ASST0: Getting warmed up

Contents

  1. Due Dates and Mark Distribution
  2. Introduction
  3. Getting Started
  4. Reading Component
  5. Working with the Kernel
  6. Your Task
  7. Submitting

1. Due Time & Date and Mark Distribution

Due Time & Date: 8am (08:00), Fri March 1st (Week 2)

Marks: Worth 10 marks (contributing to the 100 potential class marks available in the course)

This warmup is done as an individual.

No bonuses apply for this warmup exercise.

2. Introduction

The aim of the warmup exercise is to have you familiarise yourself with the environment that you will be using for the more substantial assignments. The exercise consists of two parts: an assessed exercise for marks, and a non-assessable component. The non-assessable component consists of a set of directed questions to give you practice navigating and reading the code base. The answers to this code reading Q & A component of the exercise are available on the wiki (improvable by you the students). The assessable exercise consists of you: learning how to build and run OS/161, making a very minor change to the existing OS to fix a bug, and learning the submission process. The change is conceptually trivial, so you can view this exercise as us giving away marks as an incentive for you to get the assignment environment up and running early in the trimester in preparation for the assignments.

Note that this exercise is not indicative of the level of difficulty of the actual assignments. The assignments are much more challenging.

The OS/161 Environment

This assignment will introduce you to the components of the environment you will use during the semester:

The introduction to the OS/161 system explains how the components of the OS/161 system fit together, and contains important information about using the tools. You should take the time to read it now.

git

git is a source code management system used to track changes to a piece of software. We make use of git in this course to allow you to manage the large code base, and recover from potential problems. git keeps a copy of each committed change to your OS/161 files. It allows you to track the changes you have made, and more importantly, rollback to a known state if things get out of hand.

git also enables you and your partner to work on the same code repository in a coordinated way. You can even work on versions of your code stored at home and at CSE.

git is a large system of which you need to know only a small subset. We will give you directions for the parts you need to know, but feel free to expand your knowledge as git is a common tool worth knowing, and is used widely in industry.

3. Getting Started

Setting up your development environment

See the Wiki for details of how to set up your development environment. Working at CSE requires the least effort to set up and is supported, but is also the least efficient to work with. Working on your own equipment is the most efficient, but requires a little time to set up - time that you have at the start of the trimester.

If you are here, we assume you have the following set up:

Obtaining the distribution with git

The following steps obtains a copy of the assignment sources.

You should now have an asst0-src directory to work on.

4. Reading component

Now that you have an OS/161 source tree, read the code walkthrough.

This component of this warmup aims to guide you through the code base to help you begin to comprehend its contents, identify what functionality is implemented where.

Note that while the code reading component is not assessable, we view it as the ideal opportunity to get to know your way around the code, including practicing with whatever code browsing tool or editor you plan to use. You will benefit in the assignments by practicing navigating around and developing a rudimentary understanding of the code base. The code reading component is here to give you some of that practice.

5. Working with the Kernel

Building a Kernel

Now to the business end of this exercise. You will now build and install a kernel.

Running your Kernel

If you have made it this far, your have built and installed the entire OS in ~/cs3231/root. Now it is time to run it.

Summarising, you have configured and installed in ~/cs3231/root the userland applications that will eventually run on OS/161 and the OS/161 kernel itself. Going forward, you would normally only be modifying the kernel (the files in ~/cs3231/asst0-src/kern). To rebuild the kernel after changes, only the following commands are required in ~/cs3231/asst0-src/kern/compile/ASST0.

% bmake && bmake install

Using GDB

GDB is a tool in the toolbox that can help you understand what went wrong with your code. It has the advantage over kprintf() style debugging in that it does not change the behaviour of the code, and it can be used when something unexpected happens and not require you to change the code and reproduce the problem in order to debug it. This is very useful for intermittant bugs.

The Wiki has a setup guide for os161-gdb. Now is a good time to set it up. You'll need it to follow the example below. There is also a short tutorial here on using GDB with OS/161

6. Your Task

The task for this assignment is to find the bug that is causing OS/161 to crash and fix it. You can then commit your changes with git and push the changes back to gitlab.cse.unsw.edu.au.

Firstly, lets examine the output above where OS/161 crashes. Skip the initialisation status messages until you reach the point where the panic begins. Let's examine each line at a high level (as the semester progresses you'll get a deeper understanding of what is going on).

Finding the bug

Now we will look at two methods to find the offending code. The first using mostly just GDB, then second method will take advantage of the fact with know the address of the faulting instruction already.

Using just GDB

Open a second terminal window on the same machine and run GDB as follows, then use the connect and where commands. Note: login.cse.unsw.edu.au is actually and alias for several separate machines.

% cd ~/cs3231/root
% os161-gdb kernel
GNU gdb (GDB) 7.8
Copyright (C) 2014 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.  Type "show copying"
and "show warranty" for details.
This GDB was configured as "--host=x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu --target=mips-harvard-os161".
Type "show configuration" for configuration details.
For bug reporting instructions, please see:
<http://www.gnu.org/software/gdb/bugs/>.
Find the GDB manual and other documentation resources online at:
<http://www.gnu.org/software/gdb/documentation/>.
For help, type "help".
Type "apropos word" to search for commands related to "word"...
Reading symbols from kernel...done.
(gdb) connect
membar_any_any () at includelinks/machine/membar.h:47
47              __asm volatile(
Breakpoint 1 at 0x8000ac8c: file ../../lib/kprintf.c, line 135.
(gdb) where
#0  membar_any_any () at includelinks/machine/membar.h:47
#1  membar_store_store () at includelinks/machine/membar.h:58
#2  lamebus_write_register (bus=<optimised out>, slot=<optimised out>, offset=offset@entry=16, val=val@entry=0)
    at ../../arch/sys161/dev/lamebus_machdep.c:184
#3  0x800052ec in ltrace_stop (code=code@entry=0) at ../../dev/lamebus/ltrace.c:87
#4  0x8000ad58 in panic (fmt=fmt@entry=0x80023bd8 "I can't handle this... I think I'll just die now...\n")
    at ../../lib/kprintf.c:184
#5  0x8001b2a8 in mips_trap (tf=0x80027f28) at ../../arch/mips/locore/trap.c:315
#6  <signal handler called>
#7  0x8000b504 in boot () at ../../main/main.c:140
#8  0x8000b5d4 in kmain (arguments=0x80026020 "") at ../../main/main.c:218
#9  0x8001d1ac in __start () at ../../arch/sys161/main/start.S:216
(gdb)

The where command shows the current nesting of function calls as represented by stack frames on the current kernel stack. Here are some observations.

Let's investigate by switching to frame 7 so we can inspect it's local variables.

(gdb) frame 7
#7  0x8000b504 in boot () at ../../main/main.c:140
140                     * foo = 'x';            /* attempt to access it */
(gdb) print foo
$1 = 0x0
(gdb)

The exception occurs while storing the character 'x' to the pointer foo, which has a value of zero, i.e. NULL. Lets use list to see more context.

(gdb) list
135             kheap_nextgeneration();
136
137             {
138                     /* remove this section of code to fix ASST0 */
139                     char *foo = NULL;       /* create a NULL pointer */
140                     * foo = 'x';            /* attempt to access it */
141             }
142
143             /*
144              * Make sure various things aren't screwed up.
(gdb)

It should be clear now how to fix the bug

Using EPC and GDB

Let's use our knowledge of EPC to go directly to the problem using the address of the offending instruction.

(gdb) list *0x8000b504                                                       
0x8000b504 is in boot (../../main/main.c:140).                               
135             kheap_nextgeneration();                                      
136                                                                          
137             {                                                            
138                     /* remove this section of code to fix ASST0 */       
139                     char *foo = NULL;       /* create a NULL pointer */  
140                     * foo = 'x';            /* attempt to access it */   
141             }                                                            
142                                                                          
143             /*                                                           
144              * Make sure various things aren't screwed up.               
(gdb)

Here we have been taken directly to the offending statement in the code base. Note that while we can identify the line of code this way, we can't print out local variables unless we are in the correct stack frame, as illustrated below. 

(gdb) print foo
No symbol "foo" in current context.
(gdb) frame 7
#7  0x8000b504 in boot () at ../../main/main.c:140
140                     * foo = 'x';            /* attempt to access it */
(gdb) print foo
$2 = 0x0
(gdb)

Fixing the bug

Remove the offending code and rebuild the kernel only, and rerun OS/161.

In asst0-src/kern/compile/ASST0. 

% bmake && bmake install

The should get the following when you run sys161 on your new kernel where it runs until you get a boot prompt. You can enter 'q' to exit at this point.

% sys161 kernel
sys161: System/161 release 2.0.8, compiled Feb 19 2017 14:31:53

OS/161 base system version 2.0.3
(with locks&CVs solution)
Copyright (c) 2000, 2001-2005, 2008-2011, 2013, 2014
   President and Fellows of Harvard College.  All rights reserved.

Put-your-group-name-here's system version 0 (ASST0 #10)

352k physical memory available
Device probe...
lamebus0 (system main bus)
emu0 at lamebus0
ltrace0 at lamebus0
ltimer0 at lamebus0
beep0 at ltimer0
rtclock0 at ltimer0
lrandom0 at lamebus0
random0 at lrandom0
lser0 at lamebus0
con0 at lser0

OS/161 kernel [? for menu]: q
Shutting down.
The system is halted.
sys161: 5411375122 cycles (39129232 run, 5372245890 global-idle)
sys161:   cpu0: 3339292 kern, 0 user, 0 idle; 7328 ll, 7328/0 sc, 66160 sync
sys161: 783 irqs 0 exns 0r/0w disk 2r/592w console 0r/0w/1m emufs 0r/0w net
sys161: Elapsed real time: 213.657611 seconds (25.3273 mhz)
sys161: Elapsed virtual time: 215.027700909 seconds (25 mhz)
%

Note: The following sample output will vary slightly depending on the year it was originally generated.

You can also test OS/161 works with the menu choice supplied on the command line as follows.

% sys161 kernel q

This is generally the way we test your submission, so make sure that you have tested using the above method, even if you have also tested interactively.

Summarising thus far, you should now have a working code base.

Committing your changes with git

First check what your local status is to avoid anything unexpected.

% git status
On branch master
Your branch is up-to-date with 'origin/master'.
Changes not staged for commit:
  (use "git add ..." to update what will be committed)
  (use "git checkout -- ..." to discard changes in working directory)

        modified:   kern/main/main.c

no changes added to commit (use "git add" and/or "git commit -a")
%

All looks as expected, so lets commit the changes and push them back to gitlab. The -m is to add a descriptive commit message on the command line.

% git commit -a -m "foo pointer fix"
% git push

You now have a completed assigment on gitlab that you can submit. Feel free to log into gitlab.cse.unsw.edu.au via the web and explore your assigment.

7. Submitting

The submission instructions are available on the Wiki. To overview submission, you will be submitting the git repository via CSE's give system. For ASST0, the submission system will automark it immediately and tell you if you received the 10 marks. You can submit as many times as you like up until the deadline until you get the marks.

Warning! Don't ignore the submission system! If your submission fails the submission process, you will fail to receive any marks.

You're now done.