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genode/doc/release_notes/23-08.txt
Norman Feske 7541c357ca Release notes for version 23.08
2023-08-24 11:33:24 +02:00

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===============================================
Release notes for the Genode OS Framework 23.08
===============================================
Genode Labs
The headline features of Genode 23.08 are concerned with developer tooling.
First, we re-approached Genode's GDB debugging support with the grand vision
of easy on-target debugging directly on Sculpt OS. Our new debug monitor
introduced in Section [Multi-component debug monitor] combines the GDB
protocol with Genode's init component. Thereby, the monitor can transparently
be integrated in Genode subsystems and can be used to debug multiple
components simultaneously.
Second, the Goa tool, which started as an experiment in 2019, has been shaped
into an all-encompassing alternative to Genode's traditional work flows for
developing, porting, and publishing applications. The tool got vastly more
flexible with respect to runtime testing, and even became able to handle
dependencies between Goa projects. The massive improvements are covered in
Section [Goa tool gets usability improvements and depot-index publishing support].
Besides the headline features of the release, we admittedly deviated from the
original plans laid out on our [http:/about/road-map - road map]. Early-on in
the release cycle, we found ourselves drawn to code modernization, the
retiring of legacies, and quality assurance. E.g., we finally updated some of
the most veteran internals of the framework to our modern-day coding
practices, we urged to continue the success story of our new Linux
device-driver environment (DDE) by replacing old USB drivers by new components
leveraging the modern approach, and created a new DDE-Linux-based NIC driver
for PC hardware while retiring the aged iPXE-based traditional driver. The
outcome of this tireless work may hardly be visible from a feature perspective.
But it greatly improves the velocity and quality of the code to maintain down
the road.
It goes without saying that the other topics of the road map haven't been
disregarded. In fact we celebrated a break-through with x86 virtualization
on our base-hw kernel, are diving deep into the latest Intel platforms, and
working on the user-visible side of the mobile version of Sculpt OS. But since
those topics are not wrapped up yet, we all have to stay tuned for the next
release.
Multi-component debug monitor
#############################
The debugging of Genode components using the GNU debugger (GDB) was already
an anticipated feature when we introduced the first version of the GDB monitor
component in version
[https://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/11.05#GDB_monitor_experiment - 11.05]
and refined it in the subsequent releases
[https://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/12.02#GDB_monitor_refinements_and_automated_test - 12.02],
[https://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/13.11#GNU_Debugger - 13.11] (on-target GDB), and
[https://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/16.05#Enhanced_GDB_support_on_NOVA - 16.05] (supporting NOVA).
Despite these efforts, the feature remained rarely used in practice.
In most situations, manual instrumentation with debug messages or the use
of GDB with the Linux version of Genode remain to be the instruments of choice.
Driven by the vision of easy on-target debugging on Sculpt OS, we identified
the following limitations of the existing GDB monitor that stand in the way.
# The GDB monitor supports only one component as debugging target, which makes
the debugging of scenarios where components closely interact difficult.
# The existing implementation re-uses the gdbserver code and thereby inherits
many POSIX peculiarities that must be stubbed for Genode, yet make the
overall implementation complex. Genode is not POSIX after all.
# The integration of the GDB monitor into an existing scenario is a fairly
invasive change that requires too much work.
Given these limitations as a backdrop, two key ideas motivated a new approach
for the revision of Genode's GDB support for this release:
First, by using Genode's sandbox API as foundation for a new debug monitor,
we would become able to use the monitor as drop-in replacement for 'init',
potentially going as far as using the monitor for Sculpt's runtime subsystem.
Wouldn't that approach vastly simplify the integration issue (3)?
Second, GDB supports the debugging of multiple processes (called inferiors)
within one session, which would in principle allow us to inspect and debug
component compositions, addressing the first limitation.
And third, the casual review of the documentation of the GDB protocol left
the impression that a Genode-tailored implementation shouldn't be that
complicated.
The result of these ideas is the new *monitor* component at _os/src/monitor_
as the designated successor of the traditional gdb_monitor. By leveraging the
sandbox API, it can be used as a drop-in replacement for the init component
and monitor multiple components. In real-world scenarios like Sculpt's
runtime, we deliberately want/need to restrict the debugging to a few selected
components, however, which calls for the support of a mix of monitored and
regular components hosted side by side. Given this requirement, the sandbox
API had to be enhanced to support the selective interception of PD and CPU
sessions.
Like the original gdb_monitor, the new monitor speaks the GDB remote serial
protocol over Genode's terminal session. But the protocol implementation does
not re-use any gdbserver code, sidestepping the complexities of POSIX.
The monitor supports the essential GDB remote protocol commands for reading
and writing of memory and registers, for stopping and resuming of threads
including single-stepping, and it reports the occurrence of page faults and
exceptions to GDB. Breakpoints are managed by GDB using software breakpoint
instructions. The GDB protocol is operated in GDB's 'non-stop' mode, which
means that threads of multiple inferiors can be stopped and resumed
individually or in groups, depending on the GDB commands issued by the user.
As of now, the monitor supports NOVA on 64-bit x86 as well as Genode's custom
base-hw kernel on 64-bit ARM and x86. The 64-bit ARM support required a change
in Genode's customized GDB port to enable shared-library support for this
architecture. So in order to use Genode's host GDB with the monitor on 64-bit
ARM, the Genode tool chain needs to be rebuilt with the _tool/tool_chain_
script.
There exist three run scripts illustrating the new component. The
_os/run/monitor.run_ script exercises memory inspection via the 'm' command
and memory modification via the 'M' command by letting a test program monitor
itself. The _os/run/monitor_gdb.run_ script performs automated tests of various
GDB commands and the _os/run/monitor_gdb_interactive.run_ script allows for the
interactive use of GDB to interact with monitored components.
Details about the configuration of the monitor component are given by the
README file at the _os/src/monitor/_ directory.
Goa tool gets usability improvements and depot-index publishing support
#######################################################################
Moving the Goa tool under the umbrella of Genode Labs in the previous release
unleashed a wave of substantial improvements.
Most significantly, we were able to integrate support for depot-index projects
into Goa (Section [Support of index projects]). This greatly simplifies the
publishing of user-specific Goa projects for the upcoming Sculpt release.
One of the game-changing features of Goa is its ability to easily test-run
applications on the host system leveraging Genode's ABI compatibility between
different kernels. However, in various instances, we still required customized
runtime scenarios in order to render an application runnable by Goa. With this
release, we further streamlined Goa's base-linux runtime with Sculpt OS
(Section [Run-stage generalization]).
Apart from these major changes, the lately added shared-library support and
Rust support have seen practical improvements.
Support of index projects
=========================
With an increasing number of Genode applications being developed with Goa,
being able to manage and publish a personal depot index with Goa became due.
In the past, we needed to build, export, and publish each individual Goa
project and manually add it to the depot index in order to make it available
for a particular Sculpt release.
For this purpose, we added support for index projects to Goa. An index project
is defined by an 'index' file. This file follows the structure of a depot index
but only names the archive names (lacking depot user and version). The
'goa export' command augments these names with the current depot user and
version information. By running 'goa publish', the result is published as a
depot index for the current Sculpt version.
As Goa supports a hierarchical project structure, an index project may
contain subdirectories with other Goa projects that provide the corresponding
pkg archives. The 'goa export' command issued within such an index project
recursively scans the working directory for any Goa project providing the
required depot archives or any of their dependencies, and exports these
subprojects as well.
To make working with index projects an even more joyful experience, we changed
the way Goa looks up version information. Goa used to expect the current
version of each required depot archive to be specified in a goarc file. For
each Goa project, however, a 'version' file may be used to specify the current
version. This file was only evaluated on export of the particular project.
With this release, Goa now scans the working directory for Goa subprojects in
order to look up their 'version' file. This spares us keeping the 'version'
files and goarc files in sync. The new 'bump-version' command adds another
level of convenience as it automatically updates the 'version' file of a Goa
project. In combination with the '-r' switch, we are now able to update the
version information of all subprojects with a single command.
An example of an index project is found at _examples/index_ in the Goa
repository.
:Goa tool:
[https://github.com/genodelabs/goa/]
Run-stage generalization
========================
In addition to building, exporting, and publishing of depot archives, Goa
supports test-running an application project directly on the development
system by utilizing base-linux. Similarly to how Goa modularized the build
stage to support various build systems, we generalized the run stage to pave
the way for other targets than base-linux. The interface of the generalized
run stage and the current feature set of the linux target is documented by
'goa help targets'.
In the course of generalizing the run stage, we introduced various plausibility
checks to further accelerate application development. For instance, we check
for typos in required and provided services of a runtime, and verify the
availability of required ROM modules.
Furthermore, the linux target underwent a major revision to streamline the
application development for Sculpt OS.
* Scenarios using a terminal component require a fonts file system.
In Sculpt OS, this is typically provided by instantiating a fonts_fs
component. Doing the same in Goa lifts the need to wrap Goa-managed
Sculpt packages in a separate test project.
* A route for the mesa_gpu_drv.lib.so ROM module was implicitly added when
a Gpu was required. For consistency with existing packages, we now require
the runtime file to mention the mesa_gpu_drv.lib.so ROM explicitly.
* For NIC requirements, we used to take the label as the tap-device name to
which the NIC driver was bound. Since the 'label' attribute might be
evaluated differently by Sculpt OS, we introduced the 'tap_name' attribute
instead. For each distinct tap device, we now instantiate a pair of NIC
driver and NIC router. Each router uses a distinct subnet for its default
domain, starting at 10.0.10.0/24 and ending at 10.0.255.0/24.
* The clipboard ROM and Report requirements are now routed to a report_rom
component.
* Arbitrary ROM requirements are routed to an lx_fs component that provides
the files found in the project's _var/rom_ directory as individual ROM
modules. An example resides in _examples/external_rom_. Thanks to Pirmin
Duss for this useful contribution.
* Remaining service requirements that are not handled otherwise will be routed
to a black-hole component.
Improved support for building shared libraries
==============================================
Since release 23.02, we are able to
[https://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/23.02#Building_and_packaging_CMake-based_shared_libraries__via_Goa_ - build CMake-based shared libraries in Goa].
In this release, this feature has seen a few improvements:
* If available, Goa now calls 'make install' during build in order to install
artifacts into _<build_dir>/install_. For libraries, this typically also
installs include files into this directory. Having all include files in the
build directory is a prerequisite for extracting these as api artifacts
(see 'goa help api').
* We added support for publishing api archives.
* 'goa export' now respects the 'common_var_dir' configuration variable and
'--common-var-dir' command-line option when exporting api archives.
* We fixed an issue that resulted in large binaries when building shared
libraries with Goa.
Quality assurance and usability tweaks
======================================
Increasing our development efforts for the Goa tool demands means to catch
regressions early on. For this purpose, we added a basic testing facility,
which validates that our examples still work as expected. Note that we are
going to address automated testing for arbitrary Goa projects at some point in
the future.
With this release, we changed the name of the '.goarc' files to 'goarc'. The
original intention of these files was to allow user-specific settings
analogously to, e.g., '.bashrc'. However, these files may contain arbitrary Tcl
code, thus having various '.goarc' files checked into git repositories, made
things a little bit too obscure because those files are hidden. When a user
clones a Git repo and invokes Goa commands, this code gets executed. Hence, it
is only fair to bring this code to the user's attention by not hiding it.
In addition to all the aforementioned major changes, we added a couple of minor
usability tweaks:
* We added 'goa help import' in order to document the syntax of the 'import'
file.
* We added the 'goa depot-dir' command that allows initializing a custom depot
directory with the default depot users.
* We added a 'goa run-dir' command that prepares the run directory without
actually running the scenario. This is helpful when the run time of 'goa run'
is automatically evaluated by external scripts since 'goa run-dir' may take a
while downloading the required depot archives.
* We added the 'run_as' configuration variable and '--run-as' command-line
option. This allows changing the depot user from which 'goa run' downloads
the required archives. See 'goa help config' for more details.
Support for the mainline Rust toolchain
=======================================
When we reintroduced Rust on Genode in the
[https://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/23.05#Initial_Rust_support - previous]
release, our implementation relied on a slightly adapted Rust toolchain to
work around missing support for versioned library symbols in our linker. With
this release, we are now able to use the mainline 'x86_64-unknown-freebsd'
target provided by Rust project, eliminating the need for a custom toolchain.
On top of the streamlined Rust support, we created a Goa package for a popular
Rust command-line application, which will be published along with updated
system packages in the upcoming Sculpt release.
For details on the mainline Rust toolchain support and the ported package,
take a look at the dedicated
[https://genodians.org/atopia/2023-08-24-enabling-the-upstream-rust-toolchain - blog post on Genodians.org].
Base framework and OS-level infrastructure
##########################################
Internal core and base-framework modernization
==============================================
Genode's API received multiple rounds of modernization in the past years. But
some of the framework's deepest internals remained largely unchanged over that
time. Even though one can argue that mature and battle-tested code should
better not be disrupted, our programming practices are not carved in stone.
To make Genode's internal code a delight for reviewers, auditors, and future
maintainers, we revisited the following areas.
Core's page-fault resolution code got reworked for improved clarity and
safety, by introducing dedicated result types, reducing the use of basic
types, choosing expressive names, and fostering constness. Along the way, we
introduced a number of 'print' hooks that greatly ease manual instrumentation
and streamlines diagnostic messages printed by core. Those messages no longer
appear when a user-level page-fault handler is registered for the faulted-at
region map. So the monitor component produces less noise on the attempt to
dump non-existing memory.
Closely related to the page-fault handling, we tightened the distinction
between rx and rwx inside core by restricting 'Region_map::attach_executable'
to create read-only mappings, while offering the option to map the full rights
using a new 'attach_rwx' method. The 'attach_rwx' method is now used by the
dynamic linker to explicitly attach the linker area with full rwx rights. With
the old page-fault handling code, the execute flag was evaluated only for leaf
dataspaces, not for managed dataspaces while traversing region-map
hierarchies. With the new page-fault handling code, the execute bit is
downgraded to no-execute when passing a managed dataspace that is not attached
as executable.
We ultimately removed the last traces of the global 'env_deprecated()'
interface that was still relied-on within core and parts of the base library.
Nowadays, we no longer use global accessors but generally employ
dependency-injection patterns. Since the 'env_deprecated()' interface is
closely related to initialization code, the startup code of core and regular
components got largely refactored, eliminating the reliance on global side
effects. As a collateral change, the legacy 'main' support for native Genode
component as well as the now-obsolete 'Entrypoint::schedule_suspend' mechanism
got removed.
API changes
===========
Register framework update
-------------------------
The register framework has been updated to ease its use with '-Wconversion'
warnings enabled, which is the default for Genode components.
When reading from a bitfield, the new version returns the value in the
smallest possible integer type, not the register-access type. This way,
the user of the bitfield value can use appropriate types without the need for
casting. The update also replaces 'bool' access types with 'uint8_t' access
types.
Thanks to this change, the net lib - used by Genode's low-level network
routing components for parsing protocol headers via the register API - has
been made compliant to strict conversion warnings.
Hex-dump utility
----------------
To aid the monitoring, implementation, and debugging of binary protocols, a
handy hex-dump utility got added to _util/formatted_output.h_. The new
'Genode::Hex_dump' class can be used to print a hexadecimal dump of a byte
range. The data is printed in a format similar to that used by the 'xxd'
utility. In addition to the 'xxd' format, consecutive duplicate lines are
replaced with a single "*\n".
Libraries and applications
##########################
New NIC server for raw uplink connectivity
==========================================
With Genode
[https://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/21.02#Pluggable_network_device_drivers - 21.02],
we transitioned all network device drivers to act as session clients in order
to make them pluggable. We achieved this by introducing a new _uplink_ service
interface that is very similar to the NIC service but with the peer roles
switched. Up to now, the only uplink server and uplink-to-NIC adapter was the
NIC router. This is reasonable as it is the standard network multiplexer in
Genode and therefore normally sits in front of each network device driver
anyway. However, there is one major issue with this approach: It binds
physical network access to layer 3 and 4 routing respectively layer 2
multiplexing, which, in our case, means that NIC clients can talk to the
physical network only with what is protocol-wise supported by the NIC router.
That's why Genode 23.08 introduces the new NIC-uplink adapter component. It
re-enables raw access to physical networks in Genode by forwarding packets
unmodified and unfiltered between multiple NIC sessions and one uplink
session. The new component is accompanied by a test script _nic_uplink.run_
that demonstrates the low-level integration and a Sculpt package _pkg/pc_nic_
that can be used for deployment in more sophisticated systems together with
the PC NIC-driver as back end.
One constellation, in which the NIC-uplink server will be especially useful for
us is the planned enablement of IPv6 on different layers of Genode's network
stack. More specifically, the tool will allow us to work at IPv6 support in
both Genode's ported TCP/IP stacks and the NIC router at the same time.
New depot-remove component
==========================
_The work described in this section was contributed by Alice Domage._
_Thanks for this welcome addition._
Genode's on-target package management allows for the installation of multiple
versions of the same package side by side, which is useful to roll back the
system to an earlier state, or to accommodate software depending on an older
library version. Software is installed into the so-called _depot_ stored on
the target and populated with downloads on demand. Until now, however, the
on-target depot could only grow, not shrink. Even though this limitation
hasn't been a pressing concern for Sculpt OS on the PC, it impeded embedded
use cases.
The new depot-remove component lifts this limitation by providing an orderly
way to remove depot content and orphaned dependencies. It operates by reading
its configuration and processes delete operations based on the provided rules.
A typical configuration looks as follows.
! <config arch="x86_64" report="yes">
! <remove user="alice" pkg="nano3d"/>
! <remove user="bob" pkg="wm" version="2042-42-42"/>
! <remove-all>
! <keep user="alice" pkg="fonts_fs"/>
! </remove-all>
! </config>
For more details about the configuration options, please refer to the README
file at _/gems/src/app/depot_remove/_. Furthermore, the
_gems/run/depot_remove.run_ script illustrates the component by exercising
several practical use cases.
DDE-Linux changes
=================
With this release, we changed how external events are treated within the
Linux emulation environment.
Whenever an external event occurred, for example timer or interrupt, the
corresponding I/O signal handler was triggered. This handler unblocked the
task waiting for the event and also initiated the immediate execution of all
unblocked tasks. This, however, could lead to nested execution because these
tasks might hit serialization points, e.g., synchronously waiting for packet
stream operations, that under the hood also require handling of other I/O
signals. Such an execution model is not supported and confusing as it mixes
application and I/O level signal handling.
So the flagging of the scheduling intent is now decoupled from its execution by
using an application-level signal handler that is run in the context of the
component's main entrypoint. The I/O signal handler now triggers the scheduling
execution by sending a local signal to the EP and only flags the occurrence
of the external event by unblocking the corresponding task.
In this context, we reworked the interrupt handling itself. Previously all
interrupts were immediately processed in the I/O signal handler and only the
currently pending one was handled. Due to the decoupling change the occurrence
of interrupts becomes merely flagging a state and requires recording all
interrupts and dispatch them consecutively in one go.
To facilitate this convention, the Lx_kit initialization function got extended,
and it is now necessary to pass in a signal handler that is used to perform the
normally occurring scheduler execution. As this signal handler is part of
the main object of the DDE-Linux based component it is the natural place to
perform any additional steps that are required by the component before or after
executing the scheduler.
As it is sometimes necessary to execute a pending schedule from the EP directly,
in case the scheduler is called from within an RPC function, the scheduler is
extended with the 'execute' member function that performs the check that the
scheduler is called from within the EP and triggers the execution afterwards.
Tresor block encryptor
======================
Following the introduction of the tresor library in the
[https://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/23.05#Revision_of_Genode_s_custom_block-encryption_infrastructure - previous]
release, we further polished the tresor tester in order to make it run on a
broad spectrum of target platforms. For instance, the test can now be run
without entropy input (permanently warning the user about the security risk)
because some of our test hardware lacks support for it. Besides that, we
mainly worked at the resource consumption of the test - made it more adaptable
or reduced it through improvements. This pleased not only less powerful
hardware but our test management as well.
Furthermore, we fixed a significant former deficiency with the tresor library.
The library used to work on the raw on-disc data without decoding first. This
worked fine for some platforms but caused alignment faults on others. That
said, the tresor library now always decodes into naturally typed and aligned
C++ structs before accessing the data.
Device drivers
##############
Intel GPU
=========
The handling of GPUs is somewhat special within the driver world. A GPU is a
standalone execution unit that can be programmed much like a CPU. In the past,
there were fixed function GPUs, which have been gradually replaced by
dynamically programmable units that execute compiled machine code (think
shader compilers like GLSL or general purpose computing like CUDA or OpenCL).
This leads to a situation where a GPU driver cannot trust the client that
sends its machine code to be executed by the GPU. There exists no sufficient
way of inspecting the compiled machine code for malicious behavior by the GPU
driver. Therefore, the only reasonable solution for a GPU driver is to send
the code to the GPU and hope for the best. In case the code execution is not
successful, GPUs tend to just hang and the only thing a driver can do is to
make sure via an IOMMU that the code does not access arbitrary memory and
program a watchdog timer and reset the GPU to a graceful state in case there
is no proper response. With the current Genode release, we have implemented
this behavior for GEN9 (HD graphics) and GEN12 (Intel Iris Xe).
Intel display
=============
The ported Linux Intel display driver now supports USB Type-C connectors as
used with modern notebooks.
New PC network driver based on DDE-Linux
========================================
Since 2010, we use Ethernet drivers ported from the iPXE project in a tiny
emulation layer on Genode. While those drivers did a good job for the common
cases, they always had some rough edges that may not hurt in the original
network-booting use case but had become a nuisance in Sculpt OS and Genode
in general. Most prominently the dropped link speed with Intel E1000e cards
on cable unplug/plug and the moderate throughput on GBit links had to be
addressed.
Our new DDE Linux approach introduced this year makes the porting of drivers
from the Linux kernel much easier and less labour-intensive as in the past.
Also, Linux is a very tempting Ethernet driver donor because of the variety
of supported devices and the well known excellent performance (especially on
Intel devices). Moreover, the Intel E1000e driver addresses all issues we
had with the iPXE implementation and promises a smooth interplay with Intel
AMT/ME. Note, Intel AMT Serial-over-LAN is still an important debug console
while deploying Genode on Intel-based notebooks.
Hence, the current release brings the new _pc_nic_drv_ for Intel e1000/e1000e,
Realtek 8169, and AMD PCnet32 (Qemu) devices on PC and is fully integrated
into Sculpt OS. Performance-wise the driver easily saturates 1 GBit links in
our throughput tests.
USB host controller
===================
The USB host controller driver ports for Raspberry Pi 1 and i.MX 6 Quad got
updated to Linux kernel version 6.1.37 resp. 6.1.20. Both driver ports share
the renewed device-driver environment approach for Linux introduced in release
[https://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/21.08#Linux-device-driver_environment_re-imagined - 21.08].
Besides the update of the last remaining outdated USB host controller drivers,
we have reworked the common C/C++ Linux-to-Genode USB back end used by all USB
host controller driver incarnations. The internal changes were necessary to
address issues regarding races during USB session close attempts, resets of
USB endpoints, and potential stalls during synchronous USB RPC calls.
PC audio refinements
====================
In this release, we simplified the memory allocator in the OpenBSD-based
audio-driver component and thereby decreased its memory usage. The memory
subsystem implementation was initially brought over from DDE Linux and is
geared towards use cases where a high-performing allocator is desired. For the
audio driver with its clear memory usage pattern, such an allocator is not
necessary and since no other driver that could benefit from it was ported in
the meantime, we opted for replacing the implementation with a simpler one
with less overhead.
We also adapted the mixer state report mechanism to always generate a new
report on head-phone jack sense events.
Furthermore, we decreased the internal buffer size to implicitly limit the
number of blocks provisioned for recording that brings them in line with the
number of blocks used for playback (2).
Wifi
====
With the [DDE-Linux changes] in place, we had to adapt the initialization
procedure in the wireless LAN driver since it behaves differently to all other
DDE-Linux-based driver components. The driver is actually a 'Libc::Component'
due to its incorporation of the 'wpa_spplicant' application and the driver
itself is confined to its own shared-object to better separate the Linux code.
Since we implement the Linux initcalls as static constructors, we have to
initialize the Lx_kit before those are executed. This is normally not a
problem because they are executed manually from within the drivers main object
on construction. However, in a 'Libc::Component' this happens before our main
object is constructed. In the past, we used a VFS plugin to perform the
initialization - as the VFS is also constructed beforehand - but this is no
longer possible as the driver's main signal handler that now dispatches the
Lx_kit event signals is not available at this point.
We decided therefore to perform a multi-staged boot-up process where the
component is now implemented as regular 'Genode::Component' that triggers the
'Libc::Component' construction manually after performing the Lx_kit
initialization. This change enabled us to remove the VFS 'wifi' plugin that no
longer has to be specified in the VFS configuration.
Furthermore, we removed the handcrafted MAC address reporter in favor of the
Genode C API utility that was recently made available.
PinePhone support for buttons and screensaver
=============================================
To equip the mobile version of Sculpt OS on the PinePhone with a proper
screensaver, we added drivers for detecting user interactions with the
PinePhone's physical buttons, namely the volume buttons and the power button.
The volume buttons are connected via cascaded resistors to a single ADC of the
A64 SoC. The corresponding driver has been added to the genode-allwinner
repository at _src/drivers/button/pinephone/_ and is accompanied by the
_button_pinephone.run_ script. It reports KEY_VOLUMEUP and KEY_VOLUMEDOWN
input events to an event session.
Sensing the power button has been a slightly more delicate issue because the
power button is connected to the power-management IC (PMIC), which shall only
be accessed via the system-control processor (SCP). To detect state changes,
the PMIC's IRQ (routed through the R_INTC to the GIC) is now handled by the
power driver. This has the added benefit that also other interesting PMIC
events (like connecting AC) get immediately reported.
With the button drivers in place, we finally equipped Sculpt OS with a
screensaver as a crucial battery-conserving feature. The screensaver kicks in
after the user remained inactive in the administrative user interface for some
time. It also can be manually activated by pressing the power button. While
the screen is blanked, a press of the power button enables the display again.
Under the hood, Sculpt completely removes the drivers for the display and the
touchscreen while the screen is blanked, which considerably reduces the power
draw. The system also switches the CPU to economic mode while the screen is
blanked. Here are some illustrative data points:
! Max brightness in performance mode: 2.8 W
! Max brightness in economic mode: 2.6 W
! Low brightness in economic mode: 1.7 W
! Screensaver: 1.1 W
You can find the screensaver feature integrated in the latest mobile Sculpt OS
images published by _nfeske_.
Platforms
#########
NXP i.MX SoC family
===================
Certain parts of i.MX specific code, like the base support for the hw kernel,
and the GPIO driver for i.MX got moved from Genode's main repository to the
corresponding genode-imx repository.
Sculpt OS image creation for MNT Reform2
----------------------------------------
With this release, we introduce mainline support for Sculpt OS on the MNT
Reform2. To build a Sculpt OS image for this board you can use the common
_gems/run/sculpt_image.run_ script, like the following:
! make run/sculpt_image KERNEL=hw BOARD=mnt_reform2 DEPOT=omit
To be effective, you need to extend your RUN_OPT variable accordingly:
! RUN_OPT += --include image/imx8mq_mmc
seL4 microkernel
================
With the update of the seL4 kernel in the
[https://genode.org/documentation/release-notes/23.05#Updated_seL4_microkernel - previous]
release we now added several improvements, which reduce the boot-up time of
Genode's 'core' roottask on seL4 by converting untyped memory to I/O memory on
demand.
Build system and tools
######################
Depot autopilot on-target test orchestrator
===========================================
As the rough plan to support automated testing in Goa is shaping up, it makes
sense to share one convention about expressing the success criteria for a
package under test between the depot autopilot and Goa. This prospect motivated
us to review the convention that was used with the depot autopilot up until
now. The old syntax looked as follows:
! <runtime ...>
! <events>
! <timeout meaning="failed" sec="20"/>
! <log meaning="succeeded">
! [init -> rom_logger] ROM 'generated':*
! [init -> dynamic_rom] xray: change (finished)
! </log>
! <log meaning="succeeded">child exited</log>
! <log meaning="failed">Error: </log>
! </events>
! ...
! </runtime>
We applied the following simplifications to this syntax:
* Dropped the intermediate '<events>' tag,
* Replaced '<log meaning="succeeded">' by '<succeed>',
* Replaced '<log meaning="failed">' by '<fail>',
* Replaced '<timeout meaning="failed" sec="20"/>' by an 'after_seconds'
attribute of the '<succeed>' or '<fail>' tags.
So, the above example becomes the following:
! <runtime ...>
! <fail after_seconds="20"/>
! <succeed>
! [init -> rom_logger] ROM 'generated':*
! [init -> dynamic_rom] xray: change (finished)
! </succeed>
! <succeed>child exited</succeed>
! <fail>Error: </fail>
! ...
! </runtime>
For now, the depot autopilot maintains backwards-compatibility to allow Genode
users to adapt to the change progressively. The old scheme is used whenever
the package runtime contains an '<event>' tag. Note that backwards
compatibility will be removed after a short transition period.
All test packages of the official Genode repositories have been updated
to the new convention.
Furthermore, we took the opportunity to also add a new feature. The optional
'log_prefix' attribute in the '<succeed>' and '<fail>' tags is a simple but
handy white-list filter when it comes to typical Genode logs. When matching
the test log against the pattern given in the affected '<succeed>' or '<fail>'
tag, the depot autopilot considers only those log lines that start with the
given prefix. This is an easy way to watch only specific Genode components and
solve problems with the log order of simultaneously running components.
Last but not least, the transition prompted us to fix a minor issue with the
depot autopilot log-processing. Color sequences will now be forwarded correctly
from the test runtime to the log output of the depot autopilot, making the
analysis of test batteries a more pleasant experience.
Updated run-tool defaults for x86_64
====================================
With the update of the seL4 kernel and the update of the toolchain to GNU GCC
12 in the previous release, certain x86 assembly instructions like POPCNT are
generated, which are not supported by the Qemu CPU models we used.
Previously, the used CPU model was either the default model, or
'-cpu core2duo' for NOVA, or '-cpu phenom' for SVM virtualization.
The current release changes the default model to '-cpu Nehalem-v2', and
selects '-cpu EPYC' for SVM virtualization.
Note that the _build.conf_ file in the x86 build directory must be
re-generated by you, which otherwise may contain an older Qemu "-cpu " model,
which can collide with the new default Qemu CPU settings.
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