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2016-02-19 15:02:31 +03:00
Go to http://www.cs.utah.edu/flux/oskit/ to check for more recent
announcements. It contains good information on what the OSKit is
and what it's good for.
Here are the recent announcements:
----------------------------------------
From: Mike Hibler <mike@cs.utah.edu>
To: oskit-announce@flux.cs.utah.edu
Subject: OSKit 20020317 snapshot; St. Patrick's Day Snapshot
Date: Sun Mar 17 2002
Luck o' the Irish to ya! After more than a year, we have finally made a
new OSKit snapshot!
The major new feature in this snapshot is Kota Abe's simple process library
and encapsulated NetBSD UVM library. The process library allows you to
create multiple, demand-pageable, address spaces in which to run code in
user-mode. A mechanism exists for defining system calls to give access to
privileged services from these user-mode processes. It should be noted that
this is only the first step in defining a process model in the OSKit.
Kota did this work while a visiting researcher here in 2000-2001.
We have also added some initial infrastructure for SNMP-like queries, but
this work is *FAR* from complete, and the OSKit does *NOT* yet have any
components for actually sending or receiving SNMP messages. What it does
have is COM interfaces that correspond to the major groups of SNMP's MIB-II,
and the FreeBSD network stack now implements the relevant interfaces.
Here is a brief rundown of other changes from the 20010214
(``Valentine's Day'') release:
BOOTLOADERS:
* Netboot has been enhanced to support loading via TFTP as well as NFS.
* Added ofwboot for Sharks. It is the equivalent of pxeboot, interacting
with the Emulab bootinfo server to determine what kernel to boot.
* Much reorg, bug fixing, and performance enhancement in netdisk.
IMPROVEMENTS:
* Make sure some examples (SVGA, X11) don't get built unless the libraries
are configured in.
* Audio support on ARM. Mostly entailed adding more device support for
the ARM and "commonizing" existing x86 code. This was a lark project
to turn a Shark into an MP3 player. See the libmad directory.
* Added Testbed Master Control Protocol (TMCP) support for use in running
OSKit kernels in the Emulab (www.emulab.net) environment.
* Changes to the startup library to allow more fine-grained initialization
of network interfaces, added startup for sound devices.
* Added prototype support for transmit "polling" (i.e., transmit complete
interrupts disabled) to go along with receive polling in the network
infrastructure. Only the eepro100 driver supports this mode of operation.
IMPORTANT FIXES:
* Various fixes to the mini UDP library: recvfrom returned wrong value,
alignment problems, problems with IP broadcast addresses.
DOCUMENTATION:
* Added chapters for simple process library and UVM library.
* Began chapter documenting libstartup.
* Changes to improve WWW version.
NITS:
* In mklinuximage, ensure that resulting binary is not too large for LILO
* pthread_mutex_trylock can now be called at interrupt time
* Propagate "no more space" errors on send from ethernet drivers through
the BSD network stack and back to applications.
----------------------------------------
From: Mike Hibler <mike@cs.utah.edu>
To: oskit-announce@flux.cs.utah.edu
Subject: OSKit 20010214 snapshot; Valentine's Day Snapshot
Date: Wed Feb 14 2001
A little Valentine's Day gift from the Flux group to you, a new OSKit snapshot!
The major new feature in this release is partial, optional support for
our experimental new "Knit" component definition and linking language
(to be released separately later today). About half of the OSKit has
been specified as several hundred well-defined units, composable with
the Knit language. More information is available in our forthcoming
Knit announcement and at http://www.cs.utah.edu/flux/knit/ where you
can also find documentation on the extant OSKit "units."
This OSKit snapshot also contains infrastructure that is needed for an
imminent release of our Active Network NodeOS, Moab.
Here is a brief rundown of changes from the 20000901 (``Labor Day'') release:
BOOTLOADERS:
* Various netboot enhancements: it remembers the last command as well as
its network configuration across kernel invocations, it prompts for the
network configuration if bootp fails, and in general has been made less
chatty in its non-debug configuration.
* The PXE bootloader can be used interactively.
* Netdisk has been completely rewritten and separated from netboot.
It is now faster as well as more functional, see netboot/README for more.
* All multiboot adaptors should now correctly detect physical memories
larger than 64Mb.
IMPROVEMENTS:
* The threaded netio and listener interfaces no longer implicitly create
a service thread. The caller provides a thread via a "run" method.
(This allows the user program more control over the thread).
* Threaded netio adaptors now uses a FIFO instead of a one-element buffer.
* SVM distinguishes seg faults from protection faults
* The OSKit/Unix code now supports the oskit_skbufio_t interface
added in the Labor day release.
* Added optional oskit_pthread_cpucycles function to return per-thread
high resolution (machine cycles) run time information.
* Allow specification of multiple ethernet interfaces to use in unix mode
networking.
IMPORTANT FIXES:
* The Lance ethernet driver now works properly for PCI-based Lance cards
(previously would loop "discovering" the same card over and over).
* Attempt to disable flow control in the EEPro100 driver to avoid generation
of (potentially disruptive) multicast flow control transmissions. See
http://www.beowulf.org/listarchives/linux-eepro100/1999/09/0000.html
for details.
* Fixes to OSKit-specific polling interface in the EEPro100 device driver.
* Eliminated crash (in linux network drivers) if a packet arrives
between the time that a device is opened and the time the receive netio
is finally setup.
* Allow individual schedulers to determine the validity of scheduler state
set via pthread_attr_setschedparam and pthread_setschedparam.
* Properly define some _POSIX_THREAD_* symbols in the pthread implementation
to identify which features are supported.
* Corrections to pass computation in CPU stride scheduler.
* Properly load kernel DS segment before looking up IRQ handler in memory
(would fail if kernel ran in non-supervisor mode).
DOCUMENTATION:
* Syntax changes to get it to run through TeX4ht for producing a WWW version.
NITS:
* Cleanup minimal libc header files (removing references to things we lack)
* CPUNITS -> KNIT in ifdefs
* Support raw mode in clientos default console code.
* Remove some performance monitoring code from IRQ handler (used rdtsc
instruction not present on older x86 boxes).
* skbufio implementation uses a test-and-set rather than dis/en-abling
interrupts to preserve atomicity of its reference count.
* Fix some namespace collision problems in header files.
* oskit_linux_skbmem_* -> oskit_skbufio_mem_*
* Unix mode networking code no longer fails catastrophically if it cannot
open a device.
* Cleaned up lots of compiler warnings.
----------------------------------------
From: Leigh Stoller <stoller@cs.utah.edu>
To: oskit-announce@flux.cs.utah.edu
Subject: OSKit 20000901 snapshot; Labor Day Snapshot
Date: Fri Sept 1 2000
Since it's "Labor Day" weekend, and we've been busy, we are making another
OSKit snapshot. Besides the usual round of and minor improvements and bug
fixes-- including fixed 16-bit support-- we have made a number of important
performance improvements, and have added several new features such as PXE boot
support, POSIX realtime message queues and semaphores, a proportional share
"stride" scheduler, and a new software interrupt mechanism. We first discuss
the performance improvements, and then features, applications, and fixes.
PERFORMANCE:
* Polled packet reception: Addition of receive side polling capability to
the oskit_netdev_t and oskit_etherdev_t interfaces. For network device
drivers that support receive side polling, you can now place the card in
polling mode (via the open call) instead of interrupt mode, and poll for
packets via the new "rxpoll" method in the aforementioned interfaces. We
have modified the Tulip and EEPRO100 linux ethernet drivers to support
receive polling. We have also modified the OSKit version of the Click
Modular Router (version 1.0.6) to use the new polling interface. With
Click, we have seen an improvement of about 4 times in the number of
packets that can be forwarded before receive livelock is encountered With
all of the following optimizations in place, a Click router running on a
200 MHZ PPro can forward up to about 110,000 packets per second without
livelock.
* New oskit_skbufio_t interface: Realizing that the oskit_bufio_t interface
is a little too generic, we added the oskit_skbufio_t interface, whose
single implementor is the linux network device driver. This new interface
allows a program to operate directly on the internals of the data
structure that underlies the oskit_skbufio_t, which of course is a linux
struct sk_buff. The result is less copying, fewer COM method calls, and
an overall improvement in packet forwarding and packet sending rates of
about 10 times. We have seen similar results in the OSKit version of the
Click Modular Router (version 1.0.6), which was modified to use the
skbufio interface instead of the generic bufio interface.
* Improved linux network device driver memory allocation: Two functions,
oskit_skbmem_{alloc,free}, were added (in linux/dev/skbuff_mem.c) to
allow a kernel to have direct control over memory used for skbuffs. By
overriding these functions, a kernel can provide all memory used by
skbufios and other skbuff-based bufios that originate from the linuxdev
(device driver) library. The default implementation of
oskit_skbmem_{alloc,free} manages a cache of skbuff memory to reduce the
frequency of memory allocation calls. Skbuff memory is also allocated in
fixed-size chunks (corresponding to 0, 200 and 1600 byte skbuff lengths)
to reduce memory fragmentation.
* Improved network bufio allocation: An added method in oskit_netio_t
allows the implementor of a netio interface to provide a specialized
oskit_bufio_t allocator. This specialized allocator can be used to
provide an oskit_bufio_t implementation that is specific to the
corresponding oskit_netio_t implementation. For example, the linux netio
implementation now allows you to allocate a bufio that is already in the
correct format (that is, looks like an SKB), so that packets can be more
directly sent out on the wire.
FEATURES:
* Improved software interrupt support: We have unified the software
interrupt mechanism so that any component that needs a software interrupt
to run at the end of a hardware interrupt has a consistent way to do
that. Previously, individual components rolled their own software
interrupt mechanism, with the result that they often ran before the
hardware interrupt was really over, and potentially saw an inconsistent
hardware state. We have fixed this by providing a single implementation
that any component can use. Each of the Linux, FreeBSD, and pthreads
modules have been modified. See oskit/dev/softirq.h for a description of
the new interface.
* POSIX Realtime message queues and semaphores: New implementations of the
POSIX Realtime message queue (mq) and semaphore interfaces. These
interfaces are available to multithreaded oskit kernels, and are briefly
described in the pthreads chapter of the oskit documentation. Complete
documentation can found in the POSIX 1003.1b specification. Two small
demonstration programs: examples/x86/threads/{semtest.c,mqtest.c} are
provided.
* Stride Scheduler: A new Stride (proportional share) scheduler has been
added to the pthreads scheduler suite. This scheduler implements the
classic Stride algorithm as described in the paper referenced at the top
of threads/sched_stride/sched_stride.c. There is a simple demonstration
program: examples/x86/threads/stride_test.c. Note that you must edit
threads/MakeFlags to ensure that the stride scheduler module is built
into the pthreads library.
* Data compression library (ZLIB): The zlib subdirectory contains an
environment for building an OSKit version of zlib 1.1.3
(ftp://ftp.freesoftware.com/pub/infozip/zlib/). See the README file in
that directory for further instruction. This zlib library is used in the
netdisk kernel below.
APPLICATIONS:
* PXE boot support: A new boot program that is PXE Version 2.0 compliant.
Built on the renovated 16bit code, the PXE boot program fits in the
required 32K, and functions as a first level boot program downloaded via
TFTP by the PXE boot ROM. Once loaded, it can load either a multiboot
compliant image via TFTP, or boot the active disk partition. There is a
lengthy description in boot/pxe/README. We also provide a little bootinfo
server that you can use to tell the pxeboot kernel what to do next.
* A prototype network disk loader: The boot/disk directory contains
makefiles to build a variant of netboot capable of copying a compressed
disk image across NFS to a raw disk (or disk partition). This primitive
``netdisk'' kernel can be used to load a bare machine with a pre-prepared
disk image. Think of it as a remote "dd" program. It is included for
reference only; we expect to have a better version soon.
IMPORTANT FIXES:
* Fixes to 16 bit code: Numerous fixes and improvements to the 16 bit code
for new versions of GCC and binutils. It is once again possible to build
a working linux boot image that is less than 64K is size.
As before, go to http://www.cs.utah.edu/flux/oskit/
and everything hangs off there; currently mostly in ftp.
Thanks to all those who have sent in bug reports and/or fixes for past
snapshots. We appreciate your continued involvement in making the OSKit
more useful for everyone.
Happy "Labor Day Weekend" from the Flux Group and the
University of Utah School of Computing!
----------------------------------------
From: Leigh Stoller <stoller@cs.utah.edu>
To: oskit-announce@flux.cs.utah.edu
Subject: OSKit 20000505 snapshot, realtime & sched support: Cinco de Mayo
Date: Thu May 5 2000
To celebrate "Cinco de Mayo" we are making another OSKit snapshot.
Besides the usual round of bug fixes and minor improvements, the major
addition is improved support for realtime. The OSKit's structure
enabled significant support with only a modest amount of code.
We added two currently orthogonal features:
* A slightly modified version of the oskit device support library
(-loskit_dev) provides an extended API for registering realtime
device handlers that ensure that IRQs are delivered with minimum
possible latency. Measurements indicate that average latency for
a realtime IRQ handler is just under 5 microseconds on a 200Mhz machine.
This allows, for example, reliable support for high speed data acquisition.
* A moderate restructuring of the pthreads scheduling support allows
different types of schedulers to be easily plugged in.
Specifically, you can plug in the standard POSIX scheduler, and/or a
realtime scheduler. For the POSIX scheduler, the original pthreads
scheduler is available. For a realtime scheduler, you can use the
simple Earliest Deadline First (EDF) scheduler we threw together.
Or, you can easily write your own scheduler to replace either one.
The realtime support is discussed in detail in oskit/threads/README.SCHED,
also available at http://www.cs.utah.edu/flux/oskit/README.SCHED .
As before, go to http://www.cs.utah.edu/flux/oskit/
and everything hangs off there; currently mostly in ftp.
Thanks to all those who have sent in bug reports and/or fixes for past
snapshots. We appreciate your continued involvement in making the OSKit
more useful for everyone.
Happy "Cinco de Mayo" from the Flux Group and the
University of Utah Department of Computer Science!
----------------------------------------
From: Roland McGrath <roland@cs.utah.edu>
To: oskit-announce@flux.cs.utah.edu
Subject: New OSKit snapshot oskit-20000202
Date: Thu Feb 3 2000
In honor of the first date in the OSKit's lifetime containing only even digits,
we are happy to announce a new OSKit snapshot containing only odds and ends.
(Our fearless leader Jay Lepreau has asked to be held personally
responsible for the one-day time warp you are now experiencing.)
If you've been burning to know what the OSKit would look like on a date
with all even digits, now is your big chance. (You'll just have to trust
us that nothing changed since yesterday. If you are burning to know what
it will look like on the second date with all even digits, odds are that
nothing will have changed by tomorrow.)
This is an informal snapshot to make available the improvements we've made
to the OSKit lately. Along with the usual bug fixes and miscellaneous
small improvements, this snapshot primarily features various configuration
and build tweaks to make compiling and using the OSKit a little more
seamless in common environments. In particular, the hosted oskit support
(aka "oskit-on-unix") is somewhat revamped and cleaned up, and should work
more easily out of the box (on FreeBSD and Linux). The "unsupported" gcc
front-end script has been rewritten and should now work better; the same
script (called "x86-oskit-gcc" or "arm32-oskit-gcc") works for linking
OSKit kernels or with the `-hosted-oskit' switch to build oskit-on-unix
executable files. (Note that if you are cross-compiling, we now recommend
using GCC 2.95.2, and the front-end script won't be built if your compiler
is a very old one. Native compilers based on GCC 2.7.x can still work, but
not cross-compilers.)
We have ongoing active OSKit-based projects involving the Kaffe Java VM,
MIT's Click Router package, and our own Active Networks NodeOS system.
(For more information about these projects, see our web pages.) We are
using these systems with the current OSKit internally, but it has been a
busy time and we have not had a chance to make the latest code for these
available yet. We will be collecting these changes and making them
publically available as we get the time. Anyone with urgent research needs
to use these systems with the latest OSKit can contact us, otherwise just
stay tuned for separate announcements on this mailing list.
As before, go to http://www.cs.utah.edu/flux/oskit/
and everything hangs off there; currently mostly in ftp.
Thanks to all those who have sent in bug reports and/or fixes for past
snapshots. We appreciate your continued involvement in making the OSKit
more useful for everyone. All the best from the Flux Group!
----------------------------------------
From: Roland McGrath <roland@cs.utah.edu>
To: oskit-announce@flux.cs.utah.edu
Subject: New OSKit snapshot oskit-19991124
Date: Wed Nov 24 1999
This is an informal snapshot to make available the improvements we've made
to the OSKit lately, and give all you energetic OS hackers something to
chew on along with your leftover turkey this weekend. An incomplete list
of changes appears below.
As before, go to http://www.cs.utah.edu/flux/oskit/
and everything hangs off there; currently mostly in ftp.
Enjoy, and Happy Thanksgiving from the Flux Group!
New versions of Linux device drivers.
The entire suite of Linux device drivers has been updated to
2.2.12, replacing the code from Linux 2.0.29 used in previous
OSKit versions. This adds a number of new devices as well as
better versions of existing drivers, bringing the last 2.5 years
of Linux device driver development into the OSKit.
Floppy support.
The PC floppy disk driver (from Linux 2.2.12) is now available
(on x86 only). This driver has had only very minimal testing.
New versions of FreeBSD components.
The FreeBSD C library, math library, and network stack components
have been updated to release 3.2-STABLE of FreeBSD from the prior
collection of code from various 2.x releases. The ISA device
drivers taken from FreeBSD have not been updated.
OSKit StrongARM support improved.
The port of the OSKit to the StrongARM continues to progress
quickly. FreeBSD networking, NetBSD filesystem, and Linux
device driver support have been added. The builtin 10Mbit
ethernet and IDE Zip drive have been modestly tested. So far we
still only support the DNARD ("Shark") platform.
Flask security components.
Our colleagues at the NSA have integrated several more
components of the Flask security architecture (see
http://www.cs.utah.edu/flux/flask) into the OSKit, drawing upon
the work done in the Fluke operating system and from their
current work in Linux. This snapshot includes COM interfaces
and default implementations for the "access vector cache" and
"security server" components, as well as updates to the file
access control wrappers. The Flask COM interfaces are
documented in a new chapter of the OSKit documentation
(doc/flask.tex). A simple example program,
examples/x86/netbsd_sfs_com.c, demonstrates the use of the
security server and filesystem access check framework.
GCC 2.95 support for the x86.
Previous versions of the OSKit would not work (or even build)
with the EGCS line of GCC. This snapshot supports building with
GCC 2.95.2, which is now the recommended version to use.
Note that the StrongARM port has always required GCC 2.95.
(See the previous snapshot announcement in the ANNOUNCE file
for full details about the tools needed for the StrongARM build.)
Dropped a.out build support.
We no longer support an aout build of the OSKit. You can still
produce aout format kernels, but it is done by converting an ELF
kernel with mkbsdimage and a special version of GNU ld. Please
contact us if you have concerns about object file formats for
your uses of the OSKit.
Support for buffering/blocking console input instead of busy-wait.
A new component layered on top of the minimal console support
provides a console device with interrupt-driven, buffered input
and proper blocking support with no busy-waiting (for both the
serial-port console and the PC console). (This is still not a
production-quality device driver, and the default console
support remains unchanged, using a simple busy-wait.) The new
function start_cq_console in -loskit_startup is the easy way to
use the new console code.
"Enhanced" console support on X86.
The minimal output support for the X86 PC console has been
extended from emulating a teletype on steroids to emulating the
venerable ADM3A terminal, including support for a ^G bell using
the PC speaker. The minimal keyboard input support for the X86
console now recognizes the Control and Meta (Alt) modifier keys.
(You can enjoy the world's only ADM3A with 25 lines and a Meta key!)
Prototype packet dispatcher.
Framework for generic packet filtering support. Currently uses DPF.
Numerous bug fixes.
Fixed problem with interrupts being enabled too soon in the
base_* code. The most annoying manifestation of this was netboot
hanging/crashing on some machines.
Many bootp fixes from Michael Hohmuth <hohmuth@innocent.com>.
Thanks Michael!
Lots of fixes to the pthreads library. Most notably, a memory
leak when threads exited, indefinitely delayed thread cleanups,
and a random memory trashing bug on context switching.
Tweaks to X86 interrupt handling. Mostly related to GPROF support.
The interrupt flag should now consistantly be disabled in hardware
interrupt handlers and enabled in software interrupt handlers.
With GPROF, the profiling timer should almost always be enabled
except for small sections of code on interrupt entry and exit.
----------------------------------------
From: Leigh Stoller <stoller@fast.cs.utah.edu>
To: oskit-announce@flux.cs.utah.edu
Subject: OSKit StrongARM support
Date: Tue Sept 14 1999
This informal snapshot is to make available a very preliminary version
of StrongARM support. The only platform supported at this time is the
Digital DNARD (Shark), which contains an SA-110 StrongARM CPU, and an
I/O architecture that is very similar to a PC. There is still quite a
bit of work to do, and the device support is extremely limited since
the OSKit's device driver framework has not yet been ported to the
Digital DNARD. The only documentation at this time is this message,
although the kernel library is very similar to its x86 counterpart.
If you are familiar with the x86 kernel library, you should be able to
apply that knowledge to the ARM kernel library.
***********************************************************************
WARNING: If you are not interested in StrongARM support, then do not
update to this snapshot, as validation has been very minimal.
***********************************************************************
As before, go to http://www.cs.utah.edu/flux/oskit/
and everything hangs off there; currently mostly in ftp.
These components and libaries build and appear to work okay:
oskit crt kern
boot/ofw libc posix/sys
posix/sys_r threads svm
amm com exec
lmm dev startup
clientos memdebug memfs
fsnamespace/fsn fsnamespace/fsn_r
freebsd/libc freebsd/libc_r
examples/arm32 examples/arm32/extended examples/arm32/threads
There is a new boot adaptor in boot/ofw that provides OFW->Multiboot
boot adaptor support. The operation is very similar to the BSD boot
adaptor, in that you can give it a multiboot compliant executable plus
optional boot modules, and it will generate an OFW compliant (netbsd
a.out) image which you can boot via tftp (dhcp). See the mkofwimage
script in boot/ofw. Note that mkofwimage relies on linker emulation;
binutils needs to be built with both arm-elf and arm-netbsd targets
enabled so that an a.out file can be generated from ELF input files.
More on that below.
At the moment, the only console that is fully supported is the serial
console. VGA display output works, but keyboard input has not been
finished, so you will need to interact with your DNARD via a serial
line. The baud rate defaults to 9600, since that is the speed at
which the OFW boot loader drives the port. Of course, if you do not
need to input anything, you can use the display for output by changing
the "serial_console" variable in kern/arm32/shark/base_console_init.c.
These components are not yet available:
* FreeBSD networking and math library
* Netbsd filesystem
* Linux filesystems and device drivers
* Netboot and multiboot adaptor
* Runtime Linker (RTLD)
* bootp
* fsread
* video/X11/wimp
* Keyboard support
* GPROF profiling support
A note about compiler tools: Finding a consistent and working set of
tools that would allow us to build on our FreeBSD 3.0 machines was a
bit of a pain. We ended up using:
GCC 2.95
Binutils 990818 daily snapshot with a small patch
GDB 19990816 daily snapshot (for remote debugging)
Using this toolset, you can build ELF multiboot compliant libraries
and executables, but still create a proper OFW compliant a.out image
using linker emulation. You can pick up these tools at the OSKit ftp
site: ftp://flux.cs.utah.edu/flux/oskit/tools. There is a README file
in that directory with instructions on how to configure and build the
tools.
Once you have a working tool chain on your path, the OSKit can be
configured as follows (for cross compilation on a FreeBSD 3.0 box):
cd oskit-obj-dir
oskit-src-dir/configure --prefix=/your/prefix/dir \
--build=i586-freebsd arm-elf
gmake
gmake install
Once you have an example kernel, you can create an OFW-bootable image
using the mkofwimage script:
/your/prefix/dir/bin/mkofwimage -o foo.image your_kernel
cp foo.image /your/tftp/dir/proper_kernel_name
Then log into your DNARD, and reboot it.
---------------------------------------
From: Leigh Stoller <stoller@fast.cs.utah.edu>
To: oskit-announce@flux.cs.utah.edu
Subject: New OSKit Snapshot oskit-990722
Date: Thu July 22 1999
We are making this snapshot to get out a large amount of new code for
testing before making an official release of it. Much has changed,
including some changes to how OSKit kernels should initialize themselves.
Please take a look at the example programs in examples/x86 to see what
needs to be done. As a companion to this release, there are two new
substantial demonstration kernels available from the OSKit web page; an
"fsck" kernel FreeBSD disk partitions, and a kernelized version of the
popular "rsync" program.
As before, go to http://www.cs.utah.edu/projects/flux/oskit/
and everything hangs off there; currently mostly in ftp.
A number of changes and fixes are contained in this snapshot:
Rework of the C and POSIX libraries to remove all linktime external
dependencies. All external interfaces are now accessed via a
services database that is provided to the C/POSIX library when the
kernel is initialized. The clientos library (described below) is
responsible for setting up the services database, as well as the C
library environment object that contains an assorted collection of
interfaces that only the C/POSIX library are interested in (such as
the console stream, the filesystem namespace, the memory allocator
for malloc, the sleep interface to give up the CPU in select,
etc.).
Addition of a new "ClientOS" library to encapsulate and initialize
many of the interfaces that an application program is dependent on,
typically through the C/POSIX library. The clientos is a mandatory
library that is responsible for initializing certain core
interfaces, such as the memory object (lowest level allocator), the
global registry, the C library environment object, and the default
console stream object. See the Client Operating System
(doc/clientos.tex) chapter in the documentation, as well as the
example programs for the new initialization sequence (notably, the
requirement of a call to oskit_clientos_init() in all OSKit
kernels).
Addition of a new Dynamic Linker/Loader (RTLD) library to allow ELF
format OSKit kernels to dynamically load ELF format shared
libraries (.so) files. This code is imported from the FreeBSD 3.0
rtld-elf library, and is contained in the rtld directory. See the
RTLD chapter in the documentation, (doc/rtld.tex) and the
demonstration kernel in examples/dyntest.
Lots of improvements and additions to the "startup" library.
Although still undocumented, the startup library is intended to
insulate the application program from the details of initializing
many devices and subsystems, and to aid in setting up the client
operating system. All of the example programs (sans one or two
maybe) now use the startup library for most of their device and
subsystem initialization. See the example programs in examples/x86.
Completion of the "services database" COM interface and
implementation. The services database is a registry that maps GUID
to COM object instantiation. Its original implementation allowed
for a single global registry accessed by global functions. The
implementation is now complete, and allows per-object
instantiation. The global registry is now an instantiation of such
an object, but for backwards compatibility, is still accessible
through the original global function calls. See the Interface
Registration (doc/register.tex) chapter in the documentation.
Addition of a new filesystem namespace component. All pathname
translation has been moved out of the POSIX library and into the
oskit_fsnamespace component, which also encapsulates mount/unmount
and mountpoint traversal. Also does symlink traversal. See
oskit/fs/fsnamespace.h. In addition, a pathname cache (much like
the "namei" cache in the unix FS) was added to prevent repeated
entry into the driver framework to do directory lookups. This
resulted in huge performance improvements (up to 6x) in programs
that make heavy use of pathname translation (eg: rsync). The
improvement was especially pronounced in multithreaded programs,
where each entry into the driver framework results in the process
lock being taken and released. See the fsnamespace chapter in the
documentation (doc/fsnamespace.tex), and the startup library
(startup/start_fs.c) for example usage.
Pthread library: Rework the mutex/condition code. Some general
clean up, and now allows statically allocated and initialized
mutexes and condition variables. A statically allocated mutex or
condition will be properly initialized the first time it is used if
the program does not arrange for that to happen explicitly. Also
added sigwait, sigwaitinfo, sigtimedwait and sigqueue to the
multithreaded version of the signal code. Add documentation for the
CPU Inheritance framework to the pthread chapter.
Add small amounts of support for rsync and fsck kernels. More
additions to the C (added stuff that was previously excluded) and
POSIX library (some tty ioctls, getpass, lots of trivial stubs to
allow linking). Added asyncio I/O support to the COM pipe
implementation since rsync uses pipes with select. Some fixes to
the network code to make sure that connections to a server get torn
before the oskit reboots, and to make sure a new initial segment
value gets chosen so that the server side is not confused by a new
connection with an old segment value. This was causing failed
connections from the rsync client to the rsync server when doing
quick reboots. Much improved versions of memset, bzero, bcopy,
memcpy, etc (from NetBSD). Make sure all open files are closed
before the oskit reboots, so that all files are flushed to disk and
the disk can be cleanly unmounted.
A number of GPROF fixes and improvements when using the FreeBSD C
library. Certain errors (such as no a.out file) no longer result in
a partly written gmon.out file. This allows postmortem dump of the
gprof data, rather than having it dumped out on the console. Also
added a start_gprof() entrypoint to get the gprof code running in
main, since it is often the case that you do not want to count the
initialization code, or even have to worry about it. See
examples/x86/hello.c for an example program that uses
start_gprof().
The memfs now understands internal vs. external links (akin to
internal and external inode link counts in UNIX), which allows more
precise cleanup semantics and fixes memory leaks in some usage
patterns. Several global variables were eliminated in favor of
per-instantiation variables. Stat now returns more accurate
information about the file.
The simple console now uses COM Stream wrappers for the console
drivers (direct, gdb, serial). Simplified base_console to use the
COM wrappers and separated out initialization into
base_console_init.c making it easier to override just the
initialization.
A fair amount of documentation reorganization, as well as some
additional chapters. The OSKit web page also reflects these
documentation changes (unlike the previous snapshot).
Osenv stuff. All of the "osenv" interfaces in the device library
have been COMified, and are exported to the device driver
libraries (Linux, Freebsd, Netbsd), which have been reworked to use
the dynamic interfaces, rather than static linktime dependencies on
the device library itself. These changes are not well documented
yet, but if you stick to using the "startup" library to initialize
your kernels, you should not have to worry about it much. Feel free
to ask us questions though.
---------------------------------------
From: Leigh Stoller <stoller@fast.cs.utah.edu>
To: oskit-announce@flux.cs.utah.edu
Subject: New OSKit Snapshot oskit-990402
Date: Fri April 2 1999
The main reason we're making this snapshot is to get out the new
support for running OSKit kernels in emulation mode on top of Linux
(previously it only ran on FreeBSD). Linux users with their own
OSKit kernels please give it a whirl and report back.
See doc/unix-support.tex for details; search for "Linux".
As before, go to http://www.cs.utah.edu/projects/flux/oskit/
and everything hangs off there; currently mostly in ftp.
A number of modest changes and fixes are contained in this snapshot:
Unix Mode emulation:
-Added support for building and running the Unix emulation
package on Linux (ELF) and Freebsd 3.0 (a.out and ELF).
-Simplified the libraries and link lines in the makefiles so
that building an oskit kernel under Unix mode is easier to do.
-Added code to several of the example kernels (socket_bsd,
http_proxy) to demonstrate the use of Unix mode options.
Netboot kernel:
-Speed improvements: Overlap requests of several blocks of data at
a time from the network, instead of serially in 1K chunks.
-Added support for building a GRUB-style DOS boot floppy image
containing the GRUB boot loader and a netboot kernel.
Moved the bmod filesystem code out of the kernel library and into
its own library (liboskit_memfs). See memfs/memfs_com.c. The memory
file system is now completely independent of the multiboot and bmod
parsing code, allowing easier creation of multiple memory file
systems. The support code to populate a memfs from a multiboot bmod
is now part of the startup library. See startup/start_fs_bmod.c for
example usage.
Creating kernels: added a new perl script for creating
MultiBoot images, "mkmb2". Works the same as mkmbimage, but
runs much faster on large kernels.
Cleaned up the NetBSD glue code. Removed the fs library support
code, and replaced it with different glue code that uses the osenv_
routines in the device library (just as the Linux and Freebsd
drivers already did).
Pthread library changes: Implementation of pthread_kill() and
pthread_sigmask(). Conformant pthread_cleanup_push/pop; now
lexically scoped. A number of name changes to make the distinction
between API functions and local additons clear.
Assorted minor bug fixes.
----------------------------------------
From: Jay Lepreau <lepreau@cs.utah.edu>
To: oskit-announce@flux.cs.utah.edu
Subject: New OSKit release, 0.97
Date: Fri Jan 15 1999
As before, go to http://www.cs.utah.edu/projects/flux/oskit/
and everything hangs off there; currently mostly in ftp.
The significant changes in 0.97 are:
Many thread library fixes and improvements. CPU inheritance
scheduling is much more stable, as is the generic threads code.
Restructuring of the minimal C library and FreeBSD C libraries. The
syscall to COM layer was split out into a separate library (see the
posix directory). Both C libraries now use the posix library for the
COM layer calls.
Patch1 to 0.96:
Fixes to the FreeBSD ISA device drivers. Now operational, and can be
used to provide a proper console TTY device that does cooked input.
See the example program console_tty.c in examples/x86/extended,
which demonstrates how to initialize a console TTY device and have
the FreeBSD C library make use of it.
Changes to how boot options are handled; OSKit programs no longer
see booting-options, such as "-h" or "-d", in argv. These are now
stored in the oskit_bootargv array. This is to make porting Unix
programs to the OSKit easier since they do not need to have special
OSKit code to tweak argv. Syntax is documented at the end of the
Intro chapter.
We provide a mini-Java-shell for the Kaffe/OSKit environment. All
the OSKit changes have been merged into Transvirtual's tree (but
shortly after they did a major change in build tools so we provide a
separate Kaffe tar file for the nonce).
The above improvements were mainly due to the good work of Leigh Stoller;
Bart Robinson did the booting/cmdline work and Godmar Back does a lot in all
Kaffe-related work.
Fixes for all the bugs/fixes you sent in (thanks!) and others, including:
-Fixed remote GDB code so function calls from GDB work correctly.
-Linux ext2fs fixes
-lmm assert fix
-fix sleep record leak in linux/dev
-mklinuximage upgraded to match other mk* scripts
-Bad linuxboot.bin.good replaced with good uuencoded linuxboot.bin.uue.
Small stuff, including:
-Changes to support Kaffe.
-Add a #define for _OSKIT_VERSION in oskit/version.h.
-Some new files in preparation for importing secure filesystem and
networking components.
-Document arg syntax for mk*image scripts, in their comments.
----------------------------------------
From: Jay Lepreau <lepreau@cs.utah.edu>
To: oskit-announce@flux.cs.utah.edu
Subject: OSKit 0.96 was released today
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 98 21:58:09 MST
Go to http://www.cs.utah.edu/projects/flux/oskit/
and follow your nose for all the goodies.
Briefly: it's up to 30 component libraries now, comes with 45 example
mini-kernels, a 500 page (help!) document with few blank pages anymore
(although still lots of gaps in it), can be configured with full
multithreading and Posix threads, has prototype CPU inheritance scheduling
in it (5 policies including 2 real time), has a hierarchical network
link-sharing component, has a "simple virtual memory" component including
pageout. Has most Linux [and BSD] filesystems, several networking libs, the full
FreeBSD library (which means most of Posix), lots of device drivers (perhaps
60), profiling support, and some minimal video and window manager support.
A currently inelegant but useful component lets you run many kernels on Unix
in user-mode, which is great for debugging. Most components now use the COM
object model, which is a first in internal OS design.
Just about every component is optional, and unlike any other OS, is designed
to fit into *other* operating systems and environments if desired. Of
course the OSKit's got problems, too, don't we all. There are a ton of
things that it needs. One nice thing in that regard is that it's easy to
incrementally add to the OSKit. Let's do it!
Re licensing, the OSKit comes with full source, and is GPL'ed; "open
source" is now the "in" term apparently. If a business or someone has
trouble with the GPL, the University is willing to talk about other options.
As a special holiday bonus-- for such patience on your part-- this release
supports a version, which we provide, of the Kaffe OpenVM (Java to you) from
Transvirtual. Thus you can link them together and you've got Kaffe on the
bare HW [but without local display support], or with a configuration change,
you can run the same "Java OS" on
top of Unix. Our Kaffe changes will go into the next beta release.
Thanks to Tim Wilkinson and his company for giving Kaffe to the world.
We are grateful to the long line of free software project from whom we drew
code, including Mach, Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and XFree86. The GNU build
tools were, as always, invaluable. DARPA's support has been great.
Finally, I want to thank and acknowledge the fine team at Utah that has
accomplished so much, and with whom I have the honor to work with. Check
out the CREDITS file for their names.
Jay Lepreau
University of Utah
lepreau@cs.utah.edu
----------------------------------------
OSKIT 0.96 December 18, 1998
Modest changes from 0.95, publically distributed.
----------------------------------------
OSKIT 0.95 June 29, 1998
Huge changes and additions.
Distributed to a few sites, but not widely.
----------------------------------------
OSKIT 0.60 September 1, 1996
Significant changes from 0.50, publically distributed.
----------------------------------------
OSKIT 0.50 July 12, 1996
First version released to the public.