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_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.
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.
The `system` module (formerly `danos`) had become a grab-bag: it held the
loader<->kernel handoff *and* the kernel<->user ABI *and* the device wire types, in
one module three different audiences imported. Usage proved the seam — the
bootloader never touched the syscall/device ABI, and user space never touched the
boot handoff — so split it by audience, one module per contract:
system/boot-handoff.zig loader <-> kernel: BootInformation, Framebuffer,
MemoryMap, the VM layout + physicalToVirtual, kernel_abi
system/abi.zig kernel <-> user, core: SystemCall, mmap prot flags,
page_size, notify_badge_bit, ServiceId
system/devices/device-abi.zig kernel <-> user, devices: DeviceDescriptor,
DeviceClass, ResourceDescriptor, ResourceKind, ...
device-abi is the devices sub-project's public interface, exposed as its own module
the way vfs exposes vfs-protocol — importable by user space, unlike the
kernel-internal device model it also feeds. That collapses a real duplication:
DeviceClass and ResourceKind were defined twice (device-model.zig and the contract,
kept "in sync by hand"); device-model now re-exports them from device-abi, so the
enum a driver matches on and the one the kernel classifies with are one type.
Each import now declares which contract it speaks: the bootloader imports only
boot-handoff; a driver only abi + device-abi (via the runtime); the kernel all
three. This also retires the `system` / `runtime.system` name overlap. page_size
lands in abi (it's part of the mmap contract user space aligns to); the bootloader
keeps its own local 4 KiB constant so it depends on nothing but the handoff.
All 21 importers rewired, docs updated to keep /system mapping to source. Build,
host tests, and the QEMU suite (36/36) all green.
The shared kernel<->user ABI contract (BootInformation, the SystemCall numbers,
DeviceDescriptor, page_size, ...) is now the `system` module at
system/system.zig, following the convention that a directory's root file takes
the directory's name.
One overlap to note: the runtime's syscall wrappers are already `runtime.system`,
so the single file that uses both the contract and those wrappers
(library/runtime/heap.zig) aliases the wrappers locally as `system_calls`. The
two are distinct (top-level `system` vs `runtime.system`); everywhere else the
contract is just `system`.
Also: the QEMU run's serial capture now lands in the FHS log location,
zig-out/var/log/system/serial0-<timestamp>.log — a stand-in for the kernel's own
logging system, which will eventually write there itself.
Suite 35/35 plus host tests green.
The source layout now mirrors the runtime filesystem hierarchy
(docs/danos-file-system-hierarchy-FSH.md): what lives under system/ in the
source is what a running danos represents under /system. Each service and
driver is a sub-project directory that is its own Zig module — cross-project
references go by module name, never by a path into another project's files.
Moves (all git mv, history preserved):
- src/ -> system/ (danos internals; the self-representation)
root.zig -> danos.zig (the kernel<->user contract module)
kernel/arch/ -> kernel/architecture/ (arch -> architecture)
device/ -> devices/ (what /system/devices reflects)
boot/ -> /boot (the loaders, top level)
- sbin/ -> split by role:
init, vfs -> system/services/<name>/<name>.zig
hpetd, busd -> system/drivers/<name>/<name>.zig
vfs-test -> system/services/vfs/vfs-test.zig (inside the vfs project)
- lib/ -> library/runtime/ (room for other libraries beside runtime)
The VFS wire protocol becomes its own module, system/services/vfs/protocol.zig
("vfs-protocol"): the vfs sub-project exposes its interface, and the runtime's
file layer imports it by name. First instance of the "protocol module" pattern
(docs/driver-model.md); usb/block will expose theirs the same way.
Also: fix a naming-standard violation in the protocol — Op -> Operation (and
req -> request, _pad -> _padding). Docs updated: /system/services added to the
FHS doc, a repository-layout section added to the docs index, and stale source
paths swept across comments and docs.
Runtime boot paths are unchanged (the bootloader still loads /sbin/init);
aligning the runtime filesystem to the FHS is a separate follow-up. Suite 35/35
plus host tests green.
Daniel Samson