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[DOC] Manually Bootstraping a Translator


From: Neal H Walfield
Subject: [DOC] Manually Bootstraping a Translator
Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2001 19:59:33 +0200
User-agent: Mutt/1.3.15i

As this might be useful to someone else, here is how to manually
bootstrap a translator.

Manually Bootstrapping a Translator
===================================

The most common way to start a translator is to use the `settrans'
command.  It provides a flag, `-P', which waits until the user presses
a key before completing the handshake with the translator.  This causes
the translator to pause and gives the user a chance to attach gdb to
the process.  Sometimes, however, it is convenient to debug a translator
before it calls fsys_start.  To do this properly, we need to manually
connect the translator to the filesystem.  Happily, this is relatively
easy and requires no modification to the source code.  We shall
demonstrate how to do this using tmpfs, however, this applies equally
well to any other translator.

First, we startup gdb:

        address@hidden:~ (0)$ sudo gdb /hurd/tmpfs
        Password:
        GNU gdb 5.0
        Copyright 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

Before launching tmpfs, we set a breakpoint at main:

        (gdb) break main
        Breakpoint 1 at 0x8049e89: file tmpfs/tmpfs.c, line 228.
        (gdb) run 100M
        Starting program: /hurd/tmpfs 100M

        Breakpoint 1, main (argc=2, argv=0x124ff50)
            at ../../src/hurd/tmpfs/tmpfs.c:228

One of the first actions that tmpfs takes is to verify that it has a
bootstrap port which it later uses to rendez-vous with the starter to
pass a send right to its control port and receive a send right to its
underlying node.  The task_get_bootstrap_port function returns the
port and tmpfs compares this against MACH_PORT_NULL.  If they match,
tmpfs knows that it has no one to rendez-vous with and exits.  Since
we started tmpfs as a regular program, the bootstrap port will be
MACH_PORT_NULL.  Therefore, we need to lie.  All that is necessary is
to change the value of the `bootstrap' variable, however, we should not
change it to any random value as later, tmpfs will deallocate this port.
Thus, we set BOOTSTRAP to MACH_PORT_DEAD, i.e. ~0, which is guaranteed
to not point to a valid port right.

        228       assert_perror (err);
        (gdb) next
        230       task_get_bootstrap_port (mach_task_self (), &bootstrap);
        (gdb) next
        231       if (bootstrap == MACH_PORT_NULL)
        (gdb) print bootstrap=~0
        $1 = 4294967295

We could continue to step through and examine what happens, however, our
next step is to fake fsys_startup, the rendez-vous.  So, let us now
setup a breakpoint and continue:

        (gdb) break fsys_startup
        Breakpoint 2 at 0x1228175
        (gdb) continue
        Continuing.

        Breakpoint 2, 0x1228175 in fsys_startup () from
        /lib/libhurduser.so.0.0

As this call does nothing for us, we can just force it to return:

        (gdb) return
        Make selected stack frame return now? (y or n) y

        #0  0x103e139 in diskfs_startup_diskfs (bootstrap=4294967295, flags=0)
            at ../../src/hurd/libdiskfs/init-startup.c:93
        93                err = fsys_startup (bootstrap, flags, right,
        (gdb) next
        Single stepping until exit from function fsys_startup, 
        which has no line number information.
        95                mach_port_deallocate (mach_task_self (), right);

We now have three tasks.  First, we need to obtain a send right to the
underlying node and save that in the local variable `realnode'.  Second,
we must install the filesystem control port, which currently lives in
the local variable `right', into the underlying node.  And finally, we
must make tmpfs think nothing happened.

To obtain a send right to the underlying node, we use the function
file_name_lookup.  Its definition can be found in <hurd.h>.  This
function takes three arguments.  They are: the path to the node to open,
how to open the node and how to create the node.  They are exactly the
same types of arguments as passed to open(2) and, in fact,
file_name_lookup uses the same constants.  Since tmpfs does no I/O
operations on the underlying, we can safely specify zero as the open
mode:

        (gdb) p realnode=file_name_lookup ("/home/neal/tmp", 0, 0)
        $2 = 65

We see that we succeeded as zero, i.e.  MACH_PORT_NULL, was not
returned.

Next, we need to set the active translator on the node.  This is done
using the file_set_translator RPC.  Its definition can be found in
<hurd/fs.defs>.  The parameters are: the port to queue the message on,
the passive flags, the active flags, the shutdown flags, an argz
describing the passive translator, the length of the passive translator,
a port right to the active translator's control port and, finally, how
to produce a send right from the given right.  Since we are only
interested in setting the active translator, we specify zero for the
passive and shutdown flags.  To set the active translator, we need to
set the FS_TRANS_SET bit.  This macro can be found in
<hurd/hurd_types.h>.  By looking there, we learn that it is defined as
four.  As we have already mentioned, the control port lives in the local
variable `right', thus, we can supply that directly.  By looking at how
diskfs_init_diskfs deallocates the right, we learn that `right' itself
must be a send right.  Thus, we must specify MACH_MSG_TYPE_SEND_COPY as
the last argument.  We also have to look up this constant; it is found
in <mach/message.h> and is defined as nineteen.

        (gdb) p err=file_set_translator (realnode, 0, 4, 0, "", 0, right, 19)
        $3 = 0

Since this call returned zero, we know we succeeded.   As a side effect,
we also set err to zero, which tmpfs thinks means fsys_startup was
successful.  We can confirm that /home/neal/tmp is now translated by
testing if operations on the node block.  Here we attempt to stat the
node:

        address@hidden:~ (0)$ ls -ld ~/tmp

Success!  We can now set other breakpoints or just continue the program
on its way.

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