Chapter 3. Processes and threads

On Unix systems, new programs are started using the execve system call. If successful, execve replaces the currently-executing program by a new one. This is done within the same process, by reinitializing the whole virtual memory mapping and loading the new program binary in memory. All the process's threads (except for the calling one) are terminated, and the calling thread CPU context is reset for executing the new program startup.

Here is execve prototype:

path is the filesystem path to the new executable. argv and envp are two NULL-terminated string arrays that hold the new program arguments and environment variables. execve is responsible for copying the arrays to the new process stack.

Here is the top-down modular diagram for execve implementation in the NetBSD kernel when executing a native 32 bit ELF binary on an i386 machine:

execve calls execve1 with a pointer to a function called fetch_element, responsible for loading program arguments and environment variables in kernel space. The primary reason for this abstraction function is to allow fetching pointers from a 32 bit process on a 64 bit system.

execve1 uses a variable of type struct exec_package (defined in src/sys/sys/exec.h) to share information with the called functions.

The makecmds is responsible for checking if the program can be loaded, and to build a set of virtual memory commands (vmcmd's) that can be used later to setup the virtual memory space and to load the program code and data sections. The set of vmcmd's is stored in the ep_vmcmds field of the exec package. The use of these vmcmd set allows cancellation of the execution process before a commitment point.

The exec switch is an array of structure struct execsw defined in src/sys/kern/exec_conf.c: execsw[]. The struct execsw itself is defined in src/sys/sys/exec.h.

Each entry in the exec switch is written for a given executable format and a given kernel ABI. It contains test methods to check if a binary fits the format and ABI, and the methods to load it and start it up if it does. One can find here various methods called within execve code path.

execve1 iterate on the exec switch entries, using the es_priority for ordering, and calls the es_makecmds method of each entry until it gets a match.

The es_makecmds will fill the exec package's ep_vmcmds field with vmcmds that will be used later for setting up the new process virtual memory space. See Section 3.1.3.2, “Virtual memory space setup commands (vmcmds)” for details about the vmcmds.

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The struct emul is defined in src/sys/sys/proc.h. It defines various methods and parameters to handle system calls and traps. Each kernel ABI supported by the NetBSD kernel has its own struct emul. For instance, Linux ABI defines emul_linux in src/sys/compat/linux/common/linux_exec.c, and the native ABI defines emul_netbsd, in src/sys/kern/kern_exec.c.

The struct emul for the current ABI is obtained from the es_emul field of the exec switch entry that was selected by execve. The kernel holds a pointer to it in the process' struct proc (defined in src/sys/sys/proc.h).

Most importantly, the struct emul defines the system call handler function, and the system call table.

Each kernel ABI have a system call table. The table maps system call numbers to functions implementing the system call in the kernel (e.g.: system call number 2 is fork). The convention (for native syscalls) is that the kernel function implementing syscall foo is called sys_foo. Emulation syscalls have their own conventions, like linux_sys_ prefix for the Linux emulation. The native system call table can be found in src/sys/kern/syscalls.master.

This file is not written in C language. After any change, it must be processed by the Makefile available in the same directory. syscalls.master processing is controlled by the configuration found in syscalls.conf, and it will output several files:

In order to avoid namespace collision, non native ABI have syscalls.conf defining output file names prefixed by tags (e.g: linux_ for Linux ABI).

system call argument structures (syscallarg for short) are always used to pass arguments to functions implementing the system calls. Each system call has its own syscallarg structure. This encapsulation layer is here to hide endianness differences.

All functions implementing system calls have the same prototype:

l is the struct lwp for the calling thread, v is the syscallarg structure pointer, and retval is a pointer to the return value. The function returns the error code (see errno(2)) or 0 if there was no error. Note that the prototype is not the same as the “declaration” in syscalls.master. The declaration in syscalls.master corresponds to the documented prototype for the system call. This is because system calls as seen from userland programs have different prototypes, but the sys_... kernel functions implementing them must have the same prototype to unify the interface between MD syscall handlers and MI syscall implementation. In syscalls.master, the declaration shows the syscall arguments as seen by userland and determines the members of the syscallarg structure, which encapsulates the syscall arguments and has one member for each one.

While generating the files listed above some substitutions on the function name are performed: the syscalls tagged as COMPAT_XX are prefixed by compat_xx_, same for the syscallarg structure name. So the actual kernel function implementing those syscalls have to be defined in a corresponding way. Example: if syscalls.master has a line

97	COMPAT_30	{ int sys_socket(int domain, int type, int protocol); }

the actual syscall function will have this prototype:

and v is a pointer to struct compat_30_sys_socket_args, whose declaration is the following:

struct compat_30_sys_socket_args {
        syscallarg(int) domain;
        syscallarg(int) type;
        syscallarg(int) protocol;
};

Note the correspondence with the documented prototype of the socket(2) syscall and the declaration of sys_socket in syscalls.master. The types of syscall arguments are wrapped by syscallarg macro, which ensures that the structure members will be padded to a minimum size, again for unified interface between MD and MI code. That's why those members should not be accessed directly, but by the SCARG macro, which takes a pointer to the syscall arg structure and the argument name and extracts the argument's value. See below for an example.

The system call implementation in libc is autogenerated from the kernel implementation. As an example, let's examine the implementation of the access(2) function in libc. It can be found in the access.S file, which does not exist in the sources — it is autogenerated when libc is built. It uses macros defined in src/sys/sys/syscall.h and src/lib/libc/arch/MACHINE_ARCH/SYS.h: the syscall.h file contains defines which map the syscall names to syscall numbers. The syscall function names are changed by replacing the sys_ prefix by SYS_. The syscall.h header file is also autogenerated from src/sys/kern/syscalls.master by running make init_sysent.c in src/sys/kern, as described above. By including SYS.h, we get syscall.h and the RSYSCALL macro, which accepts the syscall name, automatically adds the SYS_ prefix, takes the corresponding number, and defines a function of the name given whose body is just the execution of the syscall itself with the right number. (The method of execution and of transfer of the syscall number and its arguments are machine dependent, but this is hidden in the RSYSCALL macro.)

To continue the example of access(2), syscall.h contains

#define SYS_access      33

so

RSYSCALL(access)

will result in defining the function access, which will execute the syscall with number 33. Thus, access.S needs to contain just:

#include "SYS.h"
RSYSCALL(access)

To automate this further, it is enough to add the name of this file to the ASM variable in src/lib/libc/sys/Makefile.inc and the file will be autogenerated with this content when libc is built.

The above is true for libc functions which correspond exactly to the kernel syscalls. It is not always the case, even if the functions are found in section 2 of the manuals. For example the wait(2), wait3(2) and waitpid(2) functions are implemented as wrappers of only one syscall, wait4(2). In such case the procedure above yields the wait4 function and the wrappers can reference it as if it were a normal C function.

Let's pretend that the access(2) syscall does not exist yet and you want to add it to the kernel. How to proceed?

This is all. To test the new syscall, simply rebuild libc (access.S will be generated at this point) and reboot with a new kernel containing the new syscall. To make the new syscall generally useful, its prototype should be added to an appropriate header file for use by userspace programs — in the case of access(2), this is unistd.h, which is found in the NetBSD sources at src/include/unistd.h.

If the system call ABI (or even API) changes, it is necessary to implement the old syscall with the original semantics to be used by old binaries. The new version of the syscall has a different syscall number, while the original one retains the old number. This is called versioning.

The naming conventions associated with versioning are complex. If the original system call is called foo (and implemented by a sys_foo function) and it is changed after the x.y release, the new syscall will be named __fooxy, with the function implementing it being named sys___fooxy. The original syscall (left for compatibility) will be still declared as sys_foo in syscalls.master, but will be tagged as COMPAT_XY, so the function will be named compat_xy_sys_foo. We will call sys_foo the original version, sys___fooxy the new version and compat_xy_sys_foo the compatibility version in the procedure described below.

Now if the syscall is versioned again after version z.q has been released, the newest version will be called __foozq. The intermediate version (formerly the new version) will have to be retained for compatibility, so it will be tagged as COMPAT_ZQ, which will change the function name from sys___fooxy to compat_zq_sys___fooxy. The oldest version compat_xy_sys_foo will be unaffected by the second versioning.

HOW TO change a system call ABI or API and add a compatibility version? Let's look at a real example: versioning of the socket(2) system call after the error code in case of unsupported address family changed from EPROTONOSUPPORT to EAFNOSUPPORT between NetBSD 3.0 and 4.0.

Now the kernel should be compilable and old statically linked binaries should work, as should binaries using the old libc. Nothing uses the new syscall yet. We have to make a new libc, which will contain both the new and the compatibility syscall:

We are done — we have covered the cases of old binaries, old libc and new kernel (including statically linked binaries), old binaries, new libc and new kernel, and new binaries, new libc and new kernel.

When committing your work (either a new syscall or a new syscall version with the compatibility syscalls), you should remember to commit the source (syscalls.master) for the autogenerated files first, and then regenerate and commit the autogenerated files. They contain the RCS Id of the source file and this way, the RCS Id will refer to the current source version. The assembly files generated by src/lib/libc/sys/Makefile.inc are not kept in the repository at all, they are regenerated every time libc is built.

When executing 32 bit binaries on a 64 bit system, care must be taken to only use addresses below 4 GB. This is a problem at process creation, when the stack and heap are allocated, but also for each system call, where 32 bits pointers handled by the 32 bit process are manipulated by the 64 bit kernel.

For a kernel built as a 64 bit binary, a 32 bit pointer is not something that makes sense: pointers can only be 64 bit long. This is why 32 bit pointers are defined as an u_int32_t synonym called netbsd32_pointer_t (in src/sys/compat/netbsd32/netbsd32.h).

For copyin and copyout, true 64 bits pointers are required. They are obtained by casting the netbsd32_pointer_t through the NETBSD32PTR64 macro.

Most of the time, implementation of a 32 bit system call is just about casting pointers and to call the 64 version of the system call. An example of such a situation can be found in src/sys/compat/netbsd32/netbsd32_time.c: netbsd32_timer_delete. Provided that the 32 bit system call argument structure pointer is called uap, and the 64 bit one is called ua, then helper macros called NETBSD32TO64_UAP, NETBSD32TOP_UAP, NETBSD32TOX_UAP, and NETBSD32TOX64_UAP can be used. Sources in src/sys/compat/netbsd32 provide multiple examples.

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For each kernel ABI, struct emul defines a machine-dependent sendsig function, which is responsible for altering the process user context so that it calls a signal handler.

sendsig builds a stack frame containing the CPU registers before the signal handler invocation. The CPU registers are altered so that on return to userland, the process executes the signal handler and have the stack pointer set to the new stack frame.

If requested at sigaction call time, sendsig will also add a struct siginfo to the stack frame.

Finally, sendsig may copy a small piece of assembly code (called a "signal trampoline") to perform cleanup after handling the signal. This is detailed in the next section. Note that modern NetBSD native programs do not use a trampoline anymore: it is only used for older programs, and emulation of other operating systems.

Once the signal handler returns, the kernel must destroy the signal handler context and restore the previous process state. This can be achieved by two ways.

First method, using the kernel-provided signal trampoline: sendsig have copied the signal trampoline on the stack and has prepared the stack and/or CPU registers so that the signal handler returns to the signal trampoline. The job of the signal trampoline is to call the sigreturn or the setcontext system calls, handling a pointer to the CPU registers saved on stack. This restores the CPU registers to their values before the signal handler invocation, and next time the process will return to userland, it will resume its execution where it stopped.

The native signal trampoline for i386 is called sigcode and can be found in src/sys/arch/i386/i386/locore.S. Each emulated ABI has its own signal trampoline, which can be quite close to the native one, except usually for the sigreturn system call number.

The second method is to use a signal trampoline provided by libc. This is how modern NetBSD native programs do. At the time the sigaction system call is invoked, the libc stub handle a pointer to a signal trampoline in libc, which is in charge of calling setcontext.

sendsig will use that pointer as the return address for the signal handler. This method is better than the previous one, because it removes the need for an executable stack page where the signal trampoline is stored. The trampoline is now stored in the code segment of libc. For instance, for i386, the signal trampoline is named __sigtramp_siginfo_2 and can be found in src/lib/libc/arch/i386/sys/__sigtramp2.S.

NetBSD 5.0 introduced a new scheduling API that allows for different scheduling algorithms to be implemented and selected at compile-time. There are currently two different scheduling algorithms available: the traditional 4.4BSD-based scheduler and the more modern M2 scheduler.

NetBSD supports the three scheduling policies required by POSIX in order to support the POSIX real-time scheduling extensions:

SCHED_FIFO and SCHED_RR are predefined scheduling policies, leaving SCHED_OTHER as an implementation-specific policy.

Currently, there are 224 different priority levels with 64 being available for the user level. Scheduling priorities are organized within the following classes:

Threads running with the SCHED_FIFO policy have a fixed priority, i.e. the kernel does not change their priority dynamically. A SCHED_FIFO thread runs until

SCHED_RR works similar to SCHED_FIFO, except that such threads have a default time-slice of 100ms.

For the SCHED_OTHER policy, both schedulers currently use the same run queue implementation, employing multi-level feedback queues. By dynamically adjusting a thread's priority to reflect its CPU and resource utilization, this approach allows the system to be responsive even under heavy loads.

Each runnable thread is placed on one of the runqueues, according to its priority. Each thread is allowed to run on the CPU for a certain amount of time, its time-slice or quantum. Once the thread has used up its time-slice, it is placed on the back on its runqueue. When the scheduler searches for a new thread to run on the CPU, the first thread of the highest priority, non-empty runqueue is selected.

The common scheduler API is implemented within the file src/sys/kern/kern_synch.c. Additional information can be found in csf(9). Generic run-queues are implemented in src/sys/kern/kern_runq.c. Detailed information about the 4.4BSD scheduler is given in [McKusick]. A description of the SVR4 scheduler is provided in [Goodheart].