Forking code support in ptrace(2)

I've finished all the planned tasks regarding fork(2), vfork(2), clone(2)/__clone(2), and posix_spawn(3) in the context of debuggers. There are no longer any known kernel issues for any of these calls. All of the calls are covered with ATF regression tests.[Read More] [0 comments]

 

Write your own fuzzer for NetBSD kernel! [Part 1]

This report was written by Maciej Grochowski as a part of developing the AFL+KCOV project.

How Fuzzing works? The dummy Fuzzer.

The easy way to describe fuzzing is to compare it to the process of unit testing a program, but with different input. This input can be random, or it can be generated in some way that makes it unexpected form standard execution perspective.

The simplest 'fuzzer' can be written in few lines of bash, by getting N bytes from /dev/rand, and putting them to the program as a parameter.

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Porting NetBSD to HummingBoard Pulse, Part 1

This report was written by Saurav Prakash as part of Google Summer of Code 2019.

My venture into the first phase of The Google Summer of Code is nearing an end. The experience was enriching in every dimension, and the learning exposure I was subjected to was genuinely worthwhile. Here is a brief report on the work I have performed during this coding period.

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Porting Wine to amd64 on NetBSD, first evaluation report

This report was written by Naveen Narayanan as part of Google Summer of Code 2019.

I have been working on porting Wine to amd64 on NetBSD as a GSoC 2019 project. Wine is a compatibility layer which allows running Microsoft Windows applications on POSIX-complaint operating systems. This report provides an overview of the progress of the project during the first coding period.

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GSoC 2019 Report: Adding NetBSD KNF to clang-format, Part 1

Prepared by Manikishan Ghantasala (shannu) as a part of Google Summer of Code 2019.

Greetings everyone, I am Manikishan an Undergraduate pursuing my Bachelors Degree in Computer Science from Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Amritapuri, Kerala, India. I have been very interested in working on the lower level development such as Operating Systems, Kernels, and Compilers. I have also worked on building a computer from scratch. The project is named From Nand To Tetris . It had helped me elevate my interest in the field of Operating Systems and to apply for this organization. I am very grateful to be a part of this program and also would like to thank the community and my mentors for granting me the opportunity and being supportive at all times.

Regarding the first evaluation, it has been quite interesting working on Add KNF (NetBSD style) in clang-format project. I love the NetBSD community and look forward to continue. It has helped me to learn a lot during this period. It has been challenging and amazing so far.

This is a blog post about the work I have done prior to the first evaluation period.

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Enhancing Syzkaller support for NetBSD, Part 1

Prepared by Siddharth Muralee(@R3x) as a part of Google Summer of Code 2019

As a part of Google Summer of Code 19, I am working on improving the support for Syzkaller kernel fuzzer. Syzkaller is an unsupervised coverage-guided kernel fuzzer, that supports a variety of operating systems including NetBSD. This report details the work done during the first coding period.

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Adapting TriforceAFL for NetBSD, Part 1

Prepared by Akul Pillai as part of GSoC 2019.

The first coding period of The Google Summer of Code has come to an end. It has been a great experience so far and I got the opportunity to learn a lot of new stuff. This is a report on the work I have during this coding period.

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XSAVE and compat32 kernel work for LLDB

Upstream describes LLDB as a next generation, high-performance debugger. It is built on top of LLVM/Clang toolchain, and features great integration with it. At the moment, it primarily supports debugging C, C++ and ObjC code, and there is interest in extending it to more languages.

In February, I have started working on LLDB, as contracted by the NetBSD Foundation. So far I've been working on reenabling continuous integration, squashing bugs, improving NetBSD core file support and lately extending NetBSD's ptrace interface to cover more register types. You can read more about that in my Apr 2019 report.

In May, I was primarily continuing the work on new ptrace interface. Besides that, I've found and fixed a bug in ptrace() compat32 code, pushed LLVM buildbot to ‘green’ status and found some upstream LLVM regressions. More below.

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NetBSD 8.1 available

NetBSD 8.1 is available!

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Validation and improvements of debugging interfaces

In the past month, I have introduced correctness and reliability of tracing processes in the kernel codebase.
I took part in BSDCan 2019 and during the event wrote a NetBSD version of truss, a ptrace(2)-powered syscall tracing utility from FreeBSD. I've finished the port after getting back home and published it to the NetBSD community. This work allowed me to validate the ptrace(2) interfaces in another application and catch new problems that affect every ptrace(2)-based debugger.[Read More] [0 comments]

 

NetBSD 8.1 Release Candidate 1

Nearly a year after the initial release of NetBSD 8.0, and lots of changes on the stable branch, a new release 8.1 is upcoming.

Binaries of the first (and most likely only) release candidate are available for testing.

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Improvements in forking, threading, and signal code

I am improving signaling code in the NetBSD kernel, covering corner cases with regression tests, and improving the documentation. I've been working at the level of sytems calls (syscalls): forking, threading, handling these with GDB, and tracing syscalls. Some work happens behind the scenes as I support the work of Michal Gorny on LLDB/ptrace(2) features.[Read More] [0 comments]