HW3: xv6 system calls

In this homework you will modify xv6 to add a system call. You can use the same setup as for the HW2: Xv6 boot.

Part One: System call tracing

Your first task is to modify the xv6 kernel to print out a line for each system call invocation. It is enough to print the name of the system call and the return value; you don't need to print the system call arguments.

When you're done, you should see output like this when booting xv6:

...
fork -> 2
exec -> 0
open -> 3
close -> 0
$write -> 1
 write -> 1

That's init forking and execing sh, sh making sure only two file descriptors are open, and sh writing the $ prompt. (Note: the output of the shell and the system call trace are intermixed, because the shell uses the write syscall to print its output.)

Hint: modify the syscall() function in syscall.c.

Challenge (10% extra): print the system call arguments.

Part Two: ps system call

Your second task is to add a new system call to xv6. The main point of the exercise is for you to see some of the different pieces of the system call machinery.

Your new system call will get information about the processes running in the system and return it to the user program. Specifically, your new system call will have the following interface:

int getprocinfo(int pid, struct uproc *up);

You will have to define the struct uproc and implement the ps utility by querying the system about all processes in the system. You should create a user-level program that calls your getprocinfo system call; here's some source you should put in ps.c:

#include "types.h"
#include "user.h"

int
main(int argc, char *argv[])
{

  // your code to print the process information in any format you like...

  exit();
}

In order to make your new ps program available to run from the xv6 shell, add _ps to the UPROGS definition in Makefile.

Since both the kernel and user level code need the definition of the struct uproc structure, we can define in one of the header files visible at both levels. For example lets put it in "stat.h"

struct uproc {
    // your code to define pid, ppid, sz 
};

Your strategy for making the getprocinfo system call should be to clone all of the pieces of code that are specific to some existing system call, for example the "uptime" system call. You should grep for uptime in all the source files, using grep -n uptime *.[chS].

To define struct uproc look at how the same fields are defined in xv6's struct proc.

When you're done, typing ps to an xv6 shell prompt should print all processes running in the system and information about them.

In the HW3.txt file write down a few words of explanation for each of the files you had to modify in the process of creating your getprocinfo() system call.

Part 3: ptable locks

Question 1:Did you forget to acquire the process table ptable.lock?

Question 2:Explain how ptable.lock lock is used in xv6. Search through the source code and find all uses of ptable.lock. Most of them are straightforward, one interesting case is the use of ptable.lock is how it is used across context switch (to understand this case, read Section "Code: Scheduling" from Chapter 5 of the xv6 book.

vagrant@odin$ cd /vagrant/ics143a
vagrant@odin$ tar -czvf hw3.tgz xv6-public