Genode used to create new processes by directly forking from the
respective Genode parent using the process library. The forking process
created a PD session at core merely for propagating the PID of the new
process into core (for later destruction). This traditional mechanisms
has the following disadvantages:
First, the PID reported by the creating process to core cannot easily be
validated by core. Therefore core has to trust the PD client to not
specify a PID of an existing process, which would happen to be killed
once the PD session gets destructed. This problem is documented by
issue #318. Second, there is no way for a Genode process to detect the
failure of its any grandchildren. The immediate parent of a faulting
process could use the SIGCHLD-and-waitpid mechanism to observe its
children but this mechanism does not work transitively.
By performing the process creation exclusively within core, all Genode
processes become immediate child processes of core. Hence, core can
respond to failures of any of those processes and reflect such
conditions via core's session interfaces. Furthermore, the PID
associated to a PD session is locally known within core and cannot be
forged anymore. In fact, there is actually no need at all to make
processes aware of any PIDs of other processes.
Please note that this patch breaks the 'chroot' mechanism that comes in
the form of the 'os/src/app/chroot' program. Because all processes are
forked from core, a chroot'ed process could sneak outside its chroot
environment by just creating a new Genode process. To address this
issue, the chroot mechanism must be added to core.
This patch simplifies the system call bindings. The common syscall
bindings in 'src/platform/' have been reduced to the syscalls needed by
non-core programs. The additional syscalls that are needed solely by
core have been moved to 'src/core/include/core_linux_syscalls.h'.
Furthermore, the resource path is not used outside of core anymore.
Hence, we could get rid of the rpath library. The resource-path code has
been moved to 'src/core/include/resource_path.h'. The IPC-related parts
of 'src/platform' have been moved to the IPC library. So there is now a
clean separation between low-level syscall bindings (in 'src/platform')
and higher-level code.
The code for the socket-descriptor registry is now located in the
'src/base/ipc/socket_descriptor_registry.h' header. The interface is
separated from 'ipc.cc' because core needs to access the registry from
outside the ipc library.
This patch eliminates the thread ID portion of the 'Native_capability'
type. The access to entrypoints is now exclusively handled by passing
socket descripts over Unix domain sockets and by inheriting the socket
descriptor of the parent entrypoint at process-creation time.
Each entrypoint creates a socket pair. The server-side socket is bound
to a unique name defined by the server. The client-side socket is then
connected to the same name. Whereas the server-side socket is meant to
be exclusively used by the server to wait for incoming requests, the
client-side socket can be delegated to other processes as payload of RPC
messages (via SCM rights). Anyone who receives a capability over RPC
receives the client-side socket of the entrypoint to which the
capability refers. Given this socket descriptor, the unique name (as
defined by the server) can be requested using 'getpeername'. Using this
name, it is possible to compare socket descriptors, which is important
to avoid duplicates from polluting the limited socket-descriptor name
space.
Wheras this patch introduces capability-based delegation of access
rights to entrypoints, it does not cover the protection of the integrity
of RPC objects. RPC objects are still referenced by a global ID passed
as normal message payload.
In the final version, the 'socket' will be the only member to remain in
the 'Dst' time. In the transition phase, we store both the old 'tid' and
the 'socket'.
