When delivering urgent signals to the current thread
we need to check if we should be unblocked, and if not
we need to yield to another process.
We also need to make sure that we suppress context switches
during Process::exec() so that we don't clobber the registers
that it sets up (eip mainly) by a context switch. To be able
to do that we add the concept of a critical section, which are
similar to Process::m_in_irq but different in that they can be
requested at any time. Calls to Scheduler::yield and
Scheduler::donate_to will return instantly without triggering
a context switch, but the processor will then asynchronously
trigger a context switch once the critical section is left.
pselect() is similar() to select(), but it takes its timeout
as timespec instead of as timeval, and it takes an additional
sigmask parameter.
Change the sys$select parameters to match pselect() and implement
select() in terms of pselect().
In case WNOHANG was specified, we want to always set should_unblock to
true (which we do since commit 4402207b98), not
wait_finished -- the latter causes us to immediately return this child to our
caller, which is not what we want -- perhaps we should return another child
which has actually exited or stopped, or nobody at all.
To avoid confusion, also rename wait_finished to fits_the_spec.
This fixes service keepalive functionality in SystemServer.
We stopped using gettimeofday() in Core::EventLoop a while back,
in favor of clock_gettime() for monotonic time.
Maintaining an optimization for a syscall we're not using doesn't make
a lot of sense, so let's go back to the old-style sys$gettimeofday().
Previosuly, if we sent a SIGCONT to a stopped thread
and then waitpid() with WSTOPPED on that thread before
the signal was dispatched,
then the WaitBlocker would first unblock (because the thread is stopped)
and only after that the thread would get the SIGCONT signal.
This would mean that when waitpid returns
the waitee is not stopped.
To fix this, we do not unblock the waiting thread
if the waitee thread has a pending SIGCONT.
This new subsystem includes better abstractions of how time will be
handled in the OS. We take advantage of the existing RTC timer to aid
in keeping time synchronized. This is standing in contrast to how we
handled time-keeping in the kernel, where the PIT was responsible for
that function in addition to update the scheduler about ticks.
With that new advantage, we can easily change the ticking dynamically
and still keep the time synchronized.
In the process context, we no longer use a fixed declaration of
TICKS_PER_SECOND, but we call the TimeManagement singleton class to
provide us the right value. This allows us to use dynamic ticking in
the future, a feature known as tickless kernel.
The scheduler no longer does by himself the calculation of real time
(Unix time), and just calls the TimeManagment singleton class to provide
the value.
Also, we can use 2 new boot arguments:
- the "time" boot argument accpets either the value "modern", or
"legacy". If "modern" is specified, the time management subsystem will
try to setup HPET. Otherwise, for "legacy" value, the time subsystem
will revert to use the PIT & RTC, leaving HPET disabled.
If this boot argument is not specified, the default pattern is to try
to setup HPET.
- the "hpet" boot argumet accepts either the value "periodic" or
"nonperiodic". If "periodic" is specified, the HPET will scan for
periodic timers, and will assert if none are found. If only one is
found, that timer will be assigned for the time-keeping task. If more
than one is found, both time-keeping task & scheduler-ticking task
will be assigned to periodic timers.
If this boot argument is not specified, the default pattern is to try
to scan for HPET periodic timers. This boot argument has no effect if
HPET is disabled.
In hardware context, PIT & RealTimeClock classes are merely inheriting
from the HardwareTimer class, and they allow to use the old i8254 (PIT)
and RTC devices, managing them via IO ports. By default, the RTC will be
programmed to a frequency of 1024Hz. The PIT will be programmed to a
frequency close to 1000Hz.
About HPET, depending if we need to scan for periodic timers or not,
we try to set a frequency close to 1000Hz for the time-keeping timer
and scheduler-ticking timer. Also, if possible, we try to enable the
Legacy replacement feature of the HPET. This feature if exists,
instructs the chipset to disconnect both i8254 (PIT) and RTC.
This behavior is observable on QEMU, and was verified against the source
code:
ce967e2f33
The HPETComparator class is inheriting from HardwareTimer class, and is
responsible for an individual HPET comparator, which is essentially a
timer. Therefore, it needs to call the singleton HPET class to perform
HPET-related operations.
The new abstraction of Hardware timers brings an opportunity of more new
features in the foreseeable future. For example, we can change the
callback function of each hardware timer, thus it makes it possible to
swap missions between hardware timers, or to allow to use a hardware
timer for other temporary missions (e.g. calibrating the LAPIC timer,
measuring the CPU frequency, etc).
Now it actually defaults to "a < b" comparison, instead of forcing you
to provide a trivial less-than comparator. Also you can pass in any
collection type that has .begin() and .end() and we'll sort it for you.
We don't have to log the process name/PID/TID, dbg() automatically adds
that as a prefix to every line.
Also we don't have to do .characters() on Strings passed to dbg() :^)
This allows a process wich has more than 1 thread to call exec, even
from a thread. This kills all the other threads, but it won't wait for
them to finish, just makes sure that they are not in a running/runable
state.
In the case where a thread does exec, the new program PID will be the
thread TID, to keep the PID == TID in the new process.
This introduces a new function inside the Process class,
kill_threads_except_self which is called on exit() too (exit with
multiple threads wasn't properly working either).
Inside the Lock class, there is the need for a new function,
clear_waiters, which removes all the waiters from the
Process::big_lock. This is needed since after a exit/exec, there should
be no other threads waiting for this lock, the threads should be simply
killed. Only queued threads should wait for this lock at this point,
since blocked threads are handled in set_should_die.
Before putting itself back on the wait queue, the finalizer task will
now check if there's more work to do, and if so, do it first. :^)
This patch also puts a bunch of process/thread debug logging behind
PROCESS_DEBUG and THREAD_DEBUG since it was unbearable to debug this
stuff with all the spam.
Move timeout management to the ReadBlocker and WriteBlocker classes.
Also get rid of the specialized ReceiveBlocker since it no longer does
anything that ReadBlocker can't do.
As suggested by Joshua, this commit adds the 2-clause BSD license as a
comment block to the top of every source file.
For the first pass, I've just added myself for simplicity. I encourage
everyone to add themselves as copyright holders of any file they've
added or modified in some significant way. If I've added myself in
error somewhere, feel free to replace it with the appropriate copyright
holder instead.
Going forward, all new source files should include a license header.
It was quite easy to put the system into a heavy churn state by doing
e.g "cat /dev/zero".
It was then basically impossible to kill the "cat" process, even with
"kill -9", since signals are only delivered in two conditions:
a) The target thread is blocked in the kernel
b) The target thread is running in userspace
However, since "cat /dev/zero" command spends most of its time actively
running in the kernel, not blocked, the signal dispatch code just kept
postponing actually handling the signal indefinitely.
To fix this, we now check before returning from a syscall if there are
any pending unmasked signals, and if so, we take a dramatic pause by
blocking the current thread, knowing it will immediately be unblocked
by signal dispatch anyway. :^)
This fixes a null RefPtr deref (which asserts) in the scheduler if a
file descriptor being select()'ed is closed by a second thread while
blocked in select().
Test: Kernel/null-deref-close-during-select.cpp
All threads were running with iomapbase=0 in their TSS, which the CPU
interprets as "there's an I/O permission bitmap starting at offset 0
into my TSS".
Because of that, any bits that were 1 inside the TSS would allow the
thread to execute I/O instructions on the port with that bit index.
Fix this by always setting the iomapbase to sizeof(TSS32), and also
setting the TSS descriptor's limit to sizeof(TSS32), effectively making
the I/O permissions bitmap zero-length.
This should make it no longer possible to do I/O from userspace. :^)
Threads now have numeric priorities with a base priority in the 1-99
range.
Whenever a runnable thread is *not* scheduled, its effective priority
is incremented by 1. This is tracked in Thread::m_extra_priority.
The effective priority of a thread is m_priority + m_extra_priority.
When a runnable thread *is* scheduled, its m_extra_priority is reset to
zero and the effective priority returns to base.
This means that lower-priority threads will always eventually get
scheduled to run, once its effective priority becomes high enough to
exceed the base priority of threads "above" it.
The previous values for ThreadPriority (Low, Normal and High) are now
replaced as follows:
Low -> 10
Normal -> 30
High -> 50
In other words, it will take 20 ticks for a "Low" priority thread to
get to "Normal" effective priority, and another 20 to reach "High".
This is not perfect, and I've used some quite naive data structures,
but I think the mechanism will allow us to build various new and
interesting optimizations, and we can figure out better data structures
later on. :^)
PR #591 defines the rationale for kernel-level timers. They're most
immediately useful for TCP retransmission, but will most likely see use
in many other areas as well.
This patch introduces three separate thread queues, one for each thread
priority available to userspace (Low, Normal and High.)
Each queue operates in a round-robin fashion, but we now always prefer
to schedule the highest priority thread that currently wants to run.
There are tons of tweaks and improvements that we can and should make
to this mechanism, but I think this is a step in the right direction.
This makes WindowServer significantly more responsive while one of its
clients is burning CPU. :^)
The idea of all processes reliably having a main thread was nice in
some ways, but cumbersome in others. More importantly, it didn't match
up with POSIX thread semantics, so let's move away from it.
This thread gets rid of Process::main_thread() and you now we just have
a bunch of Thread objects floating around each Process.
When the finalizer nukes the last Thread in a Process, it will also
tear down the Process.
There's a bunch of more things to fix around this, but this is where we
get started :^)
This patch adds a single "kernel info page" that is mappable read-only
by any process and contains the current time of day.
This is then used to implement a version of gettimeofday() that doesn't
have to make a syscall.
To protect against race condition issues, the info page also has a
serial number which is incremented whenever the kernel updates the
contents of the page. Make sure to verify that the serial number is the
same before and after reading the information you want from the page.
The kernel now supports basic profiling of all the threads in a process
by calling profiling_enable(pid_t). You finish the profiling by calling
profiling_disable(pid_t).
This all works by recording thread stacks when the timer interrupt
fires and the current thread is in a process being profiled.
Note that symbolication is deferred until profiling_disable() to avoid
adding more noise than necessary to the profile.
A simple "/bin/profile" command is included here that can be used to
start/stop profiling like so:
$ profile 10 on
... wait ...
$ profile 10 off
After a profile has been recorded, it can be fetched in /proc/profile
There are various limits (or "bugs") on this mechanism at the moment:
- Only one process can be profiled at a time.
- We allocate 8MB for the samples, if you use more space, things will
not work, and probably break a bit.
- Things will probably fall apart if the profiled process dies during
profiling, or while extracing /proc/profile
Instead of using the generic block mechanism, wait-queued threads now
go into the special Queued state.
This fixes an issue where signal dispatch would unblock a wait-queued
thread (because signal dispatch unblocks blocked threads) and cause
confusion since the thread only expected to be awoken by the queue.
The kernel's Lock class now uses a proper wait queue internally instead
of just having everyone wake up regularly to try to acquire the lock.
We also keep the donation mechanism, so that whenever someone tries to
take the lock and fails, that thread donates the remainder of its
timeslice to the current lock holder.
After unlocking a Lock, the unlocking thread calls WaitQueue::wake_one,
which unblocks the next thread in queue.
