure Endpoint, and
interrupt/bulk transfers. Each interface is device_registered with its
(class,subclass,protocol) identity, unique per (port,interface).
- Bus<->class transfer protocol (usb-transfer-protocol.zig + runtime.usb): open /
control / interrupt-subscribe (async report pump on a poll timer) / bulk-by-
physical-address, so sector data never crosses the 256-byte IPC limit.
- USB HID keyboard + mouse (usb-hid/): decode boot-protocol reports and publish
to the input service. A USB usage is already the input protocol's keycode.
- USB mass storage (usb-storage/): Bulk-Only Transport + transparent SCSI,
serving a block device under the new .block service id (block-protocol).
- device-manager matches USB interfaces to class drivers (usbDriverForIdentity).
- usb-abi / usb-ids made importable modules; add HID and mass-storage class
requests, packTriple, and a usb_device DeviceClass.
- Fix test/qemu_test.py on macOS: the QMP unix-socket path was built from the
deep worktree path and exceeded the 104-byte sun_path limit, so QEMU exited
before booting. It now lives under a short temp path.
Tests: usb-report, usb-hid, usb-storage pass under python3 test/qemu_test.py;
host units (usb-abi, usb-ids, hid-report, bulk-only-transport, scsi) green.
Time is a kernel concern in danos: the kernel owns the scheduling timer and
already exposes monotonic time via the clock/sleep/timer_bind syscalls, so a
userspace time service would be a redundant, slower path. This adds the generic
runtime.time module over those syscalls, retires the two demonstration drivers,
reorganizes the milestone docs, and makes the monotonic clock correct on Intel,
AMD, and inside any VM.
runtime.time (library/runtime/time.zig)
- Instant/Duration interface: now, sleep, spin, after, monotonicNanos, available
- a thin layer over system.clock/sleep/timerOnce; unit-tested arithmetic
Remove the demo drivers hpet and bus (a teaching example belongs in the docs,
not shipped in the tree)
- system/drivers/ now holds only real drivers: pci-bus, ps2-bus, usb-xhci-bus
- device-manager end-to-end test repointed to pci-bus (asserts on kernel state:
the process table and the device tree, not a racy serial marker)
- device_register containment moved to a new in-kernel `containment` test
- the driver-model worked example moved inline into docs/drivers.md
Reorganize milestone docs into topic docs
- m17-m18 / m19-m20 / m21 plans dissolved into process-lifecycle, device-manager,
discovery, and acpi docs; new docs/power.md and docs/timers.md; ~20 citations
repointed; plan docs deleted
TSC reliability (apic.zig, smp.zig, cpu.zig, kernel.zig)
- check the invariant-TSC bit (CPUID 0x80000007 EDX[8]) on Intel and AMD
- cross-core "warp" check at SMP bring-up, pairwise BSP<->AP as each core comes up
- fall back to the HPET clocksource when the TSC is not invariant (a bare VM) or
not synchronized (a warp), switched continuously so time never jumps
- boot log reports the outcome; new tsc-sync test exercises the TSC + warp path
Verified: zig build; zig build test; 60/60 QEMU cases (incl. new containment and
tsc-sync).
The QMP harness channel, the SCI + power button published from ring 3,
Notify/GPE dispatch in the AML interpreter, and orderly shutdown — init's
M17 stop cascade into a ring-3 S5 write. Proven by injecting a real ACPI
power-button event; QEMU powers off through the whole chain.
# Conflicts:
# system/services/init/init.zig
The debug-message refactor prefixed each service/driver line with its
source path (system/drivers/hpet:, ...) for readability, but two things
left main red: a 'drviers' typo in hpet.zig and pci-bus.zig, and five
kernel tests (init, hpet, pci-scan, device-manager, vfs-client-death)
that starts-with-matched the old short markers, which no longer sit at
the front of the prefixed lines.
Fix the typo, and convert the fragile starts-with matchers to substring
matching via a bufferHas helper — 'hpet: ok' now matches inside
'system/drivers/hpet: ok' regardless of prefix. Future-proof against
further prefix changes and harmless for the tests that already passed.
Suite 58/58.
The capstone. init becomes a real supervisor: it spawns its boot
services supervised against one endpoint that also carries its signals, a
re-arming heartbeat timer, and the power events it subscribes to. On the
power button (or a terminate signal — same path) it logs the shutdown,
runs the M17 stop sequence over its children in reverse spawn order
(vfs last), then asks the power service for S5.
The acpi service honors a shutdown request from a power subscriber — init
is the one subscriber, a soft gate that stands in for 'only the system
supervisor may power off' and, unlike a PID-1 check, survives the test
harness where the kernel's idle tasks take the early ids. The power
service is mechanism (write S5); deciding when to shut down and stopping
everything else first is init's policy — the microkernel split applied to
poweroff.
The orderly-shutdown scenario injects a real QMP power-button event and
watches the whole chain compose: button pressed -> init shutting down ->
entering S5 -> QEMU powers off. That single scenario proves the M17
lifecycle and the M21 event side compose into a clean shutdown. Suite
60/60.
The kernel publishes the FADT as one more acpi-tables memory resource
(tagged by its intact FACP header — the AML blobs are header-stripped);
the acpi service reads the PM1 event/control and GPE register ports from
that copy, so the kernel's own FADT parse is untouched. A power-protocol
module (ServiceId.power = 5, domain-named so an ARM PSCI service can serve
the same id) carries subscribe / shutdown / events.
The acpi service converts to runtime.service.run — device discovery, the
.power protocol, and the SCI notification all fold into one loop. At
startup it enables ACPI mode if SCI_EN is clear (the SMI dance), binds the
SCI (found as the node's len-1 irq resource, distinct from the broad
window), and sets PWRBTN_EN. On the SCI it reads PM1_STS, clears
PWRBTN_STS write-1, logs the press, publishes power_button to
subscribers, and always acks. The power-button scenario proves it with a
real QMP system_powerdown injected mid-run through the M21.0 channel.
The kernel no longer folds AML Device objects into the device tree — the
ring-3 acpi service is the sole builder of _HID device nodes. The kernel
keeps building the namespace only for the \_S5 sleep type, and still
seeds the static tables (MADT, HPET, MCFG, FADT) and the acpi-tables node.
The device manager matches ps2-bus from the service's _HID reports
(PNP0303 / PNP0F13, singleton-deduped) instead of boot-snapshot nodes;
its dead boot-snapshot ps2 arm is gone. The service registers every
device before reporting any, so a driver the manager spawns on the first
report already sees the full set — no keyboard-before-mouse race. The
acpi-ps2 scenario proves the whole chain: report -> spawn -> ps2-bus
finds the controller and attaches its keyboard, entirely in ring 3. The
ioport test moved to the acpi-tables I/O window, since the kernel-built
PS/2 node it used to scan for no longer exists. The retired
device-building functions in acpi.zig are dead but retained (a botched
mechanical deletion is worse mid-migration than a follow-up sweep, which
is flagged as a task). Suite 58/58.
AML method evaluation now runs in userspace touching real hardware: the
service builds an interpreter with a ring-3 Hal (port I/O routed through
its claimed acpi-tables node; a scratch page backs SystemMemory maps so a
stray OperationRegion degrades to zeros instead of faulting a process
that cannot map arbitrary physical memory). It walks the namespace and,
for each present _HID device that is not a PCI root, evaluates _CRS,
registers it under acpi-tables, and reports it with its EISA-decoded hid.
Containment for this needed the broker's irq check to become range-based
— an interrupt line is still indivisible, but a parent may own a range,
so the acpi-tables node's broad irq window contains its children's legacy
lines (a length-1 range is exactly the old equality, so single-irq
parents are unaffected). ChildAdded gained a hid field for firmware
string identity. Matching those reports to drivers stays off until M20.3,
so ps2-bus still comes up via the kernel path — no regression. The
acpi-report scenario proves the PS/2 keyboard (io 0x60/0x64 + IRQ) and
mouse (IRQ) are reported with their resources. Suite 57/57.
The AML module becomes a build module compiled into both the kernel (for
the \_S5 sleep state it still needs) and the new acpi service — one
source, two builds, no fork. The kernel publishes a single acpi-tables
node: the DSDT/SSDT blobs as memory resources, a broad io_port grant (the
honest trust boundary — firmware AML names whatever ports it chose, known
only after parsing), and the SCI for the M21 event track. The acpi
service claims the node, maps each blob through the ordinary mmio grant
(which preserves the sub-page offset onto the bytecode), and runs the
same parser the kernel does. It self-verifies its namespace Device count
against the kernel's — 34 = 34 — deterministically via an argv the
acpi-parse test passes, so no racing the shared serial buffer. Parse-only
touches no hardware; OperationRegion evaluation waits for _CRS/_STA in
M20.2. The manager spawns 'discovery' (the neutral ramdisk name) at
startup. Suite 56/56.
enumeratePci, addBars, pciConfigurationPtr, and the PciHeader struct are
deleted; the kernel seeds only the host bridge, and the ring-3 pci-bus
driver's reports are the sole source of PCI function nodes. The manager
matches PCI drivers from reported identity, deduped by registered device
id so a bus restart never double-spawns.
The flip did its job by exposing a latent SMP race: ring-3
device_register made the broker table concurrent for the first time, and
mmio_map read it lock-free — under load a torn resource length mapped
hpet's window wrong (its user fault) and underflowed r.len-1 into a
kernel integer-overflow panic. Fixed: the broker read in mmio_map (and
claim) runs under the big kernel lock, the arithmetic rejects
zero-length and wrapping windows cleanly, and pci-bus no longer registers
unimplemented size-0 BARs. driver-restart hammered 6x, suite 55/55.
Each function is registered under the bridge with the config-space slice
and BARs sized by the same all-ones probe the kernel uses — byte-for-byte
equal descriptors, so the idempotent register returns the kernel's
existing node ids during coexistence instead of duplicating the tree.
The bridge gained the 16-bit io_port aperture that functions' I/O BARs
need to pass containment. Reports carry the registered device_id, and
the pci-scan scenario drills a forced restart: kill the enumerator after
its reports, watch the respawn re-scan, and assert the broker's PCI node
count never grew. The usb-restart test trigger is pinned to the xHCI
reporter (pci-bus racing it to two reports used to steal the kill).
Harness hardening: failing cases preserve their serial logs; the heavy
scenarios run at 150s.
The manager matches the pci_host_bridge node and spawns pci-bus with the
bridge id as its assignment — hello, supervision, restart, all the M18
contract for free. The driver claims the bridge, maps the ECAM window
(resource 0) through the ordinary mmio grant, and repeats the kernel's
brute-force bus/device/function walk from user space. The pci-scan
scenario builds its expected marker from the kernel's own function count,
so the two enumerations must agree exactly — the equivalence that
licenses retiring the kernel walk in M19.3.
The host bridge now carries MMIO apertures derived from the boot memory
map's gaps below 4 GiB (largest three, sort-merged; a single after-the-
last-region hole dies on OVMF's flash at the top) plus one aperture above
the described space — so a user-space device_register of PCI functions
with BAR resources can pass containment. The discovery test asserts
every PCI memory resource lies inside a bridge window and names any
escapee. device_register is idempotent on exact (parent, class, identity,
resources) match — a restarted registering bus cannot duplicate its
children; proven directly against the broker in the bus test.
ChildAdded gains device_id so a report can carry the registered kernel
id a matched driver needs as its assignment.
Applications ask the device manager for the tree (enumerate: a header
plus ChildEntry records) and subscribe to published add/remove events by
handing their endpoint over as the call's capability — the input-service
pattern; events are the same ChildAdded/ChildRemoved structs the bus
drivers send, one encoding in both directions. device-list is the first
client: it prints the tree, subscribes, and narrates the events through
a driver restart. The protocol's message maximum is capped at the
kernel's IPC MESSAGE_MAXIMUM (256 bytes, ten entries per reply; paging
joins the protocol when a tree outgrows one message). The startUserTask
debug print is gone: it wrote to serial unserialized against user-space
lines and sheared concurrent log markers in half — the root cause of the
scenario flakes.
child_added/child_removed join the device-manager protocol. The driver
maps its register BAR (resource 0 is the ECAM config space; the walk
starts at 1), reads CAPLENGTH and HCSPARAMS1, and reads one PORTSC per
port: the connect bit and speed class come straight from hardware, no
rings needed to see the devices. The manager mirrors reported children
keyed by (parent, port), remembers which instance reported each, and
prunes a dead reporter's children before deciding the restart — the
children describe protocol state that died with the process. The
usb-report scenario drives the whole loop: two QEMU devices reported,
reporter killed, children pruned, driver respawned with backoff, and the
new instance re-claims, re-scans, and re-reports.
The manager is now a harness service on the well-known .device_manager
endpoint. Every driver spawns supervised; drivers with an assignment must
hello (device-manager-protocol, versioned) within a deadline enforced by
a timer sweep. Exit reasons drive the restart decision: clean exits stay
down, faults restart with 300/600/1200ms backoff, and three fast deaths
mark a driver failed instead of respawning forever. usb-xhci-bus is the
first conforming driver; the crash-test fixture claims a device, hellos,
and faults on purpose — each respawn re-proving claim release on death
through the manager's own path. maximum_tasks grows 16 -> 32: the
initial-ramdisk sweep (15 binaries at once) was intermittently
overflowing the static pool.
Signals are statements delivered as coalescing notifications to the
endpoint a process nominates with signal_bind — never a hijacked stack,
never a question (liveness is the zero-length ping the harness answers).
process_signal is supervisor-or-self gated, like kill; unbound targets
accumulate a pending mask delivered on bind. timer_bind is the missing
timed wait: a one-shot deadline landing in the same replyWait as
everything else — what stop(), hello deadlines, and restart backoff are
built from. runtime.service.run folds requests, signals, and
notifications into callbacks; the VFS conversion deletes its hand-rolled
loop and gains the whole lifecycle contract. The signals scenario drives
ping, reload, terminate->exited, the timer, and the deaf-child
deadline->killed path from ring 3. docs/process-lifecycle.md increments
1-4 are now as-built.
process_subscribe adds an endpoint to a bounded, ref-counted subscriber
table; every death posts the same badge encoding a supervisor's exit
notification uses, equally late, so subscribers observe a fully-released
child. A dying subscriber's own subscriptions are removed first — it never
hears about itself. The VFS is the first subscriber: open handles now
record their owner and are swept when the owner dies, because a service
must never depend on clients cleaning up after themselves
(docs/process-lifecycle.md). Proven by the vfs-client-death scenario.
The kernel records an ExitReason at all three death sites — clean exit,
fault (classified by vector), and process_kill — into a bounded ring
before the exit notification posts, so a supervisor's query never races
the notice. process_exit_reason is gated by the same supervisor check as
kill; runtime.process.exitReason is the stable interface. This is the
input restart policy reads (docs/process-lifecycle.md iron rule 2).
Every path out of a process (exit, fault, kill) now releases its device
claims alongside its IRQ and MSI bindings, so a restarted driver can claim
its hardware again — the cleanup half of process-lifecycle.md's iron rule 1.
MSI vectors were already swept by irq.releaseOwner; claims were the gap.
The claim-release test proves kill -> release -> re-claim, plus the broker
release in isolation.
Extend the input service beyond the keyboard so mouse and joystick/gamepad
drivers can broadcast too, with per-device publish and subscribe methods.
- protocol: KeyEvent joins MouseEvent (motion/buttons/scroll) and
JoystickEvent (axes/buttons), all carried in a common InputEvent envelope
tagged with a DeviceKind. A subscribe request carries a device_mask, so a
subscriber names the classes it wants and the service routes each event only
to interested subscribers (a mouse-only listener never wakes for keystrokes).
- runtime: per-device publish methods (publishKeyboardEvent/publishMouseEvent/
publishJoystickEvent) and subscribe helpers (subscribeKeyboard/Mouse/Joystick,
each typed, plus subscribe(mask)/subscribeAll returning the tagged envelope).
- service: subscriber table gains a device_mask; broadcast routes by the
event's device class.
- mouse driver now publishes (synthetic) mouse events like the keyboard driver;
input-source cycles all three classes; input-test subscribes to all and only
emits its "ok" marker once it has received one of each class — so the passing
test proves per-device routing, not just delivery. Real HID decoding stays a
follow-up.
No kernel changes: ipc_send is generic and the 36-byte InputEvent fits its
64-byte payload. Full QEMU suite 48/48; serial log confirms keyboard, mouse,
and joystick all reach one subscription.
Programs can now subscribe to keyboard events (key_down/key_up/key_press)
and drivers can broadcast them, through a new user-space input service.
The delivery model is forced by danos IPC: a synchronous rendezvous holds
one pending reply, so a server cannot park N subscribers blocked in a
"wait for next event" call — delivery must be push. But a synchronous push
has no timeout and the kernel never wakes a sender parked on a dead peer's
endpoint, so one dying subscriber would hang all input. So this lands the
roadmap's planned asynchronous buffered send and builds the service on it:
- ipc_send (syscall 26): non-blocking post to an endpoint's bounded payload
ring, delivered through reply_wait as a buffered message (notify_message_bit).
A full ring drops the oldest. It can never hang on a dead/slow peer.
- input-protocol + runtime.input helpers (subscribe/next, connectSource/
publish) — the first real consumer of M13 capability passing: a subscriber
hands the service its own endpoint as a capability.
- input service (fan-out via ipc_send, dead-subscriber pruning), a synthetic
input-source, and input-test; the ps2-bus keyboard driver publishes to it.
Real IRQ1 scancode decoding (which must live in the bus, the PNP0303 owner)
is a documented follow-up; the source is synthetic for now.
- build/init wiring, an `input` QEMU case, and docs/input.md.
Full QEMU suite 48/48, including the new input case and every IPC/endpoint
regression (ipc, ipc-call, ipc-cap, vfs, hpet, bus, irqfree).
process_enumerate snapshots the task table (the device_enumerate shape, so
ps is a user program); system_spawn returns the child id, records the caller
as supervisor, and takes an exit endpoint; process_kill is allowed only for
the supervisor. Every death — exit, fault, or kill — posts a child-exit badge
to that endpoint (the IRQ-as-IPC pattern as SIGCHLD). A target caught off-CPU
is reaped in place; a running one is condemned and finished at its next
system call or tick, guarded so teardown never lands mid-kernel-operation.
Tested by process-list, process-kill, and supervision (a ring-3 supervisor
exercising the whole surface); design notes in docs/process-management.md.
Processes now start with C-compatible arguments: the kernel builds the
System V AMD64 entry block (argc, argv, empty envp, auxiliary vector)
at the top of the stack, argv[0] is the path or initial-ramdisk name
the process was spawned as, and system_spawn carries an optional
NUL-separated blob that becomes argv[1..]. The runtime parses the block
(runtime.argumentCount/argument) and its spawn wrappers pass arguments
through. The name is also recorded on the task, so a fault report says
which binary died, not just its id.
The user stack grows from one page to eight (32 KiB,
parameters.user_stack_pages), with the page below left unmapped as a
guard so an overflow faults into a clean process kill rather than
corrupting the image. Task.name_buffer is zero-initialised, not
undefined: an undefined default is materialised as a 0xAA fill that
moved the static task pool out of .bss and made the whole kernel ~7x
slower under QEMU TCG (caught by the affinity test).
Proven end to end by the new args test: args-echo respawns itself with
arguments via the syscall blob, burns more stack than one page could
hold, and echoes its argv intact. Full suite: 44/44.
A CPU exception raised in ring 3 by a scheduled process now kills that
process - IRQ bindings, IPC handles, and address space reclaimed, a
client it owed a reply to failed with the new -EPEER instead of hung -
and the core reschedules (docs/resilience.md step 2). Kernel-mode
faults, NMI, double fault, and machine check stay terminal, as does the
borrowed-thread isolation probe. Proven by the new fault-recovery QEMU
test: init keeps heartbeating after a process page-faults to death.
Ring 3 still has no direct in/out (no TSS I/O bitmap, IOPL never raised — a #GP), but a
driver no longer needs it: io_read(device_id, resource_index, offset, width) and
io_write(..., value) grant port access the same way mmio_map grants memory. The claim
plus the device's discovered io_port resource are the capability — resolveIoPort checks
the device is claimed by the caller, the resource is io_port, and [offset, offset+width)
stays inside it, then issues the in/out via architecture.pioRead/pioWrite. So a PS/2 or
16550 driver is now writable; the low-rate legacy hardware that needs port I/O is fine
with a syscall per access. io_port resources were recorded by discovery and ignored —
now they're used. Runtime: device.ioRead/ioWrite.
New `ioport` test claims QEMU's PS/2 controller (io_port 0x64, discovered via ACPI) and
checks the gate admits an in-range access, refuses over-wide / out-of-range / unclaimed,
and that the kernel actually reads the status port (0x1c). Suite 41/41 plus host tests.
Docs refreshed for the whole M13-M16 + port-I/O reality: drivers.md "Limits" no longer
lists port I/O, DMA memory, or barriers as missing (they exist) and its "what's next"
reflects that; the FSH doc's character-device and block-device sections are corrected
("cannot host a block driver at all" is no longer true — writable now, not yet memory-
safe pending IOMMU enforcement); device-interrupts.md unblocks the keyboard and narrows
the interrupt gap to MSI-X.
Detect the IOMMU: discovery now parses the ACPI DMAR table, finds the first VT-d
DMA-remapping unit (DRHD), maps its register block, and records its version and
capabilities (iommu_present/base/version/capabilities in the platform info). On QEMU's
emulated intel-iommu this reads back a real unit (base 0xfed90000, version 1.0).
This is detection only, and deliberately so. A full VT-d bring-up — per-device
translation domains that confine a driver's DMA to the buffers it dma_alloc'd — is the
real device-side safety guarantee, but it cannot be verified without a DMA-capable
device driver (none exist yet) and QEMU's intel-iommu to fault against. Writing that
enforcement now would be a large body of unverifiable page-table code; it belongs with
the first DMA driver, which is both the natural order and the only way to test it. Until
then the caveat stands in full: device_claim on a DMA-capable device is still equivalent
to granting ring 0. The docs say so plainly.
New `iommu` test (harness boots it with -device intel-iommu via a new per-case qemu_extra
hook) confirms the DMAR is parsed and the unit's registers read. Suite 40/40 plus host
tests.
Two parts, both blockers for real PCI drivers.
ECAM config space per function: enumeratePci now gives every pci_device its own 4 KiB
configuration window as resource 0. A claimed PCI driver mmio_maps that to reach its
command register, BARs, and — the point — its capability list (MSI/MSI-X, PCIe extended
caps), with no new syscall. Verified in the discovery test (QEMU q35's functions each
carry it).
MSI: msi_bind(device_id, endpoint) -> address (rax), data (rdx) allocates a per-device
edge-triggered vector, binds it to the endpoint, and returns the (address, data) the
driver programs into its own MSI capability. Unlike irq_bind there's no GSI, no I/O APIC
entry, no sharing, and no ack cycle — dispatch recognises an MSI vector (vector_gsi ==
none, msi_bound set), EOIs, and notifies. Owner-keyed release drops the binding on exit.
Legacy INTx (_PRT parsing + shared lines) is deliberately skipped; MSI is the real
answer.
QEMU's HPET has no MSI, so the new `msi` test proves the vector-routing path with a
self-IPI (new apic.selfIpi) standing in for the device's MSI write: bind a vector,
fire it, the bound endpoint is notified. The msi_bind syscall wraps irq.msiBind with
the claim check and lands its first real use with the first PCI driver. Suite 39/39
plus host tests.
An HCD programs a bus-master engine: it needs a descriptor ring that is physically
contiguous, at a physical address it knows, uncacheable, and pinned. mmap gives none
of those. Add dma_alloc(len, flags) -> vaddr (rax), paddr (rdx) and dma_free(vaddr,
len): grant contiguous, zeroed, pinned, strong-uncacheable memory in a per-process DMA
arena (PML4[228]) and hand back both addresses.
Pieces: pmm.allocContiguous(count, max_phys) finds a run of contiguous free frames
below a cap (dma_below_4g for 32-bit engines); mapUserDmaInto maps them uncacheable
(PCD|PWT) but WITHOUT device_grant, so unlike an MMIO grant these frames are real RAM
and freeSubtree returns them on teardown — a driver that dies leaks nothing. dma_free
is bounded to the DMA arena so it can never unmap the caller's stack/heap/MMIO.
dma_write_combining is accepted but falls back to coherent (WC needs PAT programming).
Runtime: runtime.dma.alloc/free (a two-return-value stub, like replyWait). New `dma`
kernel test drives the mechanism directly — contiguity, the below-4G cap, coherent
mapping, and reclaim-on-teardown (no leak). The thin syscall wrappers follow the tested
mmap/mmio_map shape and land their first real use with the first DMA driver. Suite
38/38 plus host tests.
ipc_call and ipc_reply_wait grow a `send_cap` argument (r9) and a `received_cap`
return (r8): an endpoint travels alongside a message, installed into the receiver's
handle table. The transfer is a share, not a move — the endpoint's refcount is bumped
and the sender keeps its handle. If the receiver's table is full the call fails
-ENOSPC and the message is NOT delivered (a half-delivered capability is worse than a
failed send); a bad handle fails -EBADF. Both directions carry a cap: a client's call
hands one to the server (seen in the server's replyWait), and the server's reply hands
one back (seen in the client's call return).
This is the "open" primitive the driver model was blocked on: a bus driver mints a
per-device endpoint and hands it to a class driver, giving it a private channel to one
device without the 8-slot global name registry.
Kernel: shareCapability in ipc-synchronous.zig at both copy points; new
setSystemCallResult3 (r8, saved/restored by the syscall stub); Task gains
ipc_send_cap / ipc_received_cap. Runtime: callCap + Reply, replyWait gains send_cap
and Received.cap; plain call/replyWait delegate with no_cap. New abi.no_cap.
New ipc-cap test (two kernel tasks exercise both directions, each verifying the
endpoint it received is the same object shared, refcount bumped to 2). No class driver
consumes callCap yet — it lands with the first one. Suite 37/37 plus host tests.
Retire the kernel's spawn-every-initial-ramdisk-binary loop, resolving the
service/driver split into a real three-level supervision hierarchy:
kernel -> spawns init (PID 1) only, and publishes the initial-ramdisk
init -> the service supervisor: spawns the system services (vfs, device-manager)
device-manager -> spawns the drivers it matches (hpet)
The kernel now only hands the initial-ramdisk image to the process layer
(publishInitialRamdisk) so user space can system_spawn from it; it launches nothing
bundled itself. init gains a boot-services list ("vfs", "device-manager") and spawns
them best-effort before settling into its heartbeat — policy lives in user space,
where a microkernel keeps it. Drivers are absent from that list on purpose: the
device manager owns them. Test-only binaries (vfs-test, bus) no longer run at boot;
their kernel self-tests still spawn them directly.
This removes increment 2's transitional double-spawn: a real boot now brings hpet up
exactly once (verified — kernel -> init -> vfs/device-manager -> hpet, zero "claim
failed"). The automated suite is unaffected: test builds run their case and halt
before the normal boot path, so each already spawns its own binaries. Suite 36/36
plus host tests; normal boot verified by hand under QEMU.
Add a `system_spawn(name)` system call: the kernel loads a binary bundled in the
initial-ramdisk, by name, as a fresh ring-3 process. It's the mechanism a user-space
supervisor needs — discovery and policy stay in user space, the kernel only spawns.
The kernel already holds the initial-ramdisk image from the boot handoff; it now
stashes it (process.setInitialRamdisk) so the handler can resolve names, bounds-checks
the name into the user half like debug_write, and returns -1 for an unknown name or a
load failure. Ungated for now (any process may spawn any bundled binary); a spawn
capability belongs here once the model grows one.
The device manager stops logging "would spawn it" and calls runtime.system.spawn on
its matched driver. On QEMU it discovers the HPET, matches `hpet`, and spawns it — and
the driver comes all the way up (claims the timer, maps its MMIO, binds and services
its IRQ, prints "hpet: ok"). The device-manager test now keys on that final marker:
since only the manager is spawned, `hpet: ok` appearing proves the whole
discover -> match -> system_spawn -> driver-up chain end to end.
Transitional: the kernel still auto-spawns the whole initial-ramdisk at boot, so a
real boot briefly double-spawns hpet (the second claim fails harmlessly). Increment 3
removes that redundancy so the manager is the sole owner of driver spawning. Suite
36/36 plus host tests.
Daniel Samson