The idle thread is now actually run when the system is idle because it
truly goes idle. The idle thread is made power efficient by using the hlt
instruction rather than a busy loop.
The new futex(2) system call is used to implement fast user-space mutexes,
condition variables, and semaphores. The same backend and design is used as
kutexes for truly sleeping kernel mutexes and condition variables.
The new exit_thread(2) flag EXIT_THREAD_FUTEX_WAKE wakes a futex.
Sleeping on clocks in the kernel now uses timers for true sleep.
The interrupt worker thread now truly sleeps when idle.
Kernel threads are now named.
This is a compatible ABI change.
The child processes of pid 1 were being reparented to pid 1, causing an
infinite loop. This change fixes the problem by adding a hook that runs in
the last thread about to exit in a process. When pid 1 exits, the hook will
prevent more processes and threads from being created, and then broadcast
kill all processes and threads. The hook is not run in LastPrayer(), as that
function runs in a worker thread and it can't block waiting for another
thread to run LastPrayer() in the same thread.
This change refactors the process group implementation and adds support
for sessions. The setsid(2) and getsid(2) system calls were added.
psctl(2) now has PSCTL_TTYNAME, which lets you get the name of a process's
terminal, and ps(1) now uses it.
The initial terminal is now called /dev/tty1.
/dev/tty is now a factory for the current terminal.
A global lock now protects the process hierarchy which makes it safe to
access other processes. This refactor removes potential vulnerabilities
and increases system robustness.
A number of terminal ioctls have been added.
This is a compatible ABI change.
This change hardens against invalid calls to sigreturn, which is a very
useful gadget when compromising a process. The system call now verifies
it is a real return from a signal and aborts the process otherwise. This
should render such attacks impossible in threads that are not servicing a
signal, and infeasible in threads that are handling signals they are yet to
return from.
The kernel now keeps track for each thread how many signals are being
handled but haven't returned yet.
Each thread now has a random signal value. It is re-randomized when the
thread handles a signal and the current signal counter is zero. This is
xorred with the context address and used as canary on the stack during
signal dispatch, protecting the saved context on the stack. This works
mostly like the regular stack protector.
The kernel now keeps track of the stack pointer for a single handled
signal per thread. It doesn't seem worth it to keep track of multiple
handled signals, as more than one is rare. Note that each delivered signal
will not necessarily result in a sigreturn because it is valid for a thread
to longjmp(3) out of a signal handler to a valid jmp_buf.
The sigreturn system call will abort if either:
- It was not called from the kernel sigreturn page.
- The thread is not currently processing a signal.
- The thread is processing a single signal, and the stack pointer did not
have the expected value.
- It fails to read the context on the stack.
- The canary is wrong.
I hereby relicense all my work on Sortix under the ISC license as below.
All Sortix contributions by other people are already under this license,
are not substantial enough to be copyrightable, or have been removed.
All imported code from other projects is compatible with this license.
All GPL licensed code from other projects had previously been removed.
Copyright 2011-2016 Jonas 'Sortie' Termansen and contributors.
Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software for any
purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above
copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES
WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR
ANY SPECIAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES
WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN
ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF
OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.
The debugger has fallen behind and has become a maintenance burden. It was
the only user of the old kernel US layout system, which is good to get rid
of. The debugger didn't work with graphical output and was likely to
conflict with the new keyboard system if used, which no longer triggered it.
The kernel symbol code was removed to simplify the kernel.
The kernel debugger was an useful debugging feature, but it needs to be done
in a better way before it can be added back.
Enable the NX bit on x86_64 and set if not PROT_EXEC and enable the write
protection mode (CR0.WP) that disables the default behavior where the kernel
is able to write to read-only memory. Fix kernel broken assumptions it can
access read-only memory and take care to never set PROT_KWRITE on user-space
pages unless PROT_WRITE is also set, otherwise user-space will be able to
write to read-only memory.
This achieves X^W in the whole system except for the core kernel itself as
it is currently don't know the purpose of pages when identity mapping the
first 4 MiB.
Jonas 'Sortie' Termansen
Mathew John Roberts