Thread ids now contain their container ids in the top 2 nibbles.
Threads on other containers can be addressed by changing those
two nibbles. The addressing of inter-container threads are
subject to capabilities.
Task ids are now unsigned as the container ids will need to be encoded
in the id fields as well.
For requests who require even more comprehensive id input, (such as
thread creation) also added is the container id so that threads
_could_ potentially be created in other containers as well.
VIRTMEM and PHYSMEM are theoretically separate resources to be
protected than a MAP resource, which is meant to protect the syscall
privileges.
In practice MAP is always used together with a VIRTMEM and a PHYSMEM
resource, therefore reach VIRTMEM/PHYSMEM resource is now merged with
the MAP capability, combining the micro-permission bits.
We still have to have the pager structs because they possess intermediate
data during boot up such as for transferring of capability lists to
boot stack one-by-one, and then to newly generated ktcbs.
Previously all pending events were handled on return of exceptions
in process context. This was causing threads that run in userspace
and take no exceptions not handle their pending events indefinitely.
Now scheduler handles them in irq context as well.
Multi-threaded apps can now wait on children to destroy.
WAIT_ON is useful when a child exists with an exit code and the pager
of the child does not want to take the hassle of destorying it via an
ipc. It provides an alternative method of synchronous thread destruction,
where the child destroys itself directly rather than the parent issuing
a destroy on it explicitly.
Reiterating again to simplify:
Working:
- Pager issues destroy, client also issues exit
they work in sync.
Missing
- Pager killing itself
- Pager killing all children while killing itself
- Pager waiting on children
One is related to the time distribution when a new child is created.
If the parent has one tick left, then both child and parent received
zero tick. When combined with
current_irq_nest_count = 1
voluntary_preempt = 0
values, this caused the scheduler from being invoked.
Second is related to the overall time distribution. When a thread
runs out of time, its new time slice is calculated by the below
formula:
new_timeslice = (thread_prio * SCHED_TICKS) / total_prio
If we consider total_prio is equal to the sum of the priorities of
all the threads in the system, it imposes a problem of getting
zero tick. In the new scenario, total_prio is equal to the priority
types in the system so it is fixed. Every thread gets a timeslice
in proportion of their priorities. Thus, there is no risk of taking
zero tick.
We moved initial list of a pager's caps from ktcb to task's space
since the task is expected to trust its space.
Most references to task->cap_list had to change. Although a single
cap list only tells part of the story about the task's caps, the
TASK_CAP_LIST macro works for us to get the first private set of
caps that a task has.
Capability checking for thread_control, exregs, mutex, cap_control,
ipc, and map system calls.
The visualised model is implemented in code that compiles, but
actual functionality hasn't been tested.
Need to add:
- Dynamic assignment of initial resources matching with what's
defined in the configuration.
- A paged-thread-group, since that would be a logical group of
seperation from a capability point-of-view.
- Resource ids for various tasks. E.g.
- Memory capabilities don't have target resources.
- Thread capability assumes current container for THREAD_CREATE.
- Mutex syscall assumes current thread (this one may not need
any changing)
- cap_control syscall assumes current thread. It may happen to
be that another thread's capability list is manipulated.
Last but not least:
- A simple and easy-to-use userspace library for dynamic expansion
of resource domains as new resources are created such as threads.
Pagers can now share their own private capabilities with their
paged children, or their siblings with whom they have a common pager
ancestor.
Added flags CAP_SHARE_CHILD and CAP_SHARE_SIBLINGS for that.
Notion of pager hierarchy introduced using the existing but unused
pagerid field.
Thread creation now has two more flags TC_AS_PAGER and TC_SHARE_PAGER.
The former sets creator as pager, the latter sets creator's pager as pager.
Thread group capability sharing now correctly carries shared capabilities
to the thread group leader's tgr_cap_list list, and this list is checked
during capability checking.
Capabilities will be shared among collection of threads. A pager
will have a right to share its own capabilities with its space,
its thread group and its container.
Currently sharing is possible with only all of the caps. Next,
it will be support for cap splitting, granting, and partial sharing
and granting.
Added support for pagers that fault to suspend and become zombies
along with all the threads that they manage. Zombie killing is to
be done at a later time, from this special zombie queue.
The implementation works same as a suspension, with the added action
that the thread is moved to a queue in kernel container.
Issues:
- A page-faulting thread suspends if receives -1 from pager page fault ipc.
This is fine if pager is about to delete the thread, but it is not if
it is a buggy pager.
- Need to find a way to completely get rid of suspended pager.
- A method of deleting suspended tasks could remedy both cases above.
Removed dependency on hard-coded pager id. Pager id is now passed
as an environment string `pagerid' to tasks. Alternatively, this
could take space in the utcb of each task.
Any thread that touches a utcb inside the kernel now properly checks
whether the utcb is mapped on its owner, and whether the mapped physical
address matches that of the current thread's tables. If not the tables
are updated.
This way, even though page tables become incoherent on utcb address
change situations (such as fork() exit(), execve()) they get updated
as they are referenced.
Since mappings are added only conditionally, caches are flushed only
when an update is necessary.
Added UTCB functions for full ipc that copy buffer or string payloads
in secondary message registers.
Some posix syscalls now use these utcb functions to copy pathnames.
It makes more sense to have a scheduler (or runqueue pair) per-cpu
rather than per-container. This provides more flexible global scheduling
policy that is also simpler due to all scheduling details being controlled
from a single point.
Bahadir Balban