diff options
| author | Anton Ivanov <anton.ivanov@cambridgegreys.com> | 2020-09-17 11:35:57 +0100 |
|---|---|---|
| committer | Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net> | 2020-09-24 10:53:44 -0600 |
| commit | 04301bf5b072b26218c9c6eabe579fdbef5c8d55 (patch) | |
| tree | f88a2dcb1f9d1eeffab97d37fdc68ea151c67027 /Documentation/virt/uml | |
| parent | 6b99e6e6aa6237b3f45ea24327fd3cb132b365cd (diff) | |
| download | lwn-04301bf5b072b26218c9c6eabe579fdbef5c8d55.tar.gz lwn-04301bf5b072b26218c9c6eabe579fdbef5c8d55.zip | |
docs: replace the old User Mode Linux HowTo with a new one
The new HowTo migrates the portions of the old howto which
are still relevant to a new document, updates them to linux 5.x
and adds documentation for vector transports and other new
features.
Signed-off-by: Anton Ivanov <anton.ivanov@cambridgegreys.com>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20200917103557.26063-1-anton.ivanov@cambridgegreys.com
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/virt/uml')
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/virt/uml/user_mode_linux.rst | 4403 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/virt/uml/user_mode_linux_howto_v2.rst | 1208 |
2 files changed, 1208 insertions, 4403 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/virt/uml/user_mode_linux.rst b/Documentation/virt/uml/user_mode_linux.rst deleted file mode 100644 index de0f0b2c9d5b..000000000000 --- a/Documentation/virt/uml/user_mode_linux.rst +++ /dev/null @@ -1,4403 +0,0 @@ -.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0 - -===================== -User Mode Linux HOWTO -===================== - -:Author: User Mode Linux Core Team -:Last-updated: Sat Jan 25 16:07:55 CET 2020 - -This document describes the use and abuse of Jeff Dike's User Mode -Linux: a port of the Linux kernel as a normal Intel Linux process. - - -.. Table of Contents - - 1. Introduction - - 1.1 How is User Mode Linux Different? - 1.2 Why Would I Want User Mode Linux? - - 2. Compiling the kernel and modules - - 2.1 Compiling the kernel - 2.2 Compiling and installing kernel modules - 2.3 Compiling and installing uml_utilities - - 3. Running UML and logging in - - 3.1 Running UML - 3.2 Logging in - 3.3 Examples - - 4. UML on 2G/2G hosts - - 4.1 Introduction - 4.2 The problem - 4.3 The solution - - 5. Setting up serial lines and consoles - - 5.1 Specifying the device - 5.2 Specifying the channel - 5.3 Examples - - 6. Setting up the network - - 6.1 General setup - 6.2 Userspace daemons - 6.3 Specifying ethernet addresses - 6.4 UML interface setup - 6.5 Multicast - 6.6 TUN/TAP with the uml_net helper - 6.7 TUN/TAP with a preconfigured tap device - 6.8 Ethertap - 6.9 The switch daemon - 6.10 Slip - 6.11 Slirp - 6.12 pcap - 6.13 Setting up the host yourself - - 7. Sharing Filesystems between Virtual Machines - - 7.1 A warning - 7.2 Using layered block devices - 7.3 Note! - 7.4 Another warning - 7.5 uml_moo : Merging a COW file with its backing file - - 8. Creating filesystems - - 8.1 Create the filesystem file - 8.2 Assign the file to a UML device - 8.3 Creating and mounting the filesystem - - 9. Host file access - - 9.1 Using hostfs - 9.2 hostfs as the root filesystem - 9.3 Building hostfs - - 10. The Management Console - 10.1 version - 10.2 halt and reboot - 10.3 config - 10.4 remove - 10.5 sysrq - 10.6 help - 10.7 cad - 10.8 stop - 10.9 go - - 11. Kernel debugging - - 11.1 Starting the kernel under gdb - 11.2 Examining sleeping processes - 11.3 Running ddd on UML - 11.4 Debugging modules - 11.5 Attaching gdb to the kernel - 11.6 Using alternate debuggers - - 12. Kernel debugging examples - - 12.1 The case of the hung fsck - 12.2 Episode 2: The case of the hung fsck - - 13. What to do when UML doesn't work - - 13.1 Strange compilation errors when you build from source - 13.2 (obsolete) - 13.3 A variety of panics and hangs with /tmp on a reiserfs filesystem - 13.4 The compile fails with errors about conflicting types for 'open', 'dup', and 'waitpid' - 13.5 UML doesn't work when /tmp is an NFS filesystem - 13.6 UML hangs on boot when compiled with gprof support - 13.7 syslogd dies with a SIGTERM on startup - 13.8 TUN/TAP networking doesn't work on a 2.4 host - 13.9 You can network to the host but not to other machines on the net - 13.10 I have no root and I want to scream - 13.11 UML build conflict between ptrace.h and ucontext.h - 13.12 The UML BogoMips is exactly half the host's BogoMips - 13.13 When you run UML, it immediately segfaults - 13.14 xterms appear, then immediately disappear - 13.15 Any other panic, hang, or strange behavior - - 14. Diagnosing Problems - - 14.1 Case 1 : Normal kernel panics - 14.2 Case 2 : Tracing thread panics - 14.3 Case 3 : Tracing thread panics caused by other threads - 14.4 Case 4 : Hangs - - 15. Thanks - - 15.1 Code and Documentation - 15.2 Flushing out bugs - 15.3 Buglets and clean-ups - 15.4 Case Studies - 15.5 Other contributions - - -1. Introduction -================ - - Welcome to User Mode Linux. It's going to be fun. - - - -1.1. How is User Mode Linux Different? ---------------------------------------- - - Normally, the Linux Kernel talks straight to your hardware (video - card, keyboard, hard drives, etc), and any programs which run ask the - kernel to operate the hardware, like so:: - - - - +-----------+-----------+----+ - | Process 1 | Process 2 | ...| - +-----------+-----------+----+ - | Linux Kernel | - +----------------------------+ - | Hardware | - +----------------------------+ - - - - - The User Mode Linux Kernel is different; instead of talking to the - hardware, it talks to a `real` Linux kernel (called the `host kernel` - from now on), like any other program. Programs can then run inside - User-Mode Linux as if they were running under a normal kernel, like - so:: - - - - +----------------+ - | Process 2 | ...| - +-----------+----------------+ - | Process 1 | User-Mode Linux| - +----------------------------+ - | Linux Kernel | - +----------------------------+ - | Hardware | - +----------------------------+ - - - - - -1.2. Why Would I Want User Mode Linux? ---------------------------------------- - - - 1. If User Mode Linux crashes, your host kernel is still fine. - - 2. You can run a usermode kernel as a non-root user. - - 3. You can debug the User Mode Linux like any normal process. - - 4. You can run gprof (profiling) and gcov (coverage testing). - - 5. You can play with your kernel without breaking things. - - 6. You can use it as a sandbox for testing new apps. - - 7. You can try new development kernels safely. - - 8. You can run different distributions simultaneously. - - 9. It's extremely fun. - - - -.. _Compiling_the_kernel_and_modules: - -2. Compiling the kernel and modules -==================================== - - - - -2.1. Compiling the kernel --------------------------- - - - Compiling the user mode kernel is just like compiling any other - kernel. - - - 1. Download the latest kernel from your favourite kernel mirror, - such as: - - https://mirrors.edge.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v5.x/linux-5.4.14.tar.xz - - 2. Make a directory and unpack the kernel into it:: - - host% - mkdir ~/uml - - host% - cd ~/uml - - host% - tar xvf linux-5.4.14.tar.xz - - - 3. Run your favorite config; ``make xconfig ARCH=um`` is the most - convenient. ``make config ARCH=um`` and ``make menuconfig ARCH=um`` - will work as well. The defaults will give you a useful kernel. If - you want to change something, go ahead, it probably won't hurt - anything. - - - Note: If the host is configured with a 2G/2G address space split - rather than the usual 3G/1G split, then the packaged UML binaries - will not run. They will immediately segfault. See - :ref:`UML_on_2G/2G_hosts` for the scoop on running UML on your system. - - - - 4. Finish with ``make linux ARCH=um``: the result is a file called - ``linux`` in the top directory of your source tree. - - -2.2. Compiling and installing kernel modules ---------------------------------------------- - - UML modules are built in the same way as the native kernel (with the - exception of the 'ARCH=um' that you always need for UML):: - - - host% make modules ARCH=um - - - - - Any modules that you want to load into this kernel need to be built in - the user-mode pool. Modules from the native kernel won't work. - - You can install them by using ftp or something to copy them into the - virtual machine and dropping them into ``/lib/modules/$(uname -r)``. - - You can also get the kernel build process to install them as follows: - - 1. with the kernel not booted, mount the root filesystem in the top - level of the kernel pool:: - - - host% mount root_fs mnt -o loop - - - - - - - 2. run:: - - - host% - make modules_install INSTALL_MOD_PATH=`pwd`/mnt ARCH=um - - - - - - - 3. unmount the filesystem:: - - - host% umount mnt - - - - - - - 4. boot the kernel on it - - - When the system is booted, you can use insmod as usual to get the - modules into the kernel. A number of things have been loaded into UML - as modules, especially filesystems and network protocols and filters, - so most symbols which need to be exported probably already are. - However, if you do find symbols that need exporting, let us - know at http://user-mode-linux.sourceforge.net/, and - they'll be "taken care of". - - - -2.3. Compiling and installing uml_utilities --------------------------------------------- - - Many features of the UML kernel require a user-space helper program, - so a uml_utilities package is distributed separately from the kernel - patch which provides these helpers. Included within this is: - - - port-helper - Used by consoles which connect to xterms or ports - - - tunctl - Configuration tool to create and delete tap devices - - - uml_net - Setuid binary for automatic tap device configuration - - - uml_switch - User-space virtual switch required for daemon - transport - - The uml_utilities tree is compiled with:: - - - host# - make && make install - - - - - Note that UML kernel patches may require a specific version of the - uml_utilities distribution. If you don't keep up with the mailing - lists, ensure that you have the latest release of uml_utilities if you - are experiencing problems with your UML kernel, particularly when - dealing with consoles or command-line switches to the helper programs - - - - - - - - -3. Running UML and logging in -============================== - - - -3.1. Running UML ------------------ - - It runs on 2.2.15 or later, and all kernel versions since 2.4. - - - Booting UML is straightforward. Simply run 'linux': it will try to - mount the file ``root_fs`` in the current directory. You do not need to - run it as root. If your root filesystem is not named ``root_fs``, then - you need to put a ``ubd0=root_fs_whatever`` switch on the linux command - line. - - - You will need a filesystem to boot UML from. There are a number - available for download from http://user-mode-linux.sourceforge.net. - There are also several tools at - http://user-mode-linux.sourceforge.net/ which can be - used to generate UML-compatible filesystem images from media. - The kernel will boot up and present you with a login prompt. - - -Note: - If the host is configured with a 2G/2G address space split - rather than the usual 3G/1G split, then the packaged UML binaries will - not run. They will immediately segfault. See :ref:`UML_on_2G/2G_hosts` - for the scoop on running UML on your system. - - - -3.2. Logging in ----------------- - - - - The prepackaged filesystems have a root account with password 'root' - and a user account with password 'user'. The login banner will - generally tell you how to log in. So, you log in and you will find - yourself inside a little virtual machine. Our filesystems have a - variety of commands and utilities installed (and it is fairly easy to - add more), so you will have a lot of tools with which to poke around - the system. - - There are a couple of other ways to log in: - - - On a virtual console - - - - Each virtual console that is configured (i.e. the device exists in - /dev and /etc/inittab runs a getty on it) will come up in its own - xterm. If you get tired of the xterms, read - :ref:`setting_up_serial_lines_and_consoles` to see how to attach - the consoles to something else, like host ptys. - - - - - Over the serial line - - - In the boot output, find a line that looks like:: - - - - serial line 0 assigned pty /dev/ptyp1 - - - - - Attach your favorite terminal program to the corresponding tty. I.e. - for minicom, the command would be:: - - - host% minicom -o -p /dev/ttyp1 - - - - - - - - Over the net - - - If the network is running, then you can telnet to the virtual - machine and log in to it. See :ref:`Setting_up_the_network` to learn - about setting up a virtual network. - - When you're done using it, run halt, and the kernel will bring itself - down and the process will exit. - - -3.3. Examples --------------- - - Here are some examples of UML in action: - - - A login session http://user-mode-linux.sourceforge.net/old/login.html - - - A virtual network http://user-mode-linux.sourceforge.net/old/net.html - - - - - -.. _UML_on_2G/2G_hosts: - -4. UML on 2G/2G hosts -====================== - - - - -4.1. Introduction ------------------- - - - Most Linux machines are configured so that the kernel occupies the - upper 1G (0xc0000000 - 0xffffffff) of the 4G address space and - processes use the lower 3G (0x00000000 - 0xbfffffff). However, some - machine are configured with a 2G/2G split, with the kernel occupying - the upper 2G (0x80000000 - 0xffffffff) and processes using the lower - 2G (0x00000000 - 0x7fffffff). - - - - -4.2. The problem ------------------ - - - The prebuilt UML binaries on this site will not run on 2G/2G hosts - because UML occupies the upper .5G of the 3G process address space - (0xa0000000 - 0xbfffffff). Obviously, on 2G/2G hosts, this is right - in the middle of the kernel address space, so UML won't even load - it - will immediately segfault. - - - - -4.3. The solution ------------------- - - - The fix for this is to rebuild UML from source after enabling - CONFIG_HOST_2G_2G (under 'General Setup'). This will cause UML to - load itself in the top .5G of that smaller process address space, - where it will run fine. See :ref:`Compiling_the_kernel_and_modules` if - you need help building UML from source. - - - - - - - -.. _setting_up_serial_lines_and_consoles: - - -5. Setting up serial lines and consoles -======================================== - - - It is possible to attach UML serial lines and consoles to many types - of host I/O channels by specifying them on the command line. - - - You can attach them to host ptys, ttys, file descriptors, and ports. - This allows you to do things like: - - - have a UML console appear on an unused host console, - - - hook two virtual machines together by having one attach to a pty - and having the other attach to the corresponding tty - - - make a virtual machine accessible from the net by attaching a - console to a port on the host. - - - The general format of the command line option is ``device=channel``. - - - -5.1. Specifying the device ---------------------------- - - Devices are specified with "con" or "ssl" (console or serial line, - respectively), optionally with a device number if you are talking - about a specific device. - - - Using just "con" or "ssl" describes all of the consoles or serial - lines. If you want to talk about console #3 or serial line #10, they - would be "con3" and "ssl10", respectively. - - - A specific device name will override a less general "con=" or "ssl=". - So, for example, you can assign a pty to each of the serial lines - except for the first two like this:: - - - ssl=pty ssl0=tty:/dev/tty0 ssl1=tty:/dev/tty1 - - - - - The specificity of the device name is all that matters; order on the - command line is irrelevant. - - - -5.2. Specifying the channel ----------------------------- - - There are a number of different types of channels to attach a UML - device to, each with a different way of specifying exactly what to - attach to. - - - pseudo-terminals - device=pty pts terminals - device=pts - - - This will cause UML to allocate a free host pseudo-terminal for the - device. The terminal that it got will be announced in the boot - log. You access it by attaching a terminal program to the - corresponding tty: - - - screen /dev/pts/n - - - screen /dev/ttyxx - - - minicom -o -p /dev/ttyxx - minicom seems not able to handle pts - devices - - - kermit - start it up, 'open' the device, then 'connect' - - - - - - - terminals - device=tty:tty device file - - - This will make UML attach the device to the specified tty (i.e:: - - - con1=tty:/dev/tty3 - - - - - will attach UML's console 1 to the host's /dev/tty3). If the tty that - you specify is the slave end of a tty/pty pair, something else must - have already opened the corresponding pty in order for this to work. - - - - - - - xterms - device=xterm - - - UML will run an xterm and the device will be attached to it. - - - - - - - Port - device=port:port number - - - This will attach the UML devices to the specified host port. - Attaching console 1 to the host's port 9000 would be done like - this:: - - - con1=port:9000 - - - - - Attaching all the serial lines to that port would be done similarly:: - - - ssl=port:9000 - - - - - You access these devices by telnetting to that port. Each active - telnet session gets a different device. If there are more telnets to a - port than UML devices attached to it, then the extra telnet sessions - will block until an existing telnet detaches, or until another device - becomes active (i.e. by being activated in /etc/inittab). - - This channel has the advantage that you can both attach multiple UML - devices to it and know how to access them without reading the UML boot - log. It is also unique in allowing access to a UML from remote - machines without requiring that the UML be networked. This could be - useful in allowing public access to UMLs because they would be - accessible from the net, but wouldn't need any kind of network - filtering or access control because they would have no network access. - - - If you attach the main console to a portal, then the UML boot will - appear to hang. In reality, it's waiting for a telnet to connect, at - which point the boot will proceed. - - - - - - - already-existing file descriptors - device=file descriptor - - - If you set up a file descriptor on the UML command line, you can - attach a UML device to it. This is most commonly used to put the - main console back on stdin and stdout after assigning all the other - consoles to something else:: - - - con0=fd:0,fd:1 con=pts - - - - - - - - - - Nothing - device=null - - - This allows the device to be opened, in contrast to 'none', but - reads will block, and writes will succeed and the data will be - thrown out. - - - - - - - None - device=none - - - This causes the device to disappear. - - - - You can also specify different input and output channels for a device - by putting a comma between them:: - - - ssl3=tty:/dev/tty2,xterm - - - - - will cause serial line 3 to accept input on the host's /dev/tty2 and - display output on an xterm. That's a silly example - the most common - use of this syntax is to reattach the main console to stdin and stdout - as shown above. - - - If you decide to move the main console away from stdin/stdout, the - initial boot output will appear in the terminal that you're running - UML in. However, once the console driver has been officially - initialized, then the boot output will start appearing wherever you - specified that console 0 should be. That device will receive all - subsequent output. - - - -5.3. Examples --------------- - - There are a number of interesting things you can do with this - capability. - - - First, this is how you get rid of those bleeding console xterms by - attaching them to host ptys:: - - - con=pty con0=fd:0,fd:1 - - - - - This will make a UML console take over an unused host virtual console, - so that when you switch to it, you will see the UML login prompt - rather than the host login prompt:: - - - con1=tty:/dev/tty6 - - - - - You can attach two virtual machines together with what amounts to a - serial line as follows: - - Run one UML with a serial line attached to a pty:: - - - ssl1=pty - - - - - Look at the boot log to see what pty it got (this example will assume - that it got /dev/ptyp1). - - Boot the other UML with a serial line attached to the corresponding - tty:: - - - ssl1=tty:/dev/ttyp1 - - - - - Log in, make sure that it has no getty on that serial line, attach a - terminal program like minicom to it, and you should see the login - prompt of the other virtual machine. - - -.. _setting_up_the_network: - -6. Setting up the network -========================== - - - - This page describes how to set up the various transports and to - provide a UML instance with network access to the host, other machines - on the local net, and the rest of the net. - - - As of 2.4.5, UML networking has been completely redone to make it much - easier to set up, fix bugs, and add new features. - - - There is a new helper, uml_net, which does the host setup that - requires root privileges. - - - There are currently five transport types available for a UML virtual - machine to exchange packets with other hosts: - - - ethertap - - - TUN/TAP - - - Multicast - - - a switch daemon - - - slip - - - slirp - - - pcap - - The TUN/TAP, ethertap, slip, and slirp transports allow a UML - instance to exchange packets with the host. They may be directed - to the host or the host may just act as a router to provide access - to other physical or virtual machines. - - - The pcap transport is a synthetic read-only interface, using the - libpcap binary to collect packets from interfaces on the host and - filter them. This is useful for building preconfigured traffic - monitors or sniffers. - - - The daemon and multicast transports provide a completely virtual - network to other virtual machines. This network is completely - disconnected from the physical network unless one of the virtual - machines on it is acting as a gateway. - - - With so many host transports, which one should you use? Here's when - you should use each one: - - - ethertap - if you want access to the host networking and it is - running 2.2 - - - TUN/TAP - if you want access to the host networking and it is - running 2.4. Also, the TUN/TAP transport is able to use a - preconfigured device, allowing it to avoid using the setuid uml_net - helper, which is a security advantage. - - - Multicast - if you want a purely virtual network and you don't want - to set up anything but the UML - - - a switch daemon - if you want a purely virtual network and you - don't mind running the daemon in order to get somewhat better - performance - - - slip - there is no particular reason to run the slip backend unless - ethertap and TUN/TAP are just not available for some reason - - - slirp - if you don't have root access on the host to setup - networking, or if you don't want to allocate an IP to your UML - - - pcap - not much use for actual network connectivity, but great for - monitoring traffic on the host - - Ethertap is available on 2.4 and works fine. TUN/TAP is preferred - to it because it has better performance and ethertap is officially - considered obsolete in 2.4. Also, the root helper only needs to - run occasionally for TUN/TAP, rather than handling every packet, as - it does with ethertap. This is a slight security advantage since - it provides fewer opportunities for a nasty UML user to somehow - exploit the helper's root privileges. - - -6.1. General setup -------------------- - - First, you must have the virtual network enabled in your UML. If are - running a prebuilt kernel from this site, everything is already - enabled. If you build the kernel yourself, under the "Network device - support" menu, enable "Network device support", and then the three - transports. - - - The next step is to provide a network device to the virtual machine. - This is done by describing it on the kernel command line. - - The general format is:: - - - eth <n> = <transport> , <transport args> - - - - - For example, a virtual ethernet device may be attached to a host - ethertap device as follows:: - - - eth0=ethertap,tap0,fe:fd:0:0:0:1,192.168.0.254 - - - - - This sets up eth0 inside the virtual machine to attach itself to the - host /dev/tap0, assigns it an ethernet address, and assigns the host - tap0 interface an IP address. - - - - Note that the IP address you assign to the host end of the tap device - must be different than the IP you assign to the eth device inside UML. - If you are short on IPs and don't want to consume two per UML, then - you can reuse the host's eth IP address for the host ends of the tap - devices. Internally, the UMLs must still get unique IPs for their eth - devices. You can also give the UMLs non-routable IPs (192.168.x.x or - 10.x.x.x) and have the host masquerade them. This will let outgoing - connections work, but incoming connections won't without more work, - such as port forwarding from the host. - Also note that when you configure the host side of an interface, it is - only acting as a gateway. It will respond to pings sent to it - locally, but is not useful to do that since it's a host interface. - You are not talking to the UML when you ping that interface and get a - response. - - - You can also add devices to a UML and remove them at runtime. See the - :ref:`The_Management_Console` page for details. - - - The sections below describe this in more detail. - - - Once you've decided how you're going to set up the devices, you boot - UML, log in, configure the UML side of the devices, and set up routes - to the outside world. At that point, you will be able to talk to any - other machines, physical or virtual, on the net. - - - If ifconfig inside UML fails and the network refuses to come up, run - tell you what went wrong. - - - -6.2. Userspace daemons ------------------------ - - You will likely need the setuid helper, or the switch daemon, or both. - They are both installed with the RPM and deb, so if you've installed - either, you can skip the rest of this section. - - - If not, then you need to check them out of CVS, build them, and - install them. The helper is uml_net, in CVS /tools/uml_net, and the - daemon is uml_switch, in CVS /tools/uml_router. They are both built - with a plain 'make'. Both need to be installed in a directory that's - in your path - /usr/bin is recommend. On top of that, uml_net needs - to be setuid root. - - - -6.3. Specifying ethernet addresses ------------------------------------ - - Below, you will see that the TUN/TAP, ethertap, and daemon interfaces - allow you to specify hardware addresses for the virtual ethernet - devices. This is generally not necessary. If you don't have a - specific reason to do it, you probably shouldn't. If one is not - specified on the command line, the driver will assign one based on the - device IP address. It will provide the address fe:fd:nn:nn:nn:nn - where nn.nn.nn.nn is the device IP address. This is nearly always - sufficient to guarantee a unique hardware address for the device. A - couple of exceptions are: - - - Another set of virtual ethernet devices are on the same network and - they are assigned hardware addresses using a different scheme which - may conflict with the UML IP address-based scheme - - - You aren't going to use the device for IP networking, so you don't - assign the device an IP address - - If you let the driver provide the hardware address, you should make - sure that the device IP address is known before the interface is - brought up. So, inside UML, this will guarantee that:: - - - - UML# - ifconfig eth0 192.168.0.250 up - - - - - If you decide to assign the hardware address yourself, make sure that - the first byte of the address is even. Addresses with an odd first - byte are broadcast addresses, which you don't want assigned to a - device. - - - -6.4. UML interface setup -------------------------- - - Once the network devices have been described on the command line, you - should boot UML and log in. - - - The first thing to do is bring the interface up:: - - - UML# ifconfig ethn ip-address up - - - - - You should be able to ping the host at this point. - - - To reach the rest of the world, you should set a default route to the - host:: - - - UML# route add default gw host ip - - - - - Again, with host ip of 192.168.0.4:: - - - UML# route add default gw 192.168.0.4 - - - - - This page used to recommend setting a network route to your local net. - This is wrong, because it will cause UML to try to figure out hardware - addresses of the local machines by arping on the interface to the - host. Since that interface is basically a single strand of ethernet - with two nodes on it (UML and the host) and arp requests don't cross - networks, they will fail to elicit any responses. So, what you want - is for UML to just blindly throw all packets at the host and let it - figure out what to do with them, which is what leaving out the network - route and adding the default route does. - - - Note: If you can't communicate with other hosts on your physical - ethernet, it's probably because of a network route that's - automatically set up. If you run 'route -n' and see a route that - looks like this:: - - - - - Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface - 192.168.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth0 - - - - - with a mask that's not 255.255.255.255, then replace it with a route - to your host:: - - - UML# - route del -net 192.168.0.0 dev eth0 netmask 255.255.255.0 - - - UML# - route add -host 192.168.0.4 dev eth0 - - - - - This, plus the default route to the host, will allow UML to exchange - packets with any machine on your ethernet. - - - -6.5. Multicast ---------------- - - The simplest way to set up a virtual network between multiple UMLs is - to use the mcast transport. This was written by Harald Welte and is - present in UML version 2.4.5-5um and later. Your system must have - multicast enabled in the kernel and there must be a multicast-capable - network device on the host. Normally, this is eth0, but if there is - no ethernet card on the host, then you will likely get strange error - messages when you bring the device up inside UML. - - - To use it, run two UMLs with:: - - - eth0=mcast - - - - - on their command lines. Log in, configure the ethernet device in each - machine with different IP addresses:: - - - UML1# ifconfig eth0 192.168.0.254 - - - UML2# ifconfig eth0 192.168.0.253 - - - - - and they should be able to talk to each other. - - The full set of command line options for this transport are:: - - - - ethn=mcast,ethernet address,multicast - address,multicast port,ttl - - - - There is also a related point-to-point only "ucast" transport. - This is useful when your network does not support multicast, and - all network connections are simple point to point links. - - The full set of command line options for this transport are:: - - - ethn=ucast,ethernet address,remote address,listen port,remote port - - - - -6.6. TUN/TAP with the uml_net helper -------------------------------------- - - TUN/TAP is the preferred mechanism on 2.4 to exchange packets with the - host. The TUN/TAP backend has been in UML since 2.4.9-3um. - - - The easiest way to get up and running is to let the setuid uml_net - helper do the host setup for you. This involves insmod-ing the tun.o - module if necessary, configuring the device, and setting up IP - forwarding, routing, and proxy arp. If you are new to UML networking, - do this first. If you're concerned about the security implications of - the setuid helper, use it to get up and running, then read the next - section to see how to have UML use a preconfigured tap device, which - avoids the use of uml_net. - - - If you specify an IP address for the host side of the device, the - uml_net helper will do all necessary setup on the host - the only - requirement is that TUN/TAP be available, either built in to the host - kernel or as the tun.o module. - - The format of the command line switch to attach a device to a TUN/TAP - device is:: - - - eth <n> =tuntap,,, <IP address> - - - - - For example, this argument will attach the UML's eth0 to the next - available tap device and assign an ethernet address to it based on its - IP address:: - - - eth0=tuntap,,,192.168.0.254 - - - - - - - Note that the IP address that must be used for the eth device inside - UML is fixed by the routing and proxy arp that is set up on the - TUN/TAP device on the host. You can use a different one, but it won't - work because reply packets won't reach the UML. This is a feature. - It prevents a nasty UML user from doing things like setting the UML IP - to the same as the network's nameserver or mail server. - - - There are a couple potential problems with running the TUN/TAP - transport on a 2.4 host kernel - - - TUN/TAP seems not to work on 2.4.3 and earlier. Upgrade the host - kernel or use the ethertap transport. - - - With an upgraded kernel, TUN/TAP may fail with:: - - - File descriptor in bad state - - - - - This is due to a header mismatch between the upgraded kernel and the - kernel that was originally installed on the machine. The fix is to - make sure that /usr/src/linux points to the headers for the running - kernel. - - These were pointed out by Tim Robinson <timro at trkr dot net> in the past. - - - -6.7. TUN/TAP with a preconfigured tap device ---------------------------------------------- - - If you prefer not to have UML use uml_net (which is somewhat - insecure), with UML 2.4.17-11, you can set up a TUN/TAP device - beforehand. The setup needs to be done as root, but once that's done, - there is no need for root assistance. Setting up the device is done - as follows: - - - Create the device with tunctl (available from the UML utilities - tarball):: - - - - - host# tunctl -u uid - - - - - where uid is the user id or username that UML will be run as. This - will tell you what device was created. - - - Configure the device IP (change IP addresses and device name to - suit):: - - - - - host# ifconfig tap0 192.168.0.254 up - - - - - - - Set up routing and arping if desired - this is my recipe, there are - other ways of doing the same thing:: - - - host# - bash -c 'echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward' - - host# - route add -host 192.168.0.253 dev tap0 - - host# - bash -c 'echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf/tap0/proxy_arp' - - host# - arp -Ds 192.168.0.253 eth0 pub - - - - - Note that this must be done every time the host boots - this configu- - ration is not stored across host reboots. So, it's probably a good - idea to stick it in an rc file. An even better idea would be a little - utility which reads the information from a config file and sets up - devices at boot time. - - - Rather than using up two IPs and ARPing for one of them, you can - also provide direct access to your LAN by the UML by using a - bridge:: - - - host# - brctl addbr br0 - - - host# - ifconfig eth0 0.0.0.0 promisc up - - - host# - ifconfig tap0 0.0.0.0 promisc up - - - host# - ifconfig br0 192.168.0.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 up - - - host# - brctl stp br0 off - - - host# - brctl setfd br0 1 - - - host# - brctl sethello br0 1 - - - host# - brctl addif br0 eth0 - - - host# - brctl addif br0 tap0 - - - - - Note that 'br0' should be setup using ifconfig with the existing IP - address of eth0, as eth0 no longer has its own IP. - - - - - - Also, the /dev/net/tun device must be writable by the user running - UML in order for the UML to use the device that's been configured - for it. The simplest thing to do is:: - - - host# chmod 666 /dev/net/tun - - - - - Making it world-writable looks bad, but it seems not to be - exploitable as a security hole. However, it does allow anyone to cre- - ate useless tap devices (useless because they can't configure them), - which is a DOS attack. A somewhat more secure alternative would to be - to create a group containing all the users who have preconfigured tap - devices and chgrp /dev/net/tun to that group with mode 664 or 660. - - - - Once the device is set up, run UML with 'eth0=tuntap,device name' - (i.e. 'eth0=tuntap,tap0') on the command line (or do it with the - mconsole config command). - - - Bring the eth device up in UML and you're in business. - - If you don't want that tap device any more, you can make it non- - persistent with:: - - - host# tunctl -d tap device - - - - - Finally, tunctl has a -b (for brief mode) switch which causes it to - output only the name of the tap device it created. This makes it - suitable for capture by a script:: - - - host# TAP=`tunctl -u 1000 -b` - - - - - - -6.8. Ethertap --------------- - - Ethertap is the general mechanism on 2.2 for userspace processes to - exchange packets with the kernel. - - - - To use this transport, you need to describe the virtual network device - on the UML command line. The general format for this is:: - - - eth <n> =ethertap, <device> , <ethernet address> , <tap IP address> - - - - - So, the previous example:: - - - eth0=ethertap,tap0,fe:fd:0:0:0:1,192.168.0.254 - - - - - attaches the UML eth0 device to the host /dev/tap0, assigns it the - ethernet address fe:fd:0:0:0:1, and assigns the IP address - 192.168.0.254 to the tap device. - - - - The tap device is mandatory, but the others are optional. If the - ethernet address is omitted, one will be assigned to it. - - - The presence of the tap IP address will cause the helper to run and do - whatever host setup is needed to allow the virtual machine to - communicate with the outside world. If you're not sure you know what - you're doing, this is the way to go. - - - If it is absent, then you must configure the tap device and whatever - arping and routing you will need on the host. However, even in this - case, the uml_net helper still needs to be in your path and it must be - setuid root if you're not running UML as root. This is because the - tap device doesn't support SIGIO, which UML needs in order to use - something as a source of input. So, the helper is used as a - convenient asynchronous IO thread. - - If you're using the uml_net helper, you can ignore the following host - setup - uml_net will do it for you. You just need to make sure you - have ethertap available, either built in to the host kernel or - available as a module. - - - If you want to set things up yourself, you need to make sure that the - appropriate /dev entry exists. If it doesn't, become root and create - it as follows:: - - - mknod /dev/tap <minor> c 36 <minor> + 16 - - - - - For example, this is how to create /dev/tap0:: - - - mknod /dev/tap0 c 36 0 + 16 - - - - - You also need to make sure that the host kernel has ethertap support. - If ethertap is enabled as a module, you apparently need to insmod - ethertap once for each ethertap device you want to enable. So,:: - - - host# - insmod ethertap - - - - - will give you the tap0 interface. To get the tap1 interface, you need - to run:: - - - host# - insmod ethertap unit=1 -o ethertap1 - - - - - - - -6.9. The switch daemon ------------------------ - - Note: This is the daemon formerly known as uml_router, but which was - renamed so the network weenies of the world would stop growling at me. - - - The switch daemon, uml_switch, provides a mechanism for creating a - totally virtual network. By default, it provides no connection to the - host network (but see -tap, below). - - - The first thing you need to do is run the daemon. Running it with no - arguments will make it listen on a default pair of unix domain - sockets. - - - If you want it to listen on a different pair of sockets, use:: - - - -unix control socket data socket - - - - - - If you want it to act as a hub rather than a switch, use:: - - - -hub - - - - - - If you want the switch to be connected to host networking (allowing - the umls to get access to the outside world through the host), use:: - - - -tap tap0 - - - - - - Note that the tap device must be preconfigured (see "TUN/TAP with a - preconfigured tap device", above). If you're using a different tap - device than tap0, specify that instead of tap0. - - - uml_switch can be backgrounded as follows:: - - - host% - uml_switch [ options ] < /dev/null > /dev/null - - - - - The reason it doesn't background by default is that it listens to - stdin for EOF. When it sees that, it exits. - - - The general format of the kernel command line switch is:: - - - - ethn=daemon,ethernet address,socket - type,control socket,data socket - - - - - You can leave off everything except the 'daemon'. You only need to - specify the ethernet address if the one that will be assigned to it - isn't acceptable for some reason. The rest of the arguments describe - how to communicate with the daemon. You should only specify them if - you told the daemon to use different sockets than the default. So, if - you ran the daemon with no arguments, running the UML on the same - machine with:: - - eth0=daemon - - - - - will cause the eth0 driver to attach itself to the daemon correctly. - - - -6.10. Slip ------------ - - Slip is another, less general, mechanism for a process to communicate - with the host networking. In contrast to the ethertap interface, - which exchanges ethernet frames with the host and can be used to - transport any higher-level protocol, it can only be used to transport - IP. - - - The general format of the command line switch is:: - - - - ethn=slip,slip IP - - - - - The slip IP argument is the IP address that will be assigned to the - host end of the slip device. If it is specified, the helper will run - and will set up the host so that the virtual machine can reach it and - the rest of the network. - - - There are some oddities with this interface that you should be aware - of. You should only specify one slip device on a given virtual - machine, and its name inside UML will be 'umn', not 'eth0' or whatever - you specified on the command line. These problems will be fixed at - some point. - - - -6.11. Slirp ------------- - - slirp uses an external program, usually /usr/bin/slirp, to provide IP - only networking connectivity through the host. This is similar to IP - masquerading with a firewall, although the translation is performed in - user-space, rather than by the kernel. As slirp does not set up any - interfaces on the host, or changes routing, slirp does not require - root access or setuid binaries on the host. - - - The general format of the command line switch for slirp is:: - - - - ethn=slirp,ethernet address,slirp path - - - - - The ethernet address is optional, as UML will set up the interface - with an ethernet address based upon the initial IP address of the - interface. The slirp path is generally /usr/bin/slirp, although it - will depend on distribution. - - - The slirp program can have a number of options passed to the command - line and we can't add them to the UML command line, as they will be - parsed incorrectly. Instead, a wrapper shell script can be written or - the options inserted into the /.slirprc file. More information on - all of the slirp options can be found in its man pages. - - - The eth0 interface on UML should be set up with the IP 10.2.0.15, - although you can use anything as long as it is not used by a network - you will be connecting to. The default route on UML should be set to - use:: - - - UML# - route add default dev eth0 - - - - - slirp provides a number of useful IP addresses which can be used by - UML, such as 10.0.2.3 which is an alias for the DNS server specified - in /etc/resolv.conf on the host or the IP given in the 'dns' option - for slirp. - - - Even with a baudrate setting higher than 115200, the slirp connection - is limited to 115200. If you need it to go faster, the slirp binary - needs to be compiled with FULL_BOLT defined in config.h. - - - -6.12. pcap ------------ - - The pcap transport is attached to a UML ethernet device on the command - line or with uml_mconsole with the following syntax:: - - - - ethn=pcap,host interface,filter - expression,option1,option2 - - - - - The expression and options are optional. - - - The interface is whatever network device on the host you want to - sniff. The expression is a pcap filter expression, which is also what - tcpdump uses, so if you know how to specify tcpdump filters, you will - use the same expressions here. The options are up to two of - 'promisc', control whether pcap puts the host interface into - promiscuous mode. 'optimize' and 'nooptimize' control whether the pcap - expression optimizer is used. - - - Example:: - - - - eth0=pcap,eth0,tcp - - eth1=pcap,eth0,!tcp - - - - will cause the UML eth0 to emit all tcp packets on the host eth0 and - the UML eth1 to emit all non-tcp packets on the host eth0. - - - -6.13. Setting up the host yourself ------------------------------------ - - If you don't specify an address for the host side of the ethertap or - slip device, UML won't do any setup on the host. So this is what is - needed to get things working (the examples use a host-side IP of - 192.168.0.251 and a UML-side IP of 192.168.0.250 - adjust to suit your - own network): - - - The device needs to be configured with its IP address. Tap devices - are also configured with an mtu of 1484. Slip devices are - configured with a point-to-point address pointing at the UML ip - address:: - - - host# ifconfig tap0 arp mtu 1484 192.168.0.251 up - - - host# - ifconfig sl0 192.168.0.251 pointopoint 192.168.0.250 up - - - - - - - If a tap device is being set up, a route is set to the UML IP:: - - - UML# route add -host 192.168.0.250 gw 192.168.0.251 - - - - - - - To allow other hosts on your network to see the virtual machine, - proxy arp is set up for it:: - - - host# arp -Ds 192.168.0.250 eth0 pub - - - - - - - Finally, the host is set up to route packets:: - - - host# echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward - - - - - - - - - - -7. Sharing Filesystems between Virtual Machines -================================================ - - - - -7.1. A warning ---------------- - - Don't attempt to share filesystems simply by booting two UMLs from the - same file. That's the same thing as booting two physical machines - from a shared disk. It will result in filesystem corruption. - - - -7.2. Using layered block devices ---------------------------------- - - The way to share a filesystem between two virtual machines is to use - the copy-on-write (COW) layering capability of the ubd block driver. - As of 2.4.6-2um, the driver supports layering a read-write private - device over a read-only shared device. A machine's writes are stored - in the private device, while reads come from either device - the - private one if the requested block is valid in it, the shared one if - not. Using this scheme, the majority of data which is unchanged is - shared between an arbitrary number of virtual machines, each of which - has a much smaller file containing the changes that it has made. With - a large number of UMLs booting from a large root filesystem, this - leads to a huge disk space saving. It will also help performance, - since the host will be able to cache the shared data using a much - smaller amount of memory, so UML disk requests will be served from the - host's memory rather than its disks. - - - - - To add a copy-on-write layer to an existing block device file, simply - add the name of the COW file to the appropriate ubd switch:: - - - ubd0=root_fs_cow,root_fs_debian_22 - - - - - where 'root_fs_cow' is the private COW file and 'root_fs_debian_22' is - the existing shared filesystem. The COW file need not exist. If it - doesn't, the driver will create and initialize it. Once the COW file - has been initialized, it can be used on its own on the command line:: - - - ubd0=root_fs_cow - - - - - The name of the backing file is stored in the COW file header, so it - would be redundant to continue specifying it on the command line. - - - -7.3. Note! ------------ - - When checking the size of the COW file in order to see the gobs of - space that you're saving, make sure you use 'ls -ls' to see the actual - disk consumption rather than the length of the file. The COW file is - sparse, so the length will be very different from the disk usage. - Here is a 'ls -l' of a COW file and backing file from one boot and - shutdown:: - - host% ls -l cow.debian debian2.2 - -rw-r--r-- 1 jdike jdike 492504064 Aug 6 21:16 cow.debian - -rwxrw-rw- 1 jdike jdike 537919488 Aug 6 20:42 debian2.2 - - - - - Doesn't look like much saved space, does it? Well, here's 'ls -ls':: - - - host% ls -ls cow.debian debian2.2 - 880 -rw-r--r-- 1 jdike jdike 492504064 Aug 6 21:16 cow.debian - 525832 -rwxrw-rw- 1 jdike jdike 537919488 Aug 6 20:42 debian2.2 - - - - - Now, you can see that the COW file has less than a meg of disk, rather - than 492 meg. - - - -7.4. Another warning ---------------------- - - Once a filesystem is being used as a readonly backing file for a COW - file, do not boot directly from it or modify it in any way. Doing so - will invalidate any COW files that are using it. The mtime and size - of the backing file are stored in the COW file header at its creation, - and they must continue to match. If they don't, the driver will - refuse to use the COW file. - - - - - If you attempt to evade this restriction by changing either the - backing file or the COW header by hand, you will get a corrupted - filesystem. - - - - - Among other things, this means that upgrading the distribution in a - backing file and expecting that all of the COW files using it will see - the upgrade will not work. - - - - -7.5. uml_moo : Merging a COW file with its backing file --------------------------------------------------------- - - Depending on how you use UML and COW devices, it may be advisable to - merge the changes in the COW file into the backing file every once in - a while. - - - - - The utility that does this is uml_moo. Its usage is:: - - - host% uml_moo COW file new backing file - - - - - There's no need to specify the backing file since that information is - already in the COW file header. If you're paranoid, boot the new - merged file, and if you're happy with it, move it over the old backing - file. - - - - - uml_moo creates a new backing file by default as a safety measure. It - also has a destructive merge option which will merge the COW file - directly into its current backing file. This is really only usable - when the backing file only has one COW file associated with it. If - there are multiple COWs associated with a backing file, a -d merge of - one of them will invalidate all of the others. However, it is - convenient if you're short of disk space, and it should also be - noticeably faster than a non-destructive merge. - - - - - uml_moo is installed with the UML deb and RPM. If you didn't install - UML from one of those packages, you can also get it from the UML - utilities http://user-mode-linux.sourceforge.net/utilities tar file - in tools/moo. - - - - - - - - -8. Creating filesystems -======================== - - - You may want to create and mount new UML filesystems, either because - your root filesystem isn't large enough or because you want to use a - filesystem other than ext2. - - - This was written on the occasion of reiserfs being included in the - 2.4.1 kernel pool, and therefore the 2.4.1 UML, so the examples will - talk about reiserfs. This information is generic, and the examples - should be easy to translate to the filesystem of your choice. - - -8.1. Create the filesystem file -================================ - - dd is your friend. All you need to do is tell dd to create an empty - file of the appropriate size. I usually make it sparse to save time - and to avoid allocating disk space until it's actually used. For - example, the following command will create a sparse 100 meg file full - of zeroes:: - - - host% - dd if=/dev/zero of=new_filesystem seek=100 count=1 bs=1M - - - - - - - 8.2. Assign the file to a UML device - - Add an argument like the following to the UML command line:: - - ubd4=new_filesystem - - - - - making sure that you use an unassigned ubd device number. - - - - 8.3. Creating and mounting the filesystem - - Make sure that the filesystem is available, either by being built into - the kernel, or available as a module, then boot up UML and log in. If - the root filesystem doesn't have the filesystem utilities (mkfs, fsck, - etc), then get them into UML by way of the net or hostfs. - - - Make the new filesystem on the device assigned to the new file:: - - - host# mkreiserfs /dev/ubd/4 - - - <----------- MKREISERFSv2 -----------> - - ReiserFS version 3.6.25 - Block size 4096 bytes - Block count 25856 - Used blocks 8212 - Journal - 8192 blocks (18-8209), journal header is in block 8210 - Bitmaps: 17 - Root block 8211 - Hash function "r5" - ATTENTION: ALL DATA WILL BE LOST ON '/dev/ubd/4'! (y/n)y - journal size 8192 (from 18) - Initializing journal - 0%....20%....40%....60%....80%....100% - Syncing..done. - - - - - Now, mount it:: - - - UML# - mount /dev/ubd/4 /mnt - - - - - and you're in business. - - - - - - - - - -9. Host file access -==================== - - - If you want to access files on the host machine from inside UML, you - can treat it as a separate machine and either nfs mount directories - from the host or copy files into the virtual machine with scp or rcp. - However, since UML is running on the host, it can access those - files just like any other process and make them available inside the - virtual machine without needing to use the network. - - - This is now possible with the hostfs virtual filesystem. With it, you - can mount a host directory into the UML filesystem and access the - files contained in it just as you would on the host. - - -9.1. Using hostfs ------------------- - - To begin with, make sure that hostfs is available inside the virtual - machine with:: - - - UML# cat /proc/filesystems - - - - . hostfs should be listed. If it's not, either rebuild the kernel - with hostfs configured into it or make sure that hostfs is built as a - module and available inside the virtual machine, and insmod it. - - - Now all you need to do is run mount:: - - - UML# mount none /mnt/host -t hostfs - - - - - will mount the host's / on the virtual machine's /mnt/host. - - - If you don't want to mount the host root directory, then you can - specify a subdirectory to mount with the -o switch to mount:: - - - UML# mount none /mnt/home -t hostfs -o /home - - - - - will mount the hosts's /home on the virtual machine's /mnt/home. - - - -9.2. hostfs as the root filesystem ------------------------------------ - - It's possible to boot from a directory hierarchy on the host using - hostfs rather than using the standard filesystem in a file. - - To start, you need that hierarchy. The easiest way is to loop mount - an existing root_fs file:: - - - host# mount root_fs uml_root_dir -o loop - - - - - You need to change the filesystem type of / in etc/fstab to be - 'hostfs', so that line looks like this:: - - /dev/ubd/0 / hostfs defaults 1 1 - - - - - Then you need to chown to yourself all the files in that directory - that are owned by root. This worked for me:: - - - host# find . -uid 0 -exec chown jdike {} \; - - - - - Next, make sure that your UML kernel has hostfs compiled in, not as a - module. Then run UML with the boot device pointing at that directory:: - - - ubd0=/path/to/uml/root/directory - - - - - UML should then boot as it does normally. - - -9.3. Building hostfs ---------------------- - - If you need to build hostfs because it's not in your kernel, you have - two choices: - - - - - Compiling hostfs into the kernel: - - - Reconfigure the kernel and set the 'Host filesystem' option under - - - - Compiling hostfs as a module: - - - Reconfigure the kernel and set the 'Host filesystem' option under - be in arch/um/fs/hostfs/hostfs.o. Install that in - ``/lib/modules/$(uname -r)/fs`` in the virtual machine, boot it up, and:: - - - UML# insmod hostfs - - -.. _The_Management_Console: - -10. The Management Console -=========================== - - - - The UML management console is a low-level interface to the kernel, - somewhat like the i386 SysRq interface. Since there is a full-blown - operating system under UML, there is much greater flexibility possible - than with the SysRq mechanism. - - - There are a number of things you can do with the mconsole interface: - - - get the kernel version - - - add and remove devices - - - halt or reboot the machine - - - Send SysRq commands - - - Pause and resume the UML - - - You need the mconsole client (uml_mconsole) which is present in CVS - (/tools/mconsole) in 2.4.5-9um and later, and will be in the RPM in - 2.4.6. - - - You also need CONFIG_MCONSOLE (under 'General Setup') enabled in UML. - When you boot UML, you'll see a line like:: - - - mconsole initialized on /home/jdike/.uml/umlNJ32yL/mconsole - - - - - If you specify a unique machine id one the UML command line, i.e.:: - - - umid=debian - - - - - you'll see this:: - - - mconsole initialized on /home/jdike/.uml/debian/mconsole - - - - - That file is the socket that uml_mconsole will use to communicate with - UML. Run it with either the umid or the full path as its argument:: - - - host% uml_mconsole debian - - - - - or:: - - - host% uml_mconsole /home/jdike/.uml/debian/mconsole - - - - - You'll get a prompt, at which you can run one of these commands: - - - version - - - halt - - - reboot - - - config - - - remove - - - sysrq - - - help - - - cad - - - stop - - - go - - -10.1. version --------------- - - This takes no arguments. It prints the UML version:: - - - (mconsole) version - OK Linux usermode 2.4.5-9um #1 Wed Jun 20 22:47:08 EDT 2001 i686 - - - - - There are a couple actual uses for this. It's a simple no-op which - can be used to check that a UML is running. It's also a way of - sending an interrupt to the UML. This is sometimes useful on SMP - hosts, where there's a bug which causes signals to UML to be lost, - often causing it to appear to hang. Sending such a UML the mconsole - version command is a good way to 'wake it up' before networking has - been enabled, as it does not do anything to the function of the UML. - - - -10.2. halt and reboot ----------------------- - - These take no arguments. They shut the machine down immediately, with - no syncing of disks and no clean shutdown of userspace. So, they are - pretty close to crashing the machine:: - - - (mconsole) halt - OK - - - - - - -10.3. config -------------- - - "config" adds a new device to the virtual machine. Currently the ubd - and network drivers support this. It takes one argument, which is the - device to add, with the same syntax as the kernel command line:: - - - - - (mconsole) - config ubd3=/home/jdike/incoming/roots/root_fs_debian22 - - OK - (mconsole) config eth1=mcast - OK - - - - - - -10.4. remove -------------- - - "remove" deletes a device from the system. Its argument is just the - name of the device to be removed. The device must be idle in whatever - sense the driver considers necessary. In the case of the ubd driver, - the removed block device must not be mounted, swapped on, or otherwise - open, and in the case of the network driver, the device must be down:: - - - (mconsole) remove ubd3 - OK - (mconsole) remove eth1 - OK - - - - - - -10.5. sysrq ------------- - - This takes one argument, which is a single letter. It calls the - generic kernel's SysRq driver, which does whatever is called for by - that argument. See the SysRq documentation in - Documentation/admin-guide/sysrq.rst in your favorite kernel tree to - see what letters are valid and what they do. - - - -10.6. help ------------ - - "help" returns a string listing the valid commands and what each one - does. - - - -10.7. cad ----------- - - This invokes the Ctl-Alt-Del action on init. What exactly this ends - up doing is up to /etc/inittab. Normally, it reboots the machine. - With UML, this is usually not desired, so if a halt would be better, - then find the section of inittab that looks like this:: - - - # What to do when CTRL-ALT-DEL is pressed. - ca:12345:ctrlaltdel:/sbin/shutdown -t1 -a -r now - - - - - and change the command to halt. - - - -10.8. stop ------------ - - This puts the UML in a loop reading mconsole requests until a 'go' - mconsole command is received. This is very useful for making backups - of UML filesystems, as the UML can be stopped, then synced via 'sysrq - s', so that everything is written to the filesystem. You can then copy - the filesystem and then send the UML 'go' via mconsole. - - - Note that a UML running with more than one CPU will have problems - after you send the 'stop' command, as only one CPU will be held in a - mconsole loop and all others will continue as normal. This is a bug, - and will be fixed. - - - -10.9. go ---------- - - This resumes a UML after being paused by a 'stop' command. Note that - when the UML has resumed, TCP connections may have timed out and if - the UML is paused for a long period of time, crond might go a little - crazy, running all the jobs it didn't do earlier. - - - - - - -.. _Kernel_debugging: - -11. Kernel debugging -===================== - - - Note: The interface that makes debugging, as described here, possible - is present in 2.4.0-test6 kernels and later. - - - Since the user-mode kernel runs as a normal Linux process, it is - possible to debug it with gdb almost like any other process. It is - slightly different because the kernel's threads are already being - ptraced for system call interception, so gdb can't ptrace them. - However, a mechanism has been added to work around that problem. - - - In order to debug the kernel, you need build it from source. See - :ref:`Compiling_the_kernel_and_modules` for information on doing that. - Make sure that you enable CONFIG_DEBUGSYM and CONFIG_PT_PROXY during - the config. These will compile the kernel with ``-g``, and enable the - ptrace proxy so that gdb works with UML, respectively. - - - - -11.1. Starting the kernel under gdb ------------------------------------- - - You can have the kernel running under the control of gdb from the - beginning by putting 'debug' on the command line. You will get an - xterm with gdb running inside it. The kernel will send some commands - to gdb which will leave it stopped at the beginning of start_kernel. - At this point, you can get things going with 'next', 'step', or - 'cont'. - - - There is a transcript of a debugging session here <debug- - session.html> , with breakpoints being set in the scheduler and in an - interrupt handler. - - -11.2. Examining sleeping processes ------------------------------------ - - - Not every bug is evident in the currently running process. Sometimes, - processes hang in the kernel when they shouldn't because they've - deadlocked on a semaphore or something similar. In this case, when - you ^C gdb and get a backtrace, you will see the idle thread, which - isn't very relevant. - - - What you want is the stack of whatever process is sleeping when it - shouldn't be. You need to figure out which process that is, which is - generally fairly easy. Then you need to get its host process id, - which you can do either by looking at ps on the host or at - task.thread.extern_pid in gdb. - - - Now what you do is this: - - - detach from the current thread:: - - - (UML gdb) det - - - - - - - attach to the thread you are interested in:: - - - (UML gdb) att <host pid> - - - - - - - look at its stack and anything else of interest:: - - - (UML gdb) bt - - - - - Note that you can't do anything at this point that requires that a - process execute, e.g. calling a function - - - when you're done looking at that process, reattach to the current - thread and continue it:: - - - (UML gdb) - att 1 - - - (UML gdb) - c - - - - - Here, specifying any pid which is not the process id of a UML thread - will cause gdb to reattach to the current thread. I commonly use 1, - but any other invalid pid would work. - - - -11.3. Running ddd on UML -------------------------- - - ddd works on UML, but requires a special kludge. The process goes - like this: - - - Start ddd:: - - - host% ddd linux - - - - - - - With ps, get the pid of the gdb that ddd started. You can ask the - gdb to tell you, but for some reason that confuses things and - causes a hang. - - - run UML with 'debug=parent gdb-pid=<pid>' added to the command line - - it will just sit there after you hit return - - - type 'att 1' to the ddd gdb and you will see something like:: - - - 0xa013dc51 in __kill () - - - (gdb) - - - - - - - At this point, type 'c', UML will boot up, and you can use ddd just - as you do on any other process. - - - -11.4. Debugging modules ------------------------- - - - gdb has support for debugging code which is dynamically loaded into - the process. This support is what is needed to debug kernel modules - under UML. - - - Using that support is somewhat complicated. You have to tell gdb what - object file you just loaded into UML and where in memory it is. Then, - it can read the symbol table, and figure out where all the symbols are - from the load address that you provided. It gets more interesting - when you load the module again (i.e. after an rmmod). You have to - tell gdb to forget about all its symbols, including the main UML ones - for some reason, then load then all back in again. - - - There's an easy way and a hard way to do this. The easy way is to use - the umlgdb expect script written by Chandan Kudige. It basically - automates the process for you. - - - First, you must tell it where your modules are. There is a list in - the script that looks like this:: - - set MODULE_PATHS { - "fat" "/usr/src/uml/linux-2.4.18/fs/fat/fat.o" - "isofs" "/usr/src/uml/linux-2.4.18/fs/isofs/isofs.o" - "minix" "/usr/src/uml/linux-2.4.18/fs/minix/minix.o" - } - - - - - You change that to list the names and paths of the modules that you - are going to debug. Then you run it from the toplevel directory of - your UML pool and it basically tells you what to do:: - - - ******** GDB pid is 21903 ******** - Start UML as: ./linux <kernel switches> debug gdb-pid=21903 - - - - GNU gdb 5.0rh-5 Red Hat Linux 7.1 - Copyright 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc. - GDB is free software, covered by the GNU General Public License, and you are - welcome to change it and/or distribute copies of it under certain conditions. - Type "show copying" to see the conditions. - There is absolutely no warranty for GDB. Type "show warranty" for details. - This GDB was configured as "i386-redhat-linux"... - (gdb) b sys_init_module - Breakpoint 1 at 0xa0011923: file module.c, line 349. - (gdb) att 1 - - - - - After you run UML and it sits there doing nothing, you hit return at - the 'att 1' and continue it:: - - - Attaching to program: /home/jdike/linux/2.4/um/./linux, process 1 - 0xa00f4221 in __kill () - (UML gdb) c - Continuing. - - - - - At this point, you debug normally. When you insmod something, the - expect magic will kick in and you'll see something like:: - - - *** Module hostfs loaded *** - Breakpoint 1, sys_init_module (name_user=0x805abb0 "hostfs", - mod_user=0x8070e00) at module.c:349 - 349 char *name, *n_name, *name_tmp = NULL; - (UML gdb) finish - Run till exit from #0 sys_init_module (name_user=0x805abb0 "hostfs", - mod_user=0x8070e00) at module.c:349 - 0xa00e2e23 in execute_syscall (r=0xa8140284) at syscall_kern.c:411 - 411 else res = EXECUTE_SYSCALL(syscall, regs); - Value returned is $1 = 0 - (UML gdb) - p/x (int)module_list + module_list->size_of_struct - - $2 = 0xa9021054 - (UML gdb) symbol-file ./linux - Load new symbol table from "./linux"? (y or n) y - Reading symbols from ./linux... - done. - (UML gdb) - add-symbol-file /home/jdike/linux/2.4/um/arch/um/fs/hostfs/hostfs.o 0xa9021054 - - add symbol table from file "/home/jdike/linux/2.4/um/arch/um/fs/hostfs/hostfs.o" at - .text_addr = 0xa9021054 - (y or n) y - - Reading symbols from /home/jdike/linux/2.4/um/arch/um/fs/hostfs/hostfs.o... - done. - (UML gdb) p *module_list - $1 = {size_of_struct = 84, next = 0xa0178720, name = 0xa9022de0 "hostfs", - size = 9016, uc = {usecount = {counter = 0}, pad = 0}, flags = 1, - nsyms = 57, ndeps = 0, syms = 0xa9023170, deps = 0x0, refs = 0x0, - init = 0xa90221f0 <init_hostfs>, cleanup = 0xa902222c <exit_hostfs>, - ex_table_start = 0x0, ex_table_end = 0x0, persist_start = 0x0, - persist_end = 0x0, can_unload = 0, runsize = 0, kallsyms_start = 0x0, - kallsyms_end = 0x0, - archdata_start = 0x1b855 <Address 0x1b855 out of bounds>, - archdata_end = 0xe5890000 <Address 0xe5890000 out of bounds>, - kernel_data = 0xf689c35d <Address 0xf689c35d out of bounds>} - >> Finished loading symbols for hostfs ... - - - - - That's the easy way. It's highly recommended. The hard way is - described below in case you're interested in what's going on. - - - Boot the kernel under the debugger and load the module with insmod or - modprobe. With gdb, do:: - - - (UML gdb) p module_list - - - - - This is a list of modules that have been loaded into the kernel, with - the most recently loaded module first. Normally, the module you want - is at module_list. If it's not, walk down the next links, looking at - the name fields until find the module you want to debug. Take the - address of that structure, and add module.size_of_struct (which in - 2.4.10 kernels is 96 (0x60)) to it. Gdb can make this hard addition - for you :-):: - - - - (UML gdb) - printf "%#x\n", (int)module_list module_list->size_of_struct - - - - - The offset from the module start occasionally changes (before 2.4.0, - it was module.size_of_struct + 4), so it's a good idea to check the - init and cleanup addresses once in a while, as describe below. Now - do:: - - - (UML gdb) - add-symbol-file /path/to/module/on/host that_address - - - - - Tell gdb you really want to do it, and you're in business. - - - If there's any doubt that you got the offset right, like breakpoints - appear not to work, or they're appearing in the wrong place, you can - check it by looking at the module structure. The init and cleanup - fields should look like:: - - - init = 0x588066b0 <init_hostfs>, cleanup = 0x588066c0 <exit_hostfs> - - - - - with no offsets on the symbol names. If the names are right, but they - are offset, then the offset tells you how much you need to add to the - address you gave to add-symbol-file. - - - When you want to load in a new version of the module, you need to get - gdb to forget about the old one. The only way I've found to do that - is to tell gdb to forget about all symbols that it knows about:: - - - (UML gdb) symbol-file - - - - - Then reload the symbols from the kernel binary:: - - - (UML gdb) symbol-file /path/to/kernel - - - - - and repeat the process above. You'll also need to re-enable break- - points. They were disabled when you dumped all the symbols because - gdb couldn't figure out where they should go. - - - -11.5. Attaching gdb to the kernel ----------------------------------- - - If you don't have the kernel running under gdb, you can attach gdb to - it later by sending the tracing thread a SIGUSR1. The first line of - the console output identifies its pid:: - - tracing thread pid = 20093 - - - - - When you send it the signal:: - - - host% kill -USR1 20093 - - - - - you will get an xterm with gdb running in it. - - - If you have the mconsole compiled into UML, then the mconsole client - can be used to start gdb:: - - - (mconsole) (mconsole) config gdb=xterm - - - - - will fire up an xterm with gdb running in it. - - - -11.6. Using alternate debuggers --------------------------------- - - UML has support for attaching to an already running debugger rather - than starting gdb itself. This is present in CVS as of 17 Apr 2001. - I sent it to Alan for inclusion in the ac tree, and it will be in my - 2.4.4 release. - - - This is useful when gdb is a subprocess of some UI, such as emacs or - ddd. It can also be used to run debuggers other than gdb on UML. - Below is an example of using strace as an alternate debugger. - - - To do this, you need to get the pid of the debugger and pass it in - with the - - - If you are using gdb under some UI, then tell it to 'att 1', and - you'll find yourself attached to UML. - - - If you are using something other than gdb as your debugger, then - you'll need to get it to do the equivalent of 'att 1' if it doesn't do - it automatically. - - - An example of an alternate debugger is strace. You can strace the - actual kernel as follows: - - - Run the following in a shell:: - - - host% - sh -c 'echo pid=$$; echo -n hit return; read x; exec strace -p 1 -o strace.out' - - - - - Run UML with 'debug' and 'gdb-pid=<pid>' with the pid printed out - by the previous command - - - Hit return in the shell, and UML will start running, and strace - output will start accumulating in the output file. - - Note that this is different from running:: - - - host% strace ./linux - - - - - That will strace only the main UML thread, the tracing thread, which - doesn't do any of the actual kernel work. It just oversees the vir- - tual machine. In contrast, using strace as described above will show - you the low-level activity of the virtual machine. - - - - - -12. Kernel debugging examples -============================== - -12.1. The case of the hung fsck --------------------------------- - - When booting up the kernel, fsck failed, and dropped me into a shell - to fix things up. I ran fsck -y, which hung:: - - - Setting hostname uml [ OK ] - Checking root filesystem - /dev/fhd0 was not cleanly unmounted, check forced. - Error reading block 86894 (Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read) while reading indirect blocks of inode 19780. - - /dev/fhd0: UNEXPECTED INCONSISTENCY; RUN fsck MANUALLY. - (i.e., without -a or -p options) - [ FAILED ] - - *** An error occurred during the file system check. - *** Dropping you to a shell; the system will reboot - *** when you leave the shell. - Give root password for maintenance - (or type Control-D for normal startup): - - [root@uml /root]# fsck -y /dev/fhd0 - fsck -y /dev/fhd0 - Parallelizing fsck version 1.14 (9-Jan-1999) - e2fsck 1.14, 9-Jan-1999 for EXT2 FS 0.5b, 95/08/09 - /dev/fhd0 contains a file system with errors, check forced. - Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes - Error reading block 86894 (Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read) while reading indirect blocks of inode 19780. Ignore error? yes - - Inode 19780, i_blocks is 1548, should be 540. Fix? yes - - Pass 2: Checking directory structure - Error reading block 49405 (Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read). Ignore error? yes - - Directory inode 11858, block 0, offset 0: directory corrupted - Salvage? yes - - Missing '.' in directory inode 11858. - Fix? yes - - Missing '..' in directory inode 11858. - Fix? yes - - - The standard drill in this sort of situation is to fire up gdb on the - signal thread, which, in this case, was pid 1935. In another window, - I run gdb and attach pid 1935:: - - - ~/linux/2.3.26/um 1016: gdb linux - GNU gdb 4.17.0.11 with Linux support - Copyright 1998 Free Software Foundation, Inc. - GDB is free software, covered by the GNU General Public License, and you are - welcome to change it and/or distribute copies of it under certain conditions. - Type "show copying" to see the conditions. - There is absolutely no warranty for GDB. Type "show warranty" for details. - This GDB was configured as "i386-redhat-linux"... - - (gdb) att 1935 - Attaching to program `/home/dike/linux/2.3.26/um/linux', Pid 1935 - 0x100756d9 in __wait4 () - - - Let's see what's currently running:: - - - - (gdb) p current_task.pid - $1 = 0 - - - - - - It's the idle thread, which means that fsck went to sleep for some - reason and never woke up. - - - Let's guess that the last process in the process list is fsck:: - - - - (gdb) p current_task.prev_task.comm - $13 = "fsck.ext2\000\000\000\000\000\000" - - - - - - It is, so let's see what it thinks it's up to:: - - - - (gdb) p current_task.prev_task.thread - $14 = {extern_pid = 1980, tracing = 0, want_tracing = 0, forking = 0, - kernel_stack_page = 0, signal_stack = 1342627840, syscall = {id = 4, args = { - 3, 134973440, 1024, 0, 1024}, have_result = 0, result = 50590720}, - request = {op = 2, u = {exec = {ip = 1350467584, sp = 2952789424}, fork = { - regs = {1350467584, 2952789424, 0 <repeats 15 times>}, sigstack = 0, - pid = 0}, switch_to = 0x507e8000, thread = {proc = 0x507e8000, - arg = 0xaffffdb0, flags = 0, new_pid = 0}, input_request = { - op = 1350467584, fd = -1342177872, proc = 0, pid = 0}}}} - - - - The interesting things here are the fact that its .thread.syscall.id - is __NR_write (see the big switch in arch/um/kernel/syscall_kern.c or - the defines in include/asm-um/arch/unistd.h), and that it never - returned. Also, its .request.op is OP_SWITCH (see - arch/um/include/user_util.h). These mean that it went into a write, - and, for some reason, called schedule(). - - - The fact that it never returned from write means that its stack should - be fairly interesting. Its pid is 1980 (.thread.extern_pid). That - process is being ptraced by the signal thread, so it must be detached - before gdb can attach it:: - - - - (gdb) call detach(1980) - - Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault. - <function called from gdb> - The program being debugged stopped while in a function called from GDB. - When the function (detach) is done executing, GDB will silently - stop (instead of continuing to evaluate the expression containing - the function call). - (gdb) call detach(1980) - $15 = 0 - - - The first detach segfaults for some reason, and the second one - succeeds. - - - Now I detach from the signal thread, attach to the fsck thread, and - look at its stack:: - - - (gdb) det - Detaching from program: /home/dike/linux/2.3.26/um/linux Pid 1935 - (gdb) att 1980 - Attaching to program `/home/dike/linux/2.3.26/um/linux', Pid 1980 - 0x10070451 in __kill () - (gdb) bt - #0 0x10070451 in __kill () - #1 0x10068ccd in usr1_pid (pid=1980) at process.c:30 - #2 0x1006a03f in _switch_to (prev=0x50072000, next=0x507e8000) - at process_kern.c:156 - #3 0x1006a052 in switch_to (prev=0x50072000, next=0x507e8000, last=0x50072000) - at process_kern.c:161 - #4 0x10001d12 in schedule () at core.c:777 - #5 0x1006a744 in __down (sem=0x507d241c) at semaphore.c:71 - #6 0x1006aa10 in __down_failed () at semaphore.c:157 - #7 0x1006c5d8 in segv_handler (sc=0x5006e940) at trap_user.c:174 - #8 0x1006c5ec in kern_segv_handler (sig=11) at trap_user.c:182 - #9 <signal handler called> - #10 0x10155404 in errno () - #11 0x1006c0aa in segv (address=1342179328, is_write=2) at trap_kern.c:50 - #12 0x1006c5d8 in segv_handler (sc=0x5006eaf8) at trap_user.c:174 - #13 0x1006c5ec in kern_segv_handler (sig=11) at trap_user.c:182 - #14 <signal handler called> - #15 0xc0fd in ?? () - #16 0x10016647 in sys_write (fd=3, - buf=0x80b8800 <Address 0x80b8800 out of bounds>, count=1024) - at read_write.c:159 - #17 0x1006d5b3 in execute_syscall (syscall=4, args=0x5006ef08) - at syscall_kern.c:254 - #18 0x1006af87 in really_do_syscall (sig=12) at syscall_user.c:35 - #19 <signal handler called> - #20 0x400dc8b0 in ?? () - - - - - - The interesting things here are: - - - There are two segfaults on this stack (frames 9 and 14) - - - The first faulting address (frame 11) is 0x50000800:: - - (gdb) p (void *)1342179328 - $16 = (void *) 0x50000800 - - - - - - The initial faulting address is interesting because it is on the idle - thread's stack. I had been seeing the idle thread segfault for no - apparent reason, and the cause looked like stack corruption. In hopes - of catching the culprit in the act, I had turned off all protections - to that stack while the idle thread wasn't running. This apparently - tripped that trap. - - - However, the more immediate problem is that second segfault and I'm - going to concentrate on that. First, I want to see where the fault - happened, so I have to go look at the sigcontent struct in frame 8:: - - - - (gdb) up - #1 0x10068ccd in usr1_pid (pid=1980) at process.c:30 - 30 kill(pid, SIGUSR1); - (gdb) - #2 0x1006a03f in _switch_to (prev=0x50072000, next=0x507e8000) - at process_kern.c:156 - 156 usr1_pid(getpid()); - (gdb) - #3 0x1006a052 in switch_to (prev=0x50072000, next=0x507e8000, last=0x50072000) - at process_kern.c:161 - 161 _switch_to(prev, next); - (gdb) - #4 0x10001d12 in schedule () at core.c:777 - 777 switch_to(prev, next, prev); - (gdb) - #5 0x1006a744 in __down (sem=0x507d241c) at semaphore.c:71 - 71 schedule(); - (gdb) - #6 0x1006aa10 in __down_failed () at semaphore.c:157 - 157 } - (gdb) - #7 0x1006c5d8 in segv_handler (sc=0x5006e940) at trap_user.c:174 - 174 segv(sc->cr2, sc->err & 2); - (gdb) - #8 0x1006c5ec in kern_segv_handler (sig=11) at trap_user.c:182 - 182 segv_handler(sc); - (gdb) p *sc - Cannot access memory at address 0x0. - - - - - That's not very useful, so I'll try a more manual method:: - - - (gdb) p *((struct sigcontext *) (&sig + 1)) - $19 = {gs = 0, __gsh = 0, fs = 0, __fsh = 0, es = 43, __esh = 0, ds = 43, - __dsh = 0, edi = 1342179328, esi = 1350378548, ebp = 1342630440, - esp = 1342630420, ebx = 1348150624, edx = 1280, ecx = 0, eax = 0, - trapno = 14, err = 4, eip = 268480945, cs = 35, __csh = 0, eflags = 66118, - esp_at_signal = 1342630420, ss = 43, __ssh = 0, fpstate = 0x0, oldmask = 0, - cr2 = 1280} - - - - The ip is in handle_mm_fault:: - - - (gdb) p (void *)268480945 - $20 = (void *) 0x1000b1b1 - (gdb) i sym $20 - handle_mm_fault + 57 in section .text - - - - - - Specifically, it's in pte_alloc:: - - - (gdb) i line *$20 - Line 124 of "/home/dike/linux/2.3.26/um/include/asm/pgalloc.h" - starts at address 0x1000b1b1 <handle_mm_fault+57> - and ends at 0x1000b1b7 <handle_mm_fault+63>. - - - - - - To find where in handle_mm_fault this is, I'll jump forward in the - code until I see an address in that procedure:: - - - - (gdb) i line *0x1000b1c0 - Line 126 of "/home/dike/linux/2.3.26/um/include/asm/pgalloc.h" - starts at address 0x1000b1b7 <handle_mm_fault+63> - and ends at 0x1000b1c3 <handle_mm_fault+75>. - (gdb) i line *0x1000b1d0 - Line 131 of "/home/dike/linux/2.3.26/um/include/asm/pgalloc.h" - starts at address 0x1000b1d0 <handle_mm_fault+88> - and ends at 0x1000b1da <handle_mm_fault+98>. - (gdb) i line *0x1000b1e0 - Line 61 of "/home/dike/linux/2.3.26/um/include/asm/pgalloc.h" - starts at address 0x1000b1da <handle_mm_fault+98> - and ends at 0x1000b1e1 <handle_mm_fault+105>. - (gdb) i line *0x1000b1f0 - Line 134 of "/home/dike/linux/2.3.26/um/include/asm/pgalloc.h" - starts at address 0x1000b1f0 <handle_mm_fault+120> - and ends at 0x1000b200 <handle_mm_fault+136>. - (gdb) i line *0x1000b200 - Line 135 of "/home/dike/linux/2.3.26/um/include/asm/pgalloc.h" - starts at address 0x1000b200 <handle_mm_fault+136> - and ends at 0x1000b208 <handle_mm_fault+144>. - (gdb) i line *0x1000b210 - Line 139 of "/home/dike/linux/2.3.26/um/include/asm/pgalloc.h" - starts at address 0x1000b210 <handle_mm_fault+152> - and ends at 0x1000b219 <handle_mm_fault+161>. - (gdb) i line *0x1000b220 - Line 1168 of "memory.c" starts at address 0x1000b21e <handle_mm_fault+166> - and ends at 0x1000b222 <handle_mm_fault+170>. - - - - - - Something is apparently wrong with the page tables or vma_structs, so - lets go back to frame 11 and have a look at them:: - - - - #11 0x1006c0aa in segv (address=1342179328, is_write=2) at trap_kern.c:50 - 50 handle_mm_fault(current, vma, address, is_write); - (gdb) call pgd_offset_proc(vma->vm_mm, address) - $22 = (pgd_t *) 0x80a548c - - - - - - That's pretty bogus. Page tables aren't supposed to be in process - text or data areas. Let's see what's in the vma:: - - - (gdb) p *vma - $23 = {vm_mm = 0x507d2434, vm_start = 0, vm_end = 134512640, - vm_next = 0x80a4f8c, vm_page_prot = {pgprot = 0}, vm_flags = 31200, - vm_avl_height = 2058, vm_avl_left = 0x80a8c94, vm_avl_right = 0x80d1000, - vm_next_share = 0xaffffdb0, vm_pprev_share = 0xaffffe63, - vm_ops = 0xaffffe7a, vm_pgoff = 2952789626, vm_file = 0xafffffec, - vm_private_data = 0x62} - (gdb) p *vma.vm_mm - $24 = {mmap = 0x507d2434, mmap_avl = 0x0, mmap_cache = 0x8048000, - pgd = 0x80a4f8c, mm_users = {counter = 0}, mm_count = {counter = 134904288}, - map_count = 134909076, mmap_sem = {count = {counter = 135073792}, - sleepers = -1342177872, wait = {lock = <optimized out or zero length>, - task_list = {next = 0xaffffe63, prev = 0xaffffe7a}, - __magic = -1342177670, __creator = -1342177300}, __magic = 98}, - page_table_lock = {}, context = 138, start_code = 0, end_code = 0, - start_data = 0, end_data = 0, start_brk = 0, brk = 0, start_stack = 0, - arg_start = 0, arg_end = 0, env_start = 0, env_end = 0, rss = 1350381536, - total_vm = 0, locked_vm = 0, def_flags = 0, cpu_vm_mask = 0, swap_cnt = 0, - swap_address = 0, segments = 0x0} - - - - This also pretty bogus. With all of the 0x80xxxxx and 0xaffffxxx - addresses, this is looking like a stack was plonked down on top of - these structures. Maybe it's a stack overflow from the next page:: - - - (gdb) p vma - $25 = (struct vm_area_struct *) 0x507d2434 - - - - That's towards the lower quarter of the page, so that would have to - have been pretty heavy stack overflow:: - - - (gdb) x/100x $25 - 0x507d2434: 0x507d2434 0x00000000 0x08048000 0x080a4f8c - 0x507d2444: 0x00000000 0x080a79e0 0x080a8c94 0x080d1000 - 0x507d2454: 0xaffffdb0 0xaffffe63 0xaffffe7a 0xaffffe7a - 0x507d2464: 0xafffffec 0x00000062 0x0000008a 0x00000000 - 0x507d2474: 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 - 0x507d2484: 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 - 0x507d2494: 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x507d2fe0 0x00000000 - 0x507d24a4: 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 - 0x507d24b4: 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 - 0x507d24c4: 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 - 0x507d24d4: 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 - 0x507d24e4: 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 - 0x507d24f4: 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 - 0x507d2504: 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 - 0x507d2514: 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 - 0x507d2524: 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 - 0x507d2534: 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x507d25dc 0x00000000 - 0x507d2544: 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 - 0x507d2554: 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 - 0x507d2564: 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 - 0x507d2574: 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 - 0x507d2584: 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 - 0x507d2594: 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 - 0x507d25a4: 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 - 0x507d25b4: 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00000000 - - - - It's not stack overflow. The only "stack-like" piece of this data is - the vma_struct itself. - - - At this point, I don't see any avenues to pursue, so I just have to - admit that I have no idea what's going on. What I will do, though, is - stick a trap on the segfault handler which will stop if it sees any - writes to the idle thread's stack. That was the thing that happened - first, and it may be that if I can catch it immediately, what's going - on will be somewhat clearer. - - -12.2. Episode 2: The case of the hung fsck -------------------------------------------- - - After setting a trap in the SEGV handler for accesses to the signal - thread's stack, I reran the kernel. - - - fsck hung again, this time by hitting the trap:: - - - - Setting hostname uml [ OK ] - Checking root filesystem - /dev/fhd0 contains a file system with errors, check forced. - Error reading block 86894 (Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read) while reading indirect blocks of inode 19780. - - /dev/fhd0: UNEXPECTED INCONSISTENCY; RUN fsck MANUALLY. - (i.e., without -a or -p options) - [ FAILED ] - - *** An error occurred during the file system check. - *** Dropping you to a shell; the system will reboot - *** when you leave the shell. - Give root password for maintenance - (or type Control-D for normal startup): - - [root@uml /root]# fsck -y /dev/fhd0 - fsck -y /dev/fhd0 - Parallelizing fsck version 1.14 (9-Jan-1999) - e2fsck 1.14, 9-Jan-1999 for EXT2 FS 0.5b, 95/08/09 - /dev/fhd0 contains a file system with errors, check forced. - Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes - Error reading block 86894 (Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read) while reading indirect blocks of inode 19780. Ignore error? yes - - Pass 2: Checking directory structure - Error reading block 49405 (Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read). Ignore error? yes - - Directory inode 11858, block 0, offset 0: directory corrupted - Salvage? yes - - Missing '.' in directory inode 11858. - Fix? yes - - Missing '..' in directory inode 11858. - Fix? yes - - Untested (4127) [100fe44c]: trap_kern.c line 31 - - - - - - I need to get the signal thread to detach from pid 4127 so that I can - attach to it with gdb. This is done by sending it a SIGUSR1, which is - caught by the signal thread, which detaches the process:: - - - kill -USR1 4127 - - - - - - Now I can run gdb on it:: - - - ~/linux/2.3.26/um 1034: gdb linux - GNU gdb 4.17.0.11 with Linux support - Copyright 1998 Free Software Foundation, Inc. - GDB is free software, covered by the GNU General Public License, and you are - welcome to change it and/or distribute copies of it under certain conditions. - Type "show copying" to see the conditions. - There is absolutely no warranty for GDB. Type "show warranty" for details. - This GDB was configured as "i386-redhat-linux"... - (gdb) att 4127 - Attaching to program `/home/dike/linux/2.3.26/um/linux', Pid 4127 - 0x10075891 in __libc_nanosleep () - - - - - - The backtrace shows that it was in a write and that the fault address - (address in frame 3) is 0x50000800, which is right in the middle of - the signal thread's stack page:: - - - (gdb) bt - #0 0x10075891 in __libc_nanosleep () - #1 0x1007584d in __sleep (seconds=1000000) - at ../sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/sleep.c:78 - #2 0x1006ce9a in stop () at user_util.c:191 - #3 0x1006bf88 in segv (address=1342179328, is_write=2) at trap_kern.c:31 - #4 0x1006c628 in segv_handler (sc=0x5006eaf8) at trap_user.c:174 - #5 0x1006c63c in kern_segv_handler (sig=11) at trap_user.c:182 - #6 <signal handler called> - #7 0xc0fd in ?? () - #8 0x10016647 in sys_write (fd=3, buf=0x80b8800 "R.", count=1024) - at read_write.c:159 - #9 0x1006d603 in execute_syscall (syscall=4, args=0x5006ef08) - at syscall_kern.c:254 - #10 0x1006af87 in really_do_syscall (sig=12) at syscall_user.c:35 - #11 <signal handler called> - #12 0x400dc8b0 in ?? () - #13 <signal handler called> - #14 0x400dc8b0 in ?? () - #15 0x80545fd in ?? () - #16 0x804daae in ?? () - #17 0x8054334 in ?? () - #18 0x804d23e in ?? () - #19 0x8049632 in ?? () - #20 0x80491d2 in ?? () - #21 0x80596b5 in ?? () - (gdb) p (void *)1342179328 - $3 = (void *) 0x50000800 - - - - Going up the stack to the segv_handler frame and looking at where in - the code the access happened shows that it happened near line 110 of - block_dev.c:: - - - - (gdb) up - #1 0x1007584d in __sleep (seconds=1000000) - at ../sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/sleep.c:78 - ../sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/sleep.c:78: No such file or directory. - (gdb) - #2 0x1006ce9a in stop () at user_util.c:191 - 191 while(1) sleep(1000000); - (gdb) - #3 0x1006bf88 in segv (address=1342179328, is_write=2) at trap_kern.c:31 - 31 KERN_UNTESTED(); - (gdb) - #4 0x1006c628 in segv_handler (sc=0x5006eaf8) at trap_user.c:174 - 174 segv(sc->cr2, sc->err & 2); - (gdb) p *sc - $1 = {gs = 0, __gsh = 0, fs = 0, __fsh = 0, es = 43, __esh = 0, ds = 43, - __dsh = 0, edi = 1342179328, esi = 134973440, ebp = 1342631484, - esp = 1342630864, ebx = 256, edx = 0, ecx = 256, eax = 1024, trapno = 14, - err = 6, eip = 268550834, cs = 35, __csh = 0, eflags = 66070, - esp_at_signal = 1342630864, ss = 43, __ssh = 0, fpstate = 0x0, oldmask = 0, - cr2 = 1342179328} - (gdb) p (void *)268550834 - $2 = (void *) 0x1001c2b2 - (gdb) i sym $2 - block_write + 1090 in section .text - (gdb) i line *$2 - Line 209 of "/home/dike/linux/2.3.26/um/include/asm/arch/string.h" - starts at address 0x1001c2a1 <block_write+1073> - and ends at 0x1001c2bf <block_write+1103>. - (gdb) i line *0x1001c2c0 - Line 110 of "block_dev.c" starts at address 0x1001c2bf <block_write+1103> - and ends at 0x1001c2e3 <block_write+1139>. - - - - Looking at the source shows that the fault happened during a call to - copy_from_user to copy the data into the kernel:: - - - 107 count -= chars; - 108 copy_from_user(p,buf,chars); - 109 p += chars; - 110 buf += chars; - - - - p is the pointer which must contain 0x50000800, since buf contains - 0x80b8800 (frame 8 above). It is defined as:: - - - p = offset + bh->b_data; - - - - - - I need to figure out what bh is, and it just so happens that bh is - passed as an argument to mark_buffer_uptodate and mark_buffer_dirty a - few lines later, so I do a little disassembly:: - - - (gdb) disas 0x1001c2bf 0x1001c2e0 - Dump of assembler code from 0x1001c2bf to 0x1001c2d0: - 0x1001c2bf <block_write+1103>: addl %eax,0xc(%ebp) - 0x1001c2c2 <block_write+1106>: movl 0xfffffdd4(%ebp),%edx - 0x1001c2c8 <block_write+1112>: btsl $0x0,0x18(%edx) - 0x1001c2cd <block_write+1117>: btsl $0x1,0x18(%edx) - 0x1001c2d2 <block_write+1122>: sbbl %ecx,%ecx - 0x1001c2d4 <block_write+1124>: testl %ecx,%ecx - 0x1001c2d6 <block_write+1126>: jne 0x1001c2e3 <block_write+1139> - 0x1001c2d8 <block_write+1128>: pushl $0x0 - 0x1001c2da <block_write+1130>: pushl %edx - 0x1001c2db <block_write+1131>: call 0x1001819c <__mark_buffer_dirty> - End of assembler dump. - - - - - - At that point, bh is in %edx (address 0x1001c2da), which is calculated - at 0x1001c2c2 as %ebp + 0xfffffdd4, so I figure exactly what that is, - taking %ebp from the sigcontext_struct above:: - - - (gdb) p (void *)1342631484 - $5 = (void *) 0x5006ee3c - (gdb) p 0x5006ee3c+0xfffffdd4 - $6 = 1342630928 - (gdb) p (void *)$6 - $7 = (void *) 0x5006ec10 - (gdb) p *((void **)$7) - $8 = (void *) 0x50100200 - - - - - - Now, I look at the structure to see what's in it, and particularly, - what its b_data field contains:: - - - (gdb) p *((struct buffer_head *)0x50100200) - $13 = {b_next = 0x50289380, b_blocknr = 49405, b_size = 1024, b_list = 0, - b_dev = 15872, b_count = {counter = 1}, b_rdev = 15872, b_state = 24, - b_flushtime = 0, b_next_free = 0x501001a0, b_prev_free = 0x50100260, - b_this_page = 0x501001a0, b_reqnext = 0x0, b_pprev = 0x507fcf58, - b_data = 0x50000800 "", b_page = 0x50004000, - b_end_io = 0x10017f60 <end_buffer_io_sync>, b_dev_id = 0x0, - b_rsector = 98810, b_wait = {lock = <optimized out or zero length>, - task_list = {next = 0x50100248, prev = 0x50100248}, __magic = 1343226448, - __creator = 0}, b_kiobuf = 0x0} - - - - - - The b_data field is indeed 0x50000800, so the question becomes how - that happened. The rest of the structure looks fine, so this probably - is not a case of data corruption. It happened on purpose somehow. - - - The b_page field is a pointer to the page_struct representing the - 0x50000000 page. Looking at it shows the kernel's idea of the state - of that page:: - - - - (gdb) p *$13.b_page - $17 = {list = {next = 0x50004a5c, prev = 0x100c5174}, mapping = 0x0, - index = 0, next_hash = 0x0, count = {counter = 1}, flags = 132, lru = { - next = 0x50008460, prev = 0x50019350}, wait = { - lock = <optimized out or zero length>, task_list = {next = 0x50004024, - prev = 0x50004024}, __magic = 1342193708, __creator = 0}, - pprev_hash = 0x0, buffers = 0x501002c0, virtual = 1342177280, - zone = 0x100c5160} - - - - - - Some sanity-checking: the virtual field shows the "virtual" address of - this page, which in this kernel is the same as its "physical" address, - and the page_struct itself should be mem_map[0], since it represents - the first page of memory:: - - - - (gdb) p (void *)1342177280 - $18 = (void *) 0x50000000 - (gdb) p mem_map - $19 = (mem_map_t *) 0x50004000 - - - - - - These check out fine. - - - Now to check out the page_struct itself. In particular, the flags - field shows whether the page is considered free or not:: - - - (gdb) p (void *)132 - $21 = (void *) 0x84 - - - - - - The "reserved" bit is the high bit, which is definitely not set, so - the kernel considers the signal stack page to be free and available to - be used. - - - At this point, I jump to conclusions and start looking at my early - boot code, because that's where that page is supposed to be reserved. - - - In my setup_arch procedure, I have the following code which looks just - fine:: - - - - bootmap_size = init_bootmem(start_pfn, end_pfn - start_pfn); - free_bootmem(__pa(low_physmem) + bootmap_size, high_physmem - low_physmem); - - - - - - Two stack pages have already been allocated, and low_physmem points to - the third page, which is the beginning of free memory. - The init_bootmem call declares the entire memory to the boot memory - manager, which marks it all reserved. The free_bootmem call frees up - all of it, except for the first two pages. This looks correct to me. - - - So, I decide to see init_bootmem run and make sure that it is marking - those first two pages as reserved. I never get that far. - - - Stepping into init_bootmem, and looking at bootmem_map before looking - at what it contains shows the following:: - - - - (gdb) p bootmem_map - $3 = (void *) 0x50000000 - - - - - - Aha! The light dawns. That first page is doing double duty as a - stack and as the boot memory map. The last thing that the boot memory - manager does is to free the pages used by its memory map, so this page - is getting freed even its marked as reserved. - - - The fix was to initialize the boot memory manager before allocating - those two stack pages, and then allocate them through the boot memory - manager. After doing this, and fixing a couple of subsequent buglets, - the stack corruption problem disappeared. - - - - - -13. What to do when UML doesn't work -===================================== - - - - -13.1. Strange compilation errors when you build from source ------------------------------------------------------------- - - As of test11, it is necessary to have "ARCH=um" in the environment or - on the make command line for all steps in building UML, including - clean, distclean, or mrproper, config, menuconfig, or xconfig, dep, - and linux. If you forget for any of them, the i386 build seems to - contaminate the UML build. If this happens, start from scratch with:: - - - host% - make mrproper ARCH=um - - - - - and repeat the build process with ARCH=um on all the steps. - - - See :ref:`Compiling_the_kernel_and_modules` for more details. - - - Another cause of strange compilation errors is building UML in - /usr/src/linux. If you do this, the first thing you need to do is - clean up the mess you made. The /usr/src/linux/asm link will now - point to /usr/src/linux/asm-um. Make it point back to - /usr/src/linux/asm-i386. Then, move your UML pool someplace else and - build it there. Also see below, where a more specific set of symptoms - is described. - - - -13.3. A variety of panics and hangs with /tmp on a reiserfs filesystem ------------------------------------------------------------------------ - - I saw this on reiserfs 3.5.21 and it seems to be fixed in 3.5.27. - Panics preceded by:: - - - Detaching pid nnnn - - - - are diagnostic of this problem. This is a reiserfs bug which causes a - thread to occasionally read stale data from a mmapped page shared with - another thread. The fix is to upgrade the filesystem or to have /tmp - be an ext2 filesystem. - - - - 13.4. The compile fails with errors about conflicting types for - 'open', 'dup', and 'waitpid' - - This happens when you build in /usr/src/linux. The UML build makes - the include/asm link point to include/asm-um. /usr/include/asm points - to /usr/src/linux/include/asm, so when that link gets moved, files - which need to include the asm-i386 versions of headers get the - incompatible asm-um versions. The fix is to move the include/asm link - back to include/asm-i386 and to do UML builds someplace else. - - - -13.5. UML doesn't work when /tmp is an NFS filesystem ------------------------------------------------------- - - This seems to be a similar situation with the ReiserFS problem above. - Some versions of NFS seems not to handle mmap correctly, which UML - depends on. The workaround is have /tmp be a non-NFS directory. - - -13.6. UML hangs on boot when compiled with gprof support ---------------------------------------------------------- - - If you build UML with gprof support and, early in the boot, it does - this:: - - - kernel BUG at page_alloc.c:100! - - - - - you have a buggy gcc. You can work around the problem by removing - UM_FASTCALL from CFLAGS in arch/um/Makefile-i386. This will open up - another bug, but that one is fairly hard to reproduce. - - - -13.7. syslogd dies with a SIGTERM on startup ---------------------------------------------- - - The exact boot error depends on the distribution that you're booting, - but Debian produces this:: - - - /etc/rc2.d/S10sysklogd: line 49: 93 Terminated - start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --exec /sbin/syslogd -- $SYSLOGD - - - - - This is a syslogd bug. There's a race between a parent process - installing a signal handler and its child sending the signal. - - - -13.8. TUN/TAP networking doesn't work on a 2.4 host ----------------------------------------------------- - - There are a couple of problems which were reported by - Tim Robinson <timro at trkr dot net> - - - It doesn't work on hosts running 2.4.7 (or thereabouts) or earlier. - The fix is to upgrade to something more recent and then read the - next item. - - - If you see:: - - - File descriptor in bad state - - - - when you bring up the device inside UML, you have a header mismatch - between the original kernel and the upgraded one. Make /usr/src/linux - point at the new headers. This will only be a problem if you build - uml_net yourself. - - - -13.9. You can network to the host but not to other machines on the net -======================================================================= - - If you can connect to the host, and the host can connect to UML, but - you cannot connect to any other machines, then you may need to enable - IP Masquerading on the host. Usually this is only experienced when - using private IP addresses (192.168.x.x or 10.x.x.x) for host/UML - networking, rather than the public address space that your host is - connected to. UML does not enable IP Masquerading, so you will need - to create a static rule to enable it:: - - - host% - iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE - - - - - Replace eth0 with the interface that you use to talk to the rest of - the world. - - - Documentation on IP Masquerading, and SNAT, can be found at - http://www.netfilter.org. - - - If you can reach the local net, but not the outside Internet, then - that is usually a routing problem. The UML needs a default route:: - - - UML# - route add default gw gateway IP - - - - - The gateway IP can be any machine on the local net that knows how to - reach the outside world. Usually, this is the host or the local net- - work's gateway. - - - Occasionally, we hear from someone who can reach some machines, but - not others on the same net, or who can reach some ports on other - machines, but not others. These are usually caused by strange - firewalling somewhere between the UML and the other box. You track - this down by running tcpdump on every interface the packets travel - over and see where they disappear. When you find a machine that takes - the packets in, but does not send them onward, that's the culprit. - - - -13.10. I have no root and I want to scream -=========================================== - - Thanks to Birgit Wahlich for telling me about this strange one. It - turns out that there's a limit of six environment variables on the - kernel command line. When that limit is reached or exceeded, argument - processing stops, which means that the 'root=' argument that UML - usually adds is not seen. So, the filesystem has no idea what the - root device is, so it panics. - - - The fix is to put less stuff on the command line. Glomming all your - setup variables into one is probably the best way to go. - - - -13.11. UML build conflict between ptrace.h and ucontext.h -========================================================== - - On some older systems, /usr/include/asm/ptrace.h and - /usr/include/sys/ucontext.h define the same names. So, when they're - included together, the defines from one completely mess up the parsing - of the other, producing errors like:: - - /usr/include/sys/ucontext.h:47: parse error before - `10` - - - - - plus a pile of warnings. - - - This is a libc botch, which has since been fixed, and I don't see any - way around it besides upgrading. - - - -13.12. The UML BogoMips is exactly half the host's BogoMips ------------------------------------------------------------- - - On i386 kernels, there are two ways of running the loop that is used - to calculate the BogoMips rating, using the TSC if it's there or using - a one-instruction loop. The TSC produces twice the BogoMips as the - loop. UML uses the loop, since it has nothing resembling a TSC, and - will get almost exactly the same BogoMips as a host using the loop. - However, on a host with a TSC, its BogoMips will be double the loop - BogoMips, and therefore double the UML BogoMips. - - - -13.13. When you run UML, it immediately segfaults --------------------------------------------------- - - If the host is configured with the 2G/2G address space split, that's - why. See ref:`UML_on_2G/2G_hosts` for the details on getting UML to - run on your host. - - - -13.14. xterms appear, then immediately disappear -------------------------------------------------- - - If you're running an up to date kernel with an old release of - uml_utilities, the port-helper program will not work properly, so - xterms will exit straight after they appear. The solution is to - upgrade to the latest release of uml_utilities. Usually this problem - occurs when you have installed a packaged release of UML then compiled - your own development kernel without upgrading the uml_utilities from - the source distribution. - - - -13.15. Any other panic, hang, or strange behavior --------------------------------------------------- - - If you're seeing truly strange behavior, such as hangs or panics that - happen in random places, or you try running the debugger to see what's - happening and it acts strangely, then it could be a problem in the - host kernel. If you're not running a stock Linus or -ac kernel, then - try that. An early version of the preemption patch and a 2.4.10 SuSE - kernel have caused very strange problems in UML. - - - Otherwise, let me know about it. Send a message to one of the UML - mailing lists - either the developer list - user-mode-linux-devel at - lists dot sourceforge dot net (subscription info) or the user list - - user-mode-linux-user at lists dot sourceforge do net (subscription - info), whichever you prefer. Don't assume that everyone knows about - it and that a fix is imminent. - - - If you want to be super-helpful, read :ref:`Diagnosing_Problems` and - follow the instructions contained therein. - -.. _Diagnosing_Problems: - -14. Diagnosing Problems -======================== - - - If you get UML to crash, hang, or otherwise misbehave, you should - report this on one of the project mailing lists, either the developer - list - user-mode-linux-devel at lists dot sourceforge dot net - (subscription info) or the user list - user-mode-linux-user at lists - dot sourceforge dot net (subscription info). When you do, it is - likely that I will want more information. So, it would be helpful to - read the stuff below, do whatever is applicable in your case, and - report the results to the list. - - - For any diagnosis, you're going to need to build a debugging kernel. - The binaries from this site aren't debuggable. If you haven't done - this before, read about :ref:`Compiling_the_kernel_and_modules` and - :ref:`Kernel_debugging` UML first. - - -14.1. Case 1 : Normal kernel panics ------------------------------------- - - The most common case is for a normal thread to panic. To debug this, - you will need to run it under the debugger (add 'debug' to the command - line). An xterm will start up with gdb running inside it. Continue - it when it stops in start_kernel and make it crash. Now ``^C gdb`` and - - - If the panic was a "Kernel mode fault", then there will be a segv - frame on the stack and I'm going to want some more information. The - stack might look something like this:: - - - (UML gdb) backtrace - #0 0x1009bf76 in __sigprocmask (how=1, set=0x5f347940, oset=0x0) - at ../sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/sigprocmask.c:49 - #1 0x10091411 in change_sig (signal=10, on=1) at process.c:218 - #2 0x10094785 in timer_handler (sig=26) at time_kern.c:32 - #3 0x1009bf38 in __restore () - at ../sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/i386/sigaction.c:125 - #4 0x1009534c in segv (address=8, ip=268849158, is_write=2, is_user=0) - at trap_kern.c:66 - #5 0x10095c04 in segv_handler (sig=11) at trap_user.c:285 - #6 0x1009bf38 in __restore () - - - - - I'm going to want to see the symbol and line information for the value - of ip in the segv frame. In this case, you would do the following:: - - - (UML gdb) i sym 268849158 - - - - - and:: - - - (UML gdb) i line *268849158 - - - - - The reason for this is the __restore frame right above the segv_han- - dler frame is hiding the frame that actually segfaulted. So, I have - to get that information from the faulting ip. - - -14.2. Case 2 : Tracing thread panics -------------------------------------- - - The less common and more painful case is when the tracing thread - panics. In this case, the kernel debugger will be useless because it - needs a healthy tracing thread in order to work. The first thing to - do is get a backtrace from the tracing thread. This is done by - figuring out what its pid is, firing up gdb, and attaching it to that - pid. You can figure out the tracing thread pid by looking at the - first line of the console output, which will look like this:: - - - tracing thread pid = 15851 - - - - - or by running ps on the host and finding the line that looks like - this:: - - - jdike 15851 4.5 0.4 132568 1104 pts/0 S 21:34 0:05 ./linux [(tracing thread)] - - - - - If the panic was 'segfault in signals', then follow the instructions - above for collecting information about the location of the seg fault. - - - If the tracing thread flaked out all by itself, then send that - backtrace in and wait for our crack debugging team to fix the problem. - - - 14.3. Case 3 : Tracing thread panics caused by other threads - - However, there are cases where the misbehavior of another thread - caused the problem. The most common panic of this type is:: - - - wait_for_stop failed to wait for <pid> to stop with <signal number> - - - - - In this case, you'll need to get a backtrace from the process men- - tioned in the panic, which is complicated by the fact that the kernel - debugger is defunct and without some fancy footwork, another gdb can't - attach to it. So, this is how the fancy footwork goes: - - In a shell:: - - - host% kill -STOP pid - - - - - Run gdb on the tracing thread as described in case 2 and do:: - - - (host gdb) call detach(pid) - - - If you get a segfault, do it again. It always works the second time. - - Detach from the tracing thread and attach to that other thread:: - - - (host gdb) detach - - - - - - - (host gdb) attach pid - - - - - If gdb hangs when attaching to that process, go back to a shell and - do:: - - - host% - kill -CONT pid - - - - - And then get the backtrace:: - - - (host gdb) backtrace - - - - - -14.4. Case 4 : Hangs ---------------------- - - Hangs seem to be fairly rare, but they sometimes happen. When a hang - happens, we need a backtrace from the offending process. Run the - kernel debugger as described in case 1 and get a backtrace. If the - current process is not the idle thread, then send in the backtrace. - You can tell that it's the idle thread if the stack looks like this:: - - - #0 0x100b1401 in __libc_nanosleep () - #1 0x100a2885 in idle_sleep (secs=10) at time.c:122 - #2 0x100a546f in do_idle () at process_kern.c:445 - #3 0x100a5508 in cpu_idle () at process_kern.c:471 - #4 0x100ec18f in start_kernel () at init/main.c:592 - #5 0x100a3e10 in start_kernel_proc (unused=0x0) at um_arch.c:71 - #6 0x100a383f in signal_tramp (arg=0x100a3dd8) at trap_user.c:50 - - - - - If this is the case, then some other process is at fault, and went to - sleep when it shouldn't have. Run ps on the host and figure out which - process should not have gone to sleep and stayed asleep. Then attach - to it with gdb and get a backtrace as described in case 3. - - - - - - -15. Thanks -=========== - - - A number of people have helped this project in various ways, and this - page gives recognition where recognition is due. - - - If you're listed here and you would prefer a real link on your name, - or no link at all, instead of the despammed email address pseudo-link, - let me know. - - - If you're not listed here and you think maybe you should be, please - let me know that as well. I try to get everyone, but sometimes my - bookkeeping lapses and I forget about contributions. - - -15.1. Code and Documentation ------------------------------ - - Rusty Russell <rusty at linuxcare.com.au> - - - - wrote the HOWTO - http://user-mode-linux.sourceforge.net/old/UserModeLinux-HOWTO.html - - - prodded me into making this project official and putting it on - SourceForge - - - came up with the way cool UML logo - http://user-mode-linux.sourceforge.net/uml-small.png - - - redid the config process - - - Peter Moulder <reiter at netspace.net.au> - Fixed my config and build - processes, and added some useful code to the block driver - - - Bill Stearns <wstearns at pobox.com> - - - - HOWTO updates - - - lots of bug reports - - - lots of testing - - - dedicated a box (uml.ists.dartmouth.edu) to support UML development - - - wrote the mkrootfs script, which allows bootable filesystems of - RPM-based distributions to be cranked out - - - cranked out a large number of filesystems with said script - - - Jim Leu <jleu at mindspring.com> - Wrote the virtual ethernet driver - and associated usermode tools - - Lars Brinkhoff http://lars.nocrew.org/ - Contributed the ptrace - proxy from his own project to allow easier kernel debugging - - - Andrea Arcangeli <andrea at suse.de> - Redid some of the early boot - code so that it would work on machines with Large File Support - - - Chris Emerson - Did the first UML port to Linux/ppc - - - Harald Welte <laforge at gnumonks.org> - Wrote the multicast - transport for the network driver - - - Jorgen Cederlof - Added special file support to hostfs - - - Greg Lonnon <glonnon at ridgerun dot com> - Changed the ubd driver - to allow it to layer a COW file on a shared read-only filesystem and - wrote the iomem emulation support - - - Henrik Nordstrom http://hem.passagen.se/hno/ - Provided a variety - of patches, fixes, and clues - - - Lennert Buytenhek - Contributed various patches, a rewrite of the - network driver, the first implementation of the mconsole driver, and - did the bulk of the work needed to get SMP working again. - - - Yon Uriarte - Fixed the TUN/TAP network backend while I slept. - - - Adam Heath - Made a bunch of nice cleanups to the initialization code, - plus various other small patches. - - - Matt Zimmerman - Matt volunteered to be the UML Debian maintainer and - is doing a real nice job of it. He also noticed and fixed a number of - actually and potentially exploitable security holes in uml_net. Plus - the occasional patch. I like patches. - - - James McMechan - James seems to have taken over maintenance of the ubd - driver and is doing a nice job of it. - - - Chandan Kudige - wrote the umlgdb script which automates the reloading - of module symbols. - - - Steve Schmidtke - wrote the UML slirp transport and hostaudio drivers, - enabling UML processes to access audio devices on the host. He also - submitted patches for the slip transport and lots of other things. - - - David Coulson http://davidcoulson.net - - - - Set up the http://usermodelinux.org site, - which is a great way of keeping the UML user community on top of - UML goings-on. - - - Site documentation and updates - - - Nifty little UML management daemon UMLd - - - Lots of testing and bug reports - - - - -15.2. Flushing out bugs ------------------------- - - - - - Yuri Pudgorodsky - - - Gerald Britton - - - Ian Wehrman - - - Gord Lamb - - - Eugene Koontz - - - John H. Hartman - - - Anders Karlsson - - - Daniel Phillips - - - John Fremlin - - - Rainer Burgstaller - - - James Stevenson - - - Matt Clay - - - Cliff Jefferies - - - Geoff Hoff - - - Lennert Buytenhek - - - Al Viro - - - Frank Klingenhoefer - - - Livio Baldini Soares - - - Jon Burgess - - - Petru Paler - - - Paul - - - Chris Reahard - - - Sverker Nilsson - - - Gong Su - - - johan verrept - - - Bjorn Eriksson - - - Lorenzo Allegrucci - - - Muli Ben-Yehuda - - - David Mansfield - - - Howard Goff - - - Mike Anderson - - - John Byrne - - - Sapan J. Batia - - - Iris Huang - - - Jan Hudec - - - Voluspa - - - - -15.3. Buglets and clean-ups ----------------------------- - - - - - Dave Zarzycki - - - Adam Lazur - - - Boria Feigin - - - Brian J. Murrell - - - JS - - - Roman Zippel - - - Wil Cooley - - - Ayelet Shemesh - - - Will Dyson - - - Sverker Nilsson - - - dvorak - - - v.naga srinivas - - - Shlomi Fish - - - Roger Binns - - - johan verrept - - - MrChuoi - - - Peter Cleve - - - Vincent Guffens - - - Nathan Scott - - - Patrick Caulfield - - - jbearce - - - Catalin Marinas - - - Shane Spencer - - - Zou Min - - - - Ryan Boder - - - Lorenzo Colitti - - - Gwendal Grignou - - - Andre' Breiler - - - Tsutomu Yasuda - - - -15.4. Case Studies -------------------- - - - - Jon Wright - - - William McEwan - - - Michael Richardson - - - -15.5. Other contributions --------------------------- - - - Bill Carr <Bill.Carr at compaq.com> made the Red Hat mkrootfs script - work with RH 6.2. - - Michael Jennings <mikejen at hevanet.com> sent in some material which - is now gracing the top of the index page - http://user-mode-linux.sourceforge.net/ of this site. - - SGI (and more specifically Ralf Baechle <ralf at - uni-koblenz.de> ) gave me an account on oss.sgi.com. - The bandwidth there made it possible to - produce most of the filesystems available on the project download - page. - - Laurent Bonnaud <Laurent.Bonnaud at inpg.fr> took the old grotty - Debian filesystem that I've been distributing and updated it to 2.2. - It is now available by itself here. - - Rik van Riel gave me some ftp space on ftp.nl.linux.org so I can make - releases even when Sourceforge is broken. - - Rodrigo de Castro looked at my broken pte code and told me what was - wrong with it, letting me fix a long-standing (several weeks) and - serious set of bugs. - - Chris Reahard built a specialized root filesystem for running a DNS - server jailed inside UML. It's available from the download - http://user-mode-linux.sourceforge.net/old/dl-sf.html page in the Jail - Filesystems section. diff --git a/Documentation/virt/uml/user_mode_linux_howto_v2.rst b/Documentation/virt/uml/user_mode_linux_howto_v2.rst new file mode 100644 index 000000000000..f70e6f5873c6 --- /dev/null +++ b/Documentation/virt/uml/user_mode_linux_howto_v2.rst @@ -0,0 +1,1208 @@ +.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0 + +######### +UML HowTo +######### + +.. contents:: :local: + +************ +Introduction +************ + +Welcome to User Mode Linux + +User Mode Linux is the first Open Source virtualization platform (first +release date 1991) and second virtualization platform for an x86 PC. + +How is UML Different from a VM using Virtualization package X? +============================================================== + +We have come to assume that virtualization also means some level of +hardware emulation. In fact, it does not. As long as a virtualization +package provides the OS with devices which the OS can recognize and +has a driver for, the devices do not need to emulate real hardware. +Most OSes today have built-in support for a number of "fake" +devices used only under virtualization. +User Mode Linux takes this concept to the ultimate extreme - there +is not a single real device in sight. It is 100% artificial or if +we use the correct term 100% paravirtual. All UML devices are abstract +concepts which map onto something provided by the host - files, sockets, +pipes, etc. + +The other major difference between UML and various virtualization +packages is that there is a distinct difference between the way the UML +kernel and the UML programs operate. +The UML kernel is just a process running on Linux - same as any other +program. It can be run by an unprivileged user and it does not require +anything in terms of special CPU features. +The UML userspace, however, is a bit different. The Linux kernel on the +host machine assists UML in intercepting everything the program running +on a UML instance is trying to do and making the UML kernel handle all +of its requests. +This is different from other virtualization packages which do not make any +difference between the guest kernel and guest programs. This difference +results in a number of advantages and disadvantages of UML over let's say +QEMU which we will cover later in this document. + + +Why Would I Want User Mode Linux? +================================= + + +* If User Mode Linux kernel crashes, your host kernel is still fine. It + is not accelerated in any way (vhost, kvm, etc) and it is not trying to + access any devices directly. It is, in fact, a process like any other. + +* You can run a usermode kernel as a non-root user (you may need to + arrange appropriate permissions for some devices). + +* You can run a very small VM with a minimal footprint for a specific + task (for example 32M or less). + +* You can get extremely high performance for anything which is a "kernel + specific task" such as forwarding, firewalling, etc while still being + isolated from the host kernel. + +* You can play with kernel concepts without breaking things. + +* You are not bound by "emulating" hardware, so you can try weird and + wonderful concepts which are very difficult to support when emulating + real hardware such as time travel and making your system clock + dependent on what UML does (very useful for things like tests). + +* It's fun. + +Why not to run UML +================== + +* The syscall interception technique used by UML makes it inherently + slower for any userspace applications. While it can do kernel tasks + on par with most other virtualization packages, its userspace is + **slow**. The root cause is that UML has a very high cost of creating + new processes and threads (something most Unix/Linux applications + take for granted). + +* UML is strictly uniprocessor at present. If you want to run an + application which needs many CPUs to function, it is clearly the + wrong choice. + +*********************** +Building a UML instance +*********************** + +There is no UML installer in any distribution. While you can use off +the shelf install media to install into a blank VM using a virtualization +package, there is no UML equivalent. You have to use appropriate tools on +your host to build a viable filesystem image. + +This is extremely easy on Debian - you can do it using debootstrap. It is +also easy on OpenWRT - the build process can build UML images. All other +distros - YMMV. + +Creating an image +================= + +Create a sparse raw disk image:: + + # dd if=/dev/zero of=disk_image_name bs=1 count=1 seek=16G + +This will create a 16G disk image. The OS will initially allocate only one +block and will allocate more as they are written by UML. As of kernel +version 4.19 UML fully supports TRIM (as usually used by flash drives). +Using TRIM inside the UML image by specifying discard as a mount option +or by running ``tune2fs -o discard /dev/ubdXX`` will request UML to +return any unused blocks to the OS. + +Create a filesystem on the disk image and mount it:: + + # mkfs.ext4 ./disk_image_name && mount ./disk_image_name /mnt + +This example uses ext4, any other filesystem such as ext3, btrfs, xfs, +jfs, etc will work too. + +Create a minimal OS installation on the mounted filesystem:: + + # debootstrap buster /mnt http://deb.debian.org/debian + +debootstrap does not set up the root password, fstab, hostname or +anything related to networking. It is up to the user to do that. + +Set the root password -t he easiest way to do that is to chroot into the +mounted image:: + + # chroot /mnt + # passwd + # exit + +Edit key system files +===================== + +UML block devices are called ubds. The fstab created by debootstrap +will be empty and it needs an entry for the root file system:: + + /dev/ubd0 ext4 discard,errors=remount-ro 0 1 + +The image hostname will be set to the same as the host on which you +are creating it image. It is a good idea to change that to avoid +"Oh, bummer, I rebooted the wrong machine". + +UML supports two classes of network devices - the older uml_net ones +which are scheduled for obsoletion. These are called ethX. It also +supports the newer vector IO devices which are significantly faster +and have support for some standard virtual network encapsulations like +Ethernet over GRE and Ethernet over L2TPv3. These are called vec0. + +Depending on which one is in use, ``/etc/network/interfaces`` will +need entries like:: + + # legacy UML network devices + auto eth0 + iface eth0 inet dhcp + + # vector UML network devices + auto vec0 + iface eth0 inet dhcp + +We now have a UML image which is nearly ready to run, all we need is a +UML kernel and modules for it. + +Most distributions have a UML package. Even if you intend to use your own +kernel, testing the image with a stock one is always a good start. These +packages come with a set of modules which should be copied to the target +filesystem. The location is distribution dependent. For Debian these +reside under /usr/lib/uml/modules. Copy recursively the content of this +directory to the mounted UML filesystem:: + + # cp -rax /usr/lib/uml/modules /mnt/lib/modules + +If you have compiled your own kernel, you need to use the usual "install +modules to a location" procedure by running:: + + # make install MODULES_DIR=/mnt/lib/modules + +At this point the image is ready to be brought up. + +************************* +Setting Up UML Networking +************************* + +UML networking is designed to emulate an Ethernet connection. This +connection may be either a point-to-point (similar to a connection +between machines using a back-to-back cable) or a connection to a +switch. UML supports a wide variety of means to build these +connections to all of: local machine, remote machine(s), local and +remote UML and other VM instances. + + ++-----------+--------+------------------------------------+------------+ +| Transport | Type | Capabilities | Throughput | ++===========+========+====================================+============+ +| tap | vector | checksum, tso | > 8Gbit | ++-----------+--------+------------------------------------+------------+ +| hybrid | vector | checksum, tso, multipacket rx | > 6GBit | ++-----------+--------+------------------------------------+------------+ +| raw | vector | checksum, tso, multipacket rx, tx" | > 6GBit | ++-----------+--------+------------------------------------+------------+ +| EoGRE | vector | multipacket rx, tx | > 3Gbit | ++-----------+--------+------------------------------------+------------+ +| Eol2tpv3 | vector | multipacket rx, tx | > 3Gbit | ++-----------+--------+------------------------------------+------------+ +| bess | vector | multipacket rx, tx | > 3Gbit | ++-----------+--------+------------------------------------+------------+ +| fd | vector | dependent on fd type | varies | ++-----------+--------+------------------------------------+------------+ +| tuntap | legacy | none | ~ 500Mbit | ++-----------+--------+------------------------------------+------------+ +| daemon | legacy | none | ~ 450Mbit | ++-----------+--------+------------------------------------+------------+ +| socket | legacy | none | ~ 450Mbit | ++-----------+--------+------------------------------------+------------+ +| pcap | legacy | rx only | ~ 450Mbit | ++-----------+--------+------------------------------------+------------+ +| ethertap | legacy | obsolete | ~ 500Mbit | ++-----------+--------+------------------------------------+------------+ +| vde | legacy | obsolete | ~ 500Mbit | ++-----------+--------+------------------------------------+------------+ + +* All transports which have tso and checksum offloads can deliver speeds + approaching 10G on TCP streams. + +* All transports which have multi-packet rx and/or tx can deliver pps + rates of up to 1Mps or more. + +* All legacy transports are generally limited to ~600-700MBit and 0.05Mps + +* GRE and L2TPv3 allow connections to all of: local machine, remote + machines, remote network devices and remote UML instances. + +* Socket allows connections only between UML instances. + +* Daemon and bess require running a local switch. This switch may be + connected to the host as well. + + +Network configuration privileges +================================ + +The majority of the supported networking modes need ``root`` privileges. +For example, in the legacy tuntap networking mode, users were required +to be part of the group associated with the tunnel device. + +For newer network drivers like the vector transports, ``root`` privilege +is required to fire an ioctl to setup the tun interface and/or use +raw sockets where needed. + +This can be achieved by granting the user a particular capability instead +of running UML as root. In case of vector transport, a user can add the +capability ``CAP_NET_ADMIN`` or ``CAP_NET_RAW``, to the uml binary. +Thenceforth, UML can be run with normal user privilges, along with +full networking. + +For example:: + + # sudo setcap cap_net_raw,cap_net_admin+ep linux + +Configuring vector transports +=============================== + +All vector transports support a similar syntax: + +If X is the interface number as in vec0, vec1, vec2, etc, the general +syntax for options is:: + + vecX:transport="Transport Name",option=value,option=value,...,option=value + +Common options +-------------- + +These options are common for all transports: + +* ``depth=int`` - sets the queue depth for vector IO. This is the + amount of packets UML will attempt to read or write in a single + system call. The default number is 64 and is generally sufficient + for most applications that need throughput in the 2-4 Gbit range. + Higher speeds may require larger values. + +* ``mac=XX:XX:XX:XX:XX`` - sets the interface MAC address value. + +* ``gro=[0,1]`` - sets GRO on or off. Enables receive/transmit offloads. + The effect of this option depends on the host side support in the transport + which is being configured. In most cases it will enable TCP segmentation and + RX/TX checksumming offloads. The setting must be identical on the host side + and the UML side. The UML kernel will produce warnings if it is not. + For example, GRO is enabled by default on local machine interfaces + (e.g. veth pairs, bridge, etc), so it should be enabled in UML in the + corresponding UML transports (raw, tap, hybrid) in order for networking to + operate correctly. + +* ``mtu=int`` - sets the interface MTU + +* ``headroom=int`` - adjusts the default headroom (32 bytes) reserved + if a packet will need to be re-encapsulated into for instance VXLAN. + +* ``vec=0`` - disable multipacket io and fall back to packet at a + time mode + +Shared Options +-------------- + +* ``ifname=str`` Transports which bind to a local network interface + have a shared option - the name of the interface to bind to. + +* ``src, dst, src_port, dst_port`` - all transports which use sockets + which have the notion of source and destination and/or source port + and destination port use these to specify them. + +* ``v6=[0,1]`` to specify if a v6 connection is desired for all + transports which operate over IP. Additionally, for transports that + have some differences in the way they operate over v4 and v6 (for example + EoL2TPv3), sets the correct mode of operation. In the absense of this + option, the socket type is determined based on what do the src and dst + arguments resolve/parse to. + +tap transport +------------- + +Example:: + + vecX:transport=tap,ifname=tap0,depth=128,gro=1 + +This will connect vec0 to tap0 on the host. Tap0 must already exist (for example +created using tunctl) and UP. + +tap0 can be configured as a point-to-point interface and given an ip +address so that UML can talk to the host. Alternatively, it is possible +to connect UML to a tap interface which is connected to a bridge. + +While tap relies on the vector infrastructure, it is not a true vector +transport at this point, because Linux does not support multi-packet +IO on tap file descriptors for normal userspace apps like UML. This +is a privilege which is offered only to something which can hook up +to it at kernel level via specialized interfaces like vhost-net. A +vhost-net like helper for UML is planned at some point in the future. + +Privileges required: tap transport requires either: + +* tap interface to exist and be created persistent and owned by the + UML user using tunctl. Example ``tunctl -u uml-user -t tap0`` + +* binary to have ``CAP_NET_ADMIN`` privilege + +hybrid transport +---------------- + +Example:: + + vecX:transport=hybrid,ifname=tap0,depth=128,gro=1 + +This is an experimental/demo transport which couples tap for transmit +and a raw socket for receive. The raw socket allows multi-packet +receive resulting in significantly higher packet rates than normal tap + +Privileges required: hybrid requires ``CAP_NET_RAW`` capability by +the UML user as well as the requirements for the tap transport. + +raw socket transport +-------------------- + +Example:: + + vecX:transport=raw,ifname=p-veth0,depth=128,gro=1 + + +This transport uses vector IO on raw sockets. While you can bind to any +interface including a physical one, the most common use it to bind to +the "peer" side of a veth pair with the other side configured on the +host. + +Example host configuration for Debian: + +**/etc/network/interfaces**:: + + auto veth0 + iface veth0 inet static + address 192.168.4.1 + netmask 255.255.255.252 + broadcast 192.168.4.3 + pre-up ip link add veth0 type veth peer name p-veth0 && \ + ifconfig p-veth0 up + +UML can now bind to p-veth0 like this:: + + vec0:transport=raw,ifname=p-veth0,depth=128,gro=1 + + +If the UML guest is configured with 192.168.4.2 and netmask 255.255.255.0 +it can talk to the host on 192.168.4.1 + +The raw transport also provides some support for offloading some of the +filtering to the host. The two options to control it are: + +* ``bpffile=str`` filename of raw bpf code to be loaded as a socket filter + +* ``bpfflash=int`` 0/1 allow loading of bpf from inside User Mode Linux. + This option allows the use of the ethtool load firmware command to + load bpf code. + +In either case the bpf code is loaded into the host kernel. While this is +presently limited to legacy bpf syntax (not ebpf), it is still a security +risk. It is not recommended to allow this unless the User Mode Linux +instance is considered trusted. + +Privileges required: raw socket transport requires `CAP_NET_RAW` +capability. + +GRE socket transport +-------------------- + +Example:: + + vecX:transport=gre,src=$src_host,dst=$dst_host + + +This will configure an Ethernet over ``GRE`` (aka ``GRETAP`` or +``GREIRB``) tunnel which will connect the UML instance to a ``GRE`` +endpoint at host dst_host. ``GRE`` supports the following additional +options: + +* ``rx_key=int`` - GRE 32 bit integer key for rx packets, if set, + ``txkey`` must be set too + +* ``tx_key=int`` - GRE 32 bit integer key for tx packets, if set + ``rx_key`` must be set too + +* ``sequence=[0,1]`` - enable GRE sequence + +* ``pin_sequence=[0,1]`` - pretend that the sequence is always reset + on each packet (needed to interoperate with some really broken + implementations) + +* ``v6=[0,1]`` - force IPv4 or IPv6 sockets respectively + +* GRE checksum is not presently supported + +GRE has a number of caveats: + +* You can use only one GRE connection per ip address. There is no way to + multiplex connections as each GRE tunnel is terminated directly on + the UML instance. + +* The key is not really a security feature. While it was intended as such + it's "security" is laughable. It is, however, a useful feature to + ensure that the tunnel is not misconfigured. + +An example configuration for a Linux host with a local address of +192.168.128.1 to connect to a UML instance at 192.168.129.1 + +**/etc/network/interfaces**:: + + auto gt0 + iface gt0 inet static + address 10.0.0.1 + netmask 255.255.255.0 + broadcast 10.0.0.255 + mtu 1500 + pre-up ip link add gt0 type gretap local 192.168.128.1 \ + remote 192.168.129.1 || true + down ip link del gt0 || true + +Additionally, GRE has been tested versus a variety of network equipment. + +Privileges required: GRE requires ``CAP_NET_RAW`` + +l2tpv3 socket transport +----------------------- + +_Warning_. L2TPv3 has a "bug". It is the "bug" known as "has more +options than GNU ls". While it has some advantages, there are usually +easier (and less verbose) ways to connect a UML instance to something. +For example, most devices which support L2TPv3 also support GRE. + +Example:: + + vec0:transport=l2tpv3,udp=1,src=$src_host,dst=$dst_host,srcport=$src_port,dstport=$dst_port,depth=128,rx_session=0xffffffff,tx_session=0xffff + +This will configure an Ethernet over L2TPv3 fixed tunnel which will +connect the UML instance to a L2TPv3 endpoint at host $dst_host using +the L2TPv3 UDP flavour and UDP destination port $dst_port. + +L2TPv3 always requires the following additional options: + +* ``rx_session=int`` - l2tpv3 32 bit integer session for rx packets + +* ``tx_session=int`` - l2tpv3 32 bit integer session for tx packets + +As the tunnel is fixed these are not negotiated and they are +preconfigured on both ends. + +Additionally, L2TPv3 supports the following optional parameters + +* ``rx_cookie=int`` - l2tpv3 32 bit integer cookie for rx packets - same + functionality as GRE key, more to prevent misconfiguration than provide + actual security + +* ``tx_cookie=int`` - l2tpv3 32 bit integer cookie for tx packets + +* ``cookie64=[0,1]`` - use 64 bit cookies instead of 32 bit. + +* ``counter=[0,1]`` - enable l2tpv3 counter + +* ``pin_counter=[0,1]`` - pretend that the counter is always reset on + each packet (needed to interoperate with some really broken + implementations) + +* ``v6=[0,1]`` - force v6 sockets + +* ``udp=[0,1]`` - use raw sockets (0) or UDP (1) version of the protocol + +L2TPv3 has a number of caveats: + +* you can use only one connection per ip address in raw mode. There is + no way to multiplex connections as each L2TPv3 tunnel is terminated + directly on the UML instance. UDP mode can use different ports for + this purpose. + +Here is an example of how to configure a linux host to connect to UML +via L2TPv3: + +**/etc/network/interfaces**:: + + auto l2tp1 + iface l2tp1 inet static + address 192.168.126.1 + netmask 255.255.255.0 + broadcast 192.168.126.255 + mtu 1500 + pre-up ip l2tp add tunnel remote 127.0.0.1 \ + local 127.0.0.1 encap udp tunnel_id 2 \ + peer_tunnel_id 2 udp_sport 1706 udp_dport 1707 && \ + ip l2tp add session name l2tp1 tunnel_id 2 \ + session_id 0xffffffff peer_session_id 0xffffffff + down ip l2tp del session tunnel_id 2 session_id 0xffffffff && \ + ip l2tp del tunnel tunnel_id 2 + + +Privileges required: L2TPv3 requires ``CAP_NET_RAW`` for raw IP mode and +no special privileges for the UDP mode. + +BESS socket transport +--------------------- + +BESS is a high performance modular network switch. + +https://github.com/NetSys/bess + +It has support for a simple sequential packet socket mode which in the +more recent versions is using vector IO for high performance. + +Example:: + + vecX:transport=bess,src=$unix_src,dst=$unix_dst + +This will configure a BESS transport using the unix_src Unix domain +socket address as source and unix_dst socket address as destination. + +For BESS configuration and how to allocate a BESS Unix domain socket port +please see the BESS documentation. + +https://github.com/NetSys/bess/wiki/Built-In-Modules-and-Ports + +BESS transport does not require any special privileges. + +Configuring Legacy transports +============================= + +Legacy transports are now considered obsolete. Please use the vector +versions. + +*********** +Running UML +*********** + +This section assumes that either the user-mode-linux package from the +distribution or a custom built kernel has been installed on the host. + +These add an executable called linux to the system. This is the UML +kernel. It can be run just like any other executable. +It will take most normal linux kernel arguments as command line +arguments. Additionally, it will need some UML specific arguments +in order to do something useful. + +Arguments +========= + +Mandatory Arguments: +-------------------- + +* ``mem=int[K,M,G]`` - amount of memory. By default bytes. It will + also accept K, M or G qualifiers. + +* ``ubdX[s,d,c,t]=`` virtual disk specification. This is not really + mandatory, but it is likely to be needed in nearly all cases so we can + specify a root file system. + The simplest possible image specification is the name of the image + file for the filesystem (created using one of the methods described + in `Creating an image`_) + + * UBD devices support copy on write (COW). The changes are kept in + a separate file which can be discarded allowing a rollback to the + original pristine image. If COW is desired, the UBD image is + specified as: ``cow_file,master_image``. + Example:``ubd0=Filesystem.cow,Filesystem.img`` + + * UBD devices can be set to use synchronous IO. Any writes are + immediately flushed to disk. This is done by adding ``s`` after + the ``ubdX`` specification + + * UBD performs some euristics on devices specified as a single + filename to make sure that a COW file has not been specified as + the image. To turn them off, use the ``d`` flag after ``ubdX`` + + * UBD supports TRIM - asking the Host OS to reclaim any unused + blocks in the image. To turn it off, specify the ``t`` flag after + ``ubdX`` + +* ``root=`` root device - most likely ``/dev/ubd0`` (this is a Linux + filesystem image) + +Important Optional Arguments +---------------------------- + +If UML is run as "linux" with no extra arguments, it will try to start an +xterm for every console configured inside the image (up to 6 in most +linux distributions). Each console is started inside an +xterm. This makes it nice and easy to use UML on a host with a GUI. It is, +however, the wrong approach if UML is to be used as a testing harness or run +in a text-only environment. + +In order to change this behaviour we need to specify an alternative console +and wire it to one of the supported "line" channels. For this we need to map a +console to use something different from the default xterm. + +Example which will divert console number 1 to stdin/stdout:: + + con1=fd:0,fd:1 + +UML supports a wide variety of serial line channels which are specified using +the following syntax + + conX=channel_type:options[,channel_type:options] + + +If the channel specification contains two parts separated by comma, the first +one is input, the second one output. + +* The null channel - Discard all input or output. Example ``con=null`` will set + all consoles to null by default. + +* The fd channel - use file descriptor numbers for input/out. Example: + ``con1=fd:0,fd:1.`` + +* The port channel - listen on tcp port number. Example: ``con1=port:4321`` + +* The pty and pts channels - use system pty/pts. + +* The tty channel - bind to an existing system tty. Example: ``con1=/dev/tty8`` + will make UML use the host 8th console (usually unused). + +* The xterm channel - this is the default - bring up an xterm on this channel + and direct IO to it. Note, that in order for xterm to work, the host must + have the UML distribution package installed. This usually contains the + port-helper and other utilities needed for UML to communicate with the xterm. + Alternatively, these need to be complied and installed from source. All + options applicable to consoles also apply to UML serial lines which are + presented as ttyS inside UML. + +Starting UML +============ + +We can now run UML. +:: + # linux mem=2048M umid=TEST \ + ubd0=Filesystem.img \ + vec0:transport=tap,ifname=tap0,depth=128,gro=1 \ + root=/dev/ubda con=null con0=null,fd:2 con1=fd:0,fd:1 + +This will run an instance with ``2048M RAM``, try to use the image file +called ``Filesystem.img`` as root. It will connect to the host using tap0. +All consoles except ``con1`` will be disabled and console 1 will +use standard input/output making it appear in the same terminal it was started. + +Logging in +============ + +If you have not set up a password when generating the image, you will have to +shut down the UML instance, mount the image, chroot into it and set it - as +described in the Generating an Image section. If the password is already set, +you can just log in. + +The UML Management Console +============================ + +In addition to managing the image from "the inside" using normal sysadmin tools, +it is possible to perform a number of low level operations using the UML +management console. The UML management console is a low-level interface to the +kernel on a running UML instance, somewhat like the i386 SysRq interface. Since +there is a full-blown operating system under UML, there is much greater +flexibility possible than with the SysRq mechanism. + +There are a number of things you can do with the mconsole interface: + +* get the kernel version +* add and remove devices +* halt or reboot the machine +* Send SysRq commands +* Pause and resume the UML +* Inspect processes running inside UML +* Inspect UML internal /proc state + +You need the mconsole client (uml\_mconsole) which is a part of the UML +tools package available in most Linux distritions. + +You also need ``CONFIG_MCONSOLE`` (under 'General Setup') enabled in the UML +kernel. When you boot UML, you'll see a line like:: + + mconsole initialized on /home/jdike/.uml/umlNJ32yL/mconsole + +If you specify a unique machine id one the UML command line, i.e. +``umid=debian``, you'll see this:: + + mconsole initialized on /home/jdike/.uml/debian/mconsole + + +That file is the socket that uml_mconsole will use to communicate with +UML. Run it with either the umid or the full path as its argument:: + + # uml_mconsole debian + +or + + # uml_mconsole /home/jdike/.uml/debian/mconsole + + +You'll get a prompt, at which you can run one of these commands: + +* version +* help +* halt +* reboot +* config +* remove +* sysrq +* help +* cad +* stop +* go +* proc +* stack + +version +------- + +This command takes no arguments. It prints the UML version:: + + (mconsole) version + OK Linux OpenWrt 4.14.106 #0 Tue Mar 19 08:19:41 2019 x86_64 + + +There are a couple actual uses for this. It's a simple no-op which +can be used to check that a UML is running. It's also a way of +sending a device interrupt to the UML. UML mconsole is treated internally as +a UML device. + +help +---- + +This command takes no arguments. It prints a short help screen with the +supported mconsole commands. + + +halt and reboot +--------------- + +These commands take no arguments. They shut the machine down immediately, with +no syncing of disks and no clean shutdown of userspace. So, they are +pretty close to crashing the machine:: + + (mconsole) halt + OK + +config +------ + +"config" adds a new device to the virtual machine. This is supported +by most UML device drivers. It takes one argument, which is the +device to add, with the same syntax as the kernel command line:: + + (mconsole) config ubd3=/home/jdike/incoming/roots/root_fs_debian22 + +remove +------ + +"remove" deletes a device from the system. Its argument is just the +name of the device to be removed. The device must be idle in whatever +sense the driver considers necessary. In the case of the ubd driver, +the removed block device must not be mounted, swapped on, or otherwise +open, and in the case of the network driver, the device must be down:: + + (mconsole) remove ubd3 + +sysrq +----- + +This command takes one argument, which is a single letter. It calls the +generic kernel's SysRq driver, which does whatever is called for by +that argument. See the SysRq documentation in +Documentation/admin-guide/sysrq.rst in your favorite kernel tree to +see what letters are valid and what they do. + +cad +--- + +This invokes the ``Ctl-Alt-Del`` action in the running image. What exactly +this ends up doing is up to init, systemd, etc. Normally, it reboots the +machine. + +stop +---- + +This puts the UML in a loop reading mconsole requests until a 'go' +mconsole command is received. This is very useful as a +debugging/snapshotting tool. + +go +-- + +This resumes a UML after being paused by a 'stop' command. Note that +when the UML has resumed, TCP connections may have timed out and if +the UML is paused for a long period of time, crond might go a little +crazy, running all the jobs it didn't do earlier. + +proc +---- + +This takes one argument - the name of a file in /proc which is printed +to the mconsole standard output + +stack +----- + +This takes one argument - the pid number of a process. Its stack is +printed to a standard output. + +******************* +Advanced UML Topics +******************* + +Sharing Filesystems between Virtual Machines +============================================ + +Don't attempt to share filesystems simply by booting two UMLs from the +same file. That's the same thing as booting two physical machines +from a shared disk. It will result in filesystem corruption. + +Using layered block devices +--------------------------- + +The way to share a filesystem between two virtual machines is to use +the copy-on-write (COW) layering capability of the ubd block driver. +Any changed blocks are stored in the private COW file, while reads come +from either device - the private one if the requested block is valid in +it, the shared one if not. Using this scheme, the majority of data +which is unchanged is shared between an arbitrary number of virtual +machines, each of which has a much smaller file containing the changes +that it has made. With a large number of UMLs booting from a large root +filesystem, this leads to a huge disk space saving. + +Sharing file system data will also help performance, since the host will +be able to cache the shared data using a much smaller amount of memory, +so UML disk requests will be served from the host's memory rather than +its disks. There is a major caveat in doing this on multisocket NUMA +machines. On such hardware, running many UML instances with a shared +master image and COW changes may caise issues like NMIs from excess of +inter-socket traffic. + +If you are running UML on high end hardware like this, make sure to +bind UML to a set of logical cpus residing on the same socket using the +``taskset`` command or have a look at the "tuning" section. + +To add a copy-on-write layer to an existing block device file, simply +add the name of the COW file to the appropriate ubd switch:: + + ubd0=root_fs_cow,root_fs_debian_22 + +where ``root_fs_cow`` is the private COW file and ``root_fs_debian_22`` is +the existing shared filesystem. The COW file need not exist. If it +doesn't, the driver will create and initialize it. + +Disk Usage +---------- + +UML has TRIM support which will release any unused space in its disk +image files to the underlying OS. It is important to use either ls -ls +or du to verify the actual file size. + +COW validity. +------------- + +Any changes to the master image will invalidate all COW files. If this +happens, UML will *NOT* automatically delete any of the COW files and +will refuse to boot. In this case the only solution is to either +restore the old image (including its last modified timestamp) or remove +all COW files which will result in their recreation. Any changes in +the COW files will be lost. + +Cows can moo - uml_moo : Merging a COW file with its backing file +----------------------------------------------------------------- + +Depending on how you use UML and COW devices, it may be advisable to +merge the changes in the COW file into the backing file every once in +a while. + +The utility that does this is uml_moo. Its usage is:: + + uml_moo COW_file new_backing_file + + +There's no need to specify the backing file since that information is +already in the COW file header. If you're paranoid, boot the new +merged file, and if you're happy with it, move it over the old backing +file. + +``uml_moo`` creates a new backing file by default as a safety measure. +It also has a destructive merge option which will merge the COW file +directly into its current backing file. This is really only usable +when the backing file only has one COW file associated with it. If +there are multiple COWs associated with a backing file, a -d merge of +one of them will invalidate all of the others. However, it is +convenient if you're short of disk space, and it should also be +noticeably faster than a non-destructive merge. + +``uml_moo`` is installed with the UML distribution packages and is +available as a part of UML utilities. + +Host file access +================== + +If you want to access files on the host machine from inside UML, you +can treat it as a separate machine and either nfs mount directories +from the host or copy files into the virtual machine with scp. +However, since UML is running on the host, it can access those +files just like any other process and make them available inside the +virtual machine without the need to use the network. +This is possible with the hostfs virtual filesystem. With it, you +can mount a host directory into the UML filesystem and access the +files contained in it just as you would on the host. + +*SECURITY WARNING* + +Hostfs without any parameters to the UML Image will allow the image +to mount any part of the host filesystem and write to it. Always +confine hostfs to a specific "harmless" directory (for example ``/var/tmp``) +if running UML. This is especially important if UML is being run as root. + +Using hostfs +------------ + +To begin with, make sure that hostfs is available inside the virtual +machine with:: + + # cat /proc/filesystems + +``hostfs`` should be listed. If it's not, either rebuild the kernel +with hostfs configured into it or make sure that hostfs is built as a +module and available inside the virtual machine, and insmod it. + + +Now all you need to do is run mount:: + + # mount none /mnt/host -t hostfs + +will mount the host's ``/`` on the virtual machine's ``/mnt/host``. +If you don't want to mount the host root directory, then you can +specify a subdirectory to mount with the -o switch to mount:: + + # mount none /mnt/home -t hostfs -o /home + +will mount the hosts's /home on the virtual machine's /mnt/home. + +hostfs as the root filesystem +----------------------------- + +It's possible to boot from a directory hierarchy on the host using +hostfs rather than using the standard filesystem in a file. +To start, you need that hierarchy. The easiest way is to loop mount +an existing root_fs file:: + + # mount root_fs uml_root_dir -o loop + + +You need to change the filesystem type of ``/`` in ``etc/fstab`` to be +'hostfs', so that line looks like this:: + + /dev/ubd/0 / hostfs defaults 1 1 + +Then you need to chown to yourself all the files in that directory +that are owned by root. This worked for me:: + + # find . -uid 0 -exec chown jdike {} \; + +Next, make sure that your UML kernel has hostfs compiled in, not as a +module. Then run UML with the boot device pointing at that directory:: + + ubd0=/path/to/uml/root/directory + +UML should then boot as it does normally. + +Hostfs Caveats +-------------- + +Hostfs does not support keeping track of host filesystem changes on the +host (outside UML). As a result, if a file is changed without UML's +knowledge, UML will not know about it and its own in-memory cache of +the file may be corrupt. While it is possible to fix this, it is not +something which is being worked on at present. + +Tuning UML +============ + +UML at present is strictly uniprocessor. It will, however spin up a +number of threads to handle various functions. + +The UBD driver, SIGIO and the MMU emulation do that. If the system is +idle, these threads will be migrated to other processors on a SMP host. +This, unfortunately, will usually result in LOWER performance because of +all of the cache/memory synchronization traffic between cores. As a +result, UML will usually benefit from being pinned on a single CPU +especially on a large system. This can result in performance differences +of 5 times or higher on some benchmarks. + +Similarly, on large multi-node NUMA systems UML will benefit if all of +its memory is allocated from the same NUMA node it will run on. The +OS will *NOT* do that by default. In order to do that, the sysadmin +needs to create a suitable tmpfs ramdisk bound to a particular node +and use that as the source for UML RAM allocation by specifying it +in the TMP or TEMP environment variables. UML will look at the values +of ``TMPDIR``, ``TMP`` or ``TEMP`` for that. If that fails, it will +look for shmfs mounted under ``/dev/shm``. If everything else fails use +``/tmp/`` regardless of the filesystem type used for it:: + + mount -t tmpfs -ompol=bind:X none /mnt/tmpfs-nodeX + TEMP=/mnt/tmpfs-nodeX taskset -cX linux options options options.. + +******************************************* +Contributing to UML and Developing with UML +******************************************* + +UML is an excellent platform to develop new Linux kernel concepts - +filesystems, devices, virtualization, etc. It provides unrivalled +opportunities to create and test them without being constrained to +emulating specific hardware. + +Example - want to try how linux will work with 4096 "proper" network +devices? + +Not an issue with UML. At the same time, this is something which +is difficult with other virtualization packages - they are +constrained by the number of devices allowed on the hardware bus +they are trying to emulate (for example 16 on a PCI bus in qemu). + +If you have something to contribute such as a patch, a bugfix, a +new feature, please send it to ``linux-um@lists.infradead.org`` + +Please follow all standard Linux patch guidelines such as cc-ing +relevant maintainers and run ``./sripts/checkpatch.pl`` on your patch. +For more details see ``Documentation/process/submitting-patches.rst`` + +Note - the list does not accept HTML or attachments, all emails must +be formatted as plain text. + +Developing always goes hand in hand with debugging. First of all, +you can always run UML under gdb and there will be a whole section +later on on how to do that. That, however, is not the only way to +debug a linux kernel. Quite often adding tracing statements and/or +using UML specific approaches such as ptracing the UML kernel process +are significantly more informative. + +Tracing UML +============= + +When running UML consists of a main kernel thread and a number of +helper threads. The ones of interest for tracing are NOT the ones +that are already ptraced by UML as a part of its MMU emulation. + +These are usually the first three threads visible in a ps display. +The one with the lowest PID number and using most CPU is usually the +kernel thread. The other threads are the disk +(ubd) device helper thread and the sigio helper thread. +Running ptrace on this thread usually results in the following picture:: + + host$ strace -p 16566 + --- SIGIO {si_signo=SIGIO, si_code=POLL_IN, si_band=65} --- + epoll_wait(4, [{EPOLLIN, {u32=3721159424, u64=3721159424}}], 64, 0) = 1 + epoll_wait(4, [], 64, 0) = 0 + rt_sigreturn({mask=[PIPE]}) = 16967 + ptrace(PTRACE_GETREGS, 16967, NULL, 0xd5f34f38) = 0 + ptrace(PTRACE_GETREGSET, 16967, NT_X86_XSTATE, [{iov_base=0xd5f35010, iov_len=832}]) = 0 + ptrace(PTRACE_GETSIGINFO, 16967, NULL, {si_signo=SIGTRAP, si_code=0x85, si_pid=16967, si_uid=0}) = 0 + ptrace(PTRACE_SETREGS, 16967, NULL, 0xd5f34f38) = 0 + ptrace(PTRACE_SETREGSET, 16967, NT_X86_XSTATE, [{iov_base=0xd5f35010, iov_len=2696}]) = 0 + ptrace(PTRACE_SYSEMU, 16967, NULL, 0) = 0 + --- SIGCHLD {si_signo=SIGCHLD, si_code=CLD_TRAPPED, si_pid=16967, si_uid=0, si_status=SIGTRAP, si_utime=65, si_stime=89} --- + wait4(16967, [{WIFSTOPPED(s) && WSTOPSIG(s) == SIGTRAP | 0x80}], WSTOPPED|__WALL, NULL) = 16967 + ptrace(PTRACE_GETREGS, 16967, NULL, 0xd5f34f38) = 0 + ptrace(PTRACE_GETREGSET, 16967, NT_X86_XSTATE, [{iov_base=0xd5f35010, iov_len=832}]) = 0 + ptrace(PTRACE_GETSIGINFO, 16967, NULL, {si_signo=SIGTRAP, si_code=0x85, si_pid=16967, si_uid=0}) = 0 + timer_settime(0, 0, {it_interval={tv_sec=0, tv_nsec=0}, it_value={tv_sec=0, tv_nsec=2830912}}, NULL) = 0 + getpid() = 16566 + clock_nanosleep(CLOCK_MONOTONIC, 0, {tv_sec=1, tv_nsec=0}, NULL) = ? ERESTART_RESTARTBLOCK (Interrupted by signal) + --- SIGALRM {si_signo=SIGALRM, si_code=SI_TIMER, si_timerid=0, si_overrun=0, si_value={int=1631716592, ptr=0x614204f0}} --- + rt_sigreturn({mask=[PIPE]}) = -1 EINTR (Interrupted system call) + +This is a typical picture from a mostly idle UML instance + +* UML interrupt controller uses epoll - this is UML waiting for IO + interrupts: + + epoll_wait(4, [{EPOLLIN, {u32=3721159424, u64=3721159424}}], 64, 0) = 1 + +* The sequence of ptrace calls is part of MMU emulation and runnin the + UML userspace +* ``timer_settime`` is part of the UML high res timer subsystem mapping + timer requests from inside UML onto the host high resultion timers. +* ``clock_nanosleep`` is UML going into idle (similar to the way a PC + will execute an ACPI idle). + +As you can see UML will generate quite a bit of output even in idle.The output +can be very informative when observing IO. It shows the actual IO calls, their +arguments and returns values. + +Kernel debugging +================ + +You can run UML under gdb now, though it will not necessarily agree to +be started under it. If you are trying to track a runtime bug, it is +much better to attach gdb to a running UML instance and let UML run. + +Assuming the same PID number as in the previous example, this would be:: + + # gdb -p 16566 + +This will STOP the UML instance, so you must enter `cont` at the GDB +command line to request it to continue. It may be a good idea to make +this into a gdb script and pass it to gdb as an argument. + +Developing Device Drivers +========================= + +Nearly all UML drivers are monolithic. While it is possible to build a +UML driver as a kernel module, that limits the possible functionality +to in-kernel only and non-UML specific. The reason for this is that +in order to really leverage UML, one needs to write a piece of +userspace code which maps driver concepts onto actual userspace host +calls. + +This forms the so called "user" portion of the driver. While it can +reuse a lot of kernel concepts, it is generally just another piece of +userspace code. This portion needs some matching "kernel" code which +resides inside the UML image and which implements the Linux kernel part. + +*Note: There are very few limitations in the way "kernel" and "user" interact*. + +UML does not have a strictly defined kernel to host API. It does not +try to emulate a specific architecture or bus. UML's "kernel" and +"user" can share memory, code and interact as needed to implement +whatever design the software developer has in mind. The only +limitations are purely technical. Due to a lot of functions and +variables having the same names, the developer should be careful +which includes and libraries they are trying to refer to. + +As a result a lot of userspace code consists of simple wrappers. +F.e. ``os_close_file()`` is just a wrapper around ``close()`` +which ensures that the userspace function close does not clash +with similarly named function(s) in the kernel part. + +Security Considerations +----------------------- + +Drivers or any new functionality should default to not +accepting arbitrary filename, bpf code or other parameters +which can affect the host from inside the UML instance. +For example, specifying the socket used for IPC communication +between a driver and the host at the UML command line is OK +security-wise. Allowing it as a loadable module parameter +isn't. + +If such functionality is desireable for a particular application +(e.g. loading BPF "firmware" for raw socket network transports), +it should be off by default and should be explicitly turned on +as a command line parameter at startup. + +Even with this in mind, the level of isolation between UML +and the host is relatively weak. If the UML userspace is +allowed to load arbitrary kernel drivers, an attacker can +use this to break out of UML. Thus, if UML is used in +a production application, it is recommended that all modules +are loaded at boot and kernel module loading is disabled +afterwards. |