Investigate Milk-V Jupiter board (riscv64) by a_faerber

Description

On Monday of Hackweek 24 we received two Milk-V Jupiter mini-ITX boards (JUPITER_V1.1) via the RISC-V International devboards program. The Jupiter board uses a Spacemit M1 System-on-Chip (SoC).

The Banana Pi BPI-F3 board with related Spacemit K1 SoC had previously already been investigated by Marvin Friedrich.

Goals

Investigate the hardware, any shipping boot firmware and its ability to boot openSUSE Tumbleweed.

Resources

• Milk-V Jupiter product page
• Milk-V Jupiter docs

Progress

• On Monday Andreas purchased an ATX power supply, to power up the board.
• According to UART output (note there's two UART pinouts on the board), there appears to be an undocumented U-Boot bootloader in QSPI, in addition to the documented microSD, NVMe and eMMC boot methods.
• The on-board bootloader does not seem to support USB ("No working controllers found").
• Manually loading our GRUB from microSD (via load+bootefi commands from SPI-based U-Boot) works, but in GRUB loading our kernel fails ("error: ../../grub-core/loader/efi/linux.c:521:out of memory.").
• Marvin instead had success flashing a ready-made Bianbu OS image via titantools to microSD card (i.e., a different U-Boot on microSD), that he then modified to load openSUSE kernels instead.

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FizzBuzz OS by mssola

Project Description

FizzBuzz OS (or just fbos) is an idea I've had in order to better grasp the fundamentals of the low level of a RISC-V machine. In practice, I'd like to build a small Operating System kernel that is able to launch three processes: one that simply prints "Fizz", another that prints "Buzz", and the third which prints "FizzBuzz". These processes are unaware of each other and it's up to the kernel to schedule them by using the timer interrupts as given on openSBI (fizz on % 3 seconds, buzz on % 5 seconds, and fizzbuzz on % 15 seconds).

This kernel provides just one system call, write, which allows any program to pass the string to be written into stdout.

This project is free software and you can find it here.

Goal for this Hackweek

• Better understand the RISC-V SBI interface.
• Better understand RISC-V in privileged mode.
• Have fun.

Resources

• SBI v2.0 ratified specification
• Blog post on SBI
• mssola/fbos

Results

The project was a resounding success Lots of learning, and the initial target was met.

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Create openSUSE images for Arm/RISC-V boards by avicenzi

Project Description

Create openSUSE images (or test generic EFI images) for Arm and/or RISC-V boards that are not yet supported.

Goal for this Hackweek

Create bootable images of Tumbleweed for SBCs that currently have no images available or are untested.

Consider generic EFI images where possible, as some boards can hold a bootloader.

Document in the openSUSE Wiki how to flash and use the image for a given board.

Boards that I have around and there are no images:

• Rock 3B
• Nano PC T3 Plus
• Lichee RV D1
• StartFive VisionFive (has some image needs testing)

Hack Week 22

• NanoPC T4

Hack Week 21

• NanoPi M4B
• Radxa Zero

Resources

• https://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Arm
• https://en.opensuse.org/Portal:RISC-V

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Explore Microchip PIC64GX1000 Curiosity board (riscv64) by a_faerber

Description

The Microchip PIC64 family of RISC-V chipsets was announced this summer, with PIC64GX as first subfamily (with SiFive U54 CPU cores, same as Microchip PolarFire). Later families (PIC64-HPSC and PIC64HX) were announced to feature the long-awaited RISC-V Hypervisor Extension.

My pre-ordered PIC64GX1000 Curiosity board arrived the week before Hackweek 24.

Goals

I intend to investigate enabling openSUSE Tumbleweed riscv64 on this new chipset and board.

Resources

• Microchip Curiosity PIC64GX1000 Kit ES

Progress

• Created udev rules for Curiosity board's FTDI based debug UARTs on USB-C - UART B has output from HSS / OpenSBI, UART C has output from U-Boot and kernel
• Modified the image https://download.opensuse.org/ports/riscv/tumbleweed/images/openSUSE-Tumbleweed-RISC-V-JeOS-efi.riscv64-2024.11.10-Build1.13.raw.xz (20241118) with gdisk to prepend a bootloader partition (copying the binary bootloader from the vendor-supplied microSD, ignoring excess partition size) and added the microchip/pic64gx-curiosity-kit.dtb file to the EFI System Partition (again from the vendor-supplied microSD)
• This boots into Tumbleweed! with ttyS1 by default (UART C)

Stretch goals

Investigate also the Microchip PolarFire SoC Discovery board.

Progress

The Microchip PolarFire Icicle board and BeagleV-Fire board had previously already been enabled by Torsten Duwe.

• Additional udev rules needed to be created for its FTDI UART bridge chip.
• The board ships with a "FIR filter" demo pre-flashed, not exposing any bootloader, only some demo output on UART C. The board will need to be flashed with a Microchip reference design for Linux.
• The board has an on-board Flash Pro Express JTAG debugger on USB-C. Proprietary Programming and Debug tools software is available from Microchip to download, requiring an account. This should then be able to flash the .job file.
• An in-progress patchset for OpenOCD is available in Gerrit, not yet in the openSUSE package. Presumably OpenOCD would not support Microchip's .job file format.

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Tumbleweed on Mars-CM (RISC-V board) by ph03nix

RISC-V is awesome, Tumbleweed is awesome, chocolate cake is awesome. I'm planning to combine all of them in one project.

Project Description

I recently purchased a MILK-V Mars CM and managed to setup it up already using Debian Linux. My project for this Hackweek is to see how far I can get to run Tumbleweed on this compute module board.

Goal for this Hackweek

• Run Tumbleweed on the Compute Module

Resources

• http://milkv.io/mars-cm
• https://en.opensuse.org/HCL:VisionFive2

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Modernize ocfs2 by goldwynr

Ocfs2 has gone into a stage of neglect and disrepair. Modernize the code to generate enough interest.

Goals: * Change the mount sequence to use fscontext * Move from using bufferhead to bio/folios * Use iomap * Run it through xfstests

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early stage kdump support by mbrugger

Project Description

When we experience a early boot crash, we are not able to analyze the kernel dump, as user-space wasn't able to load the crash system. The idea is to make the crash system compiled into the host kernel (think of initramfs) so that we can create a kernel dump really early in the boot process.

Goal for the Hackweeks

1. Investigate if this is possible and the implications it would have (done in HW21)
2. Hack up a PoC (done in HW22 and HW23)
3. Prepare RFC series (giving it's only one week, we are entering wishful thinking territory here).

update HW23

• I was able to include the crash kernel into the kernel Image.
• I'll need to find a way to load that from init/main.c:start_kernel() probably after kcsan_init()
• I workaround for a smoke test was to hack kexec_file_load() systemcall which has two problems:
  1. My initramfs in the porduction kernel does not have a new enough kexec version, that's not a blocker but where the week ended
  2. As the crash kernel is part of init.data it will be already stale once I can call kexec_file_load() from user-space.

The solution is probably to rewrite the POC so that the invocation can be done from init.text (that's my theory) but I'm not sure if I can reuse the kexec infrastructure in the kernel from there, which I rely on heavily.

update HW24

• Day1
  • rebased on v6.12 with no problems others then me breaking the config
  • setting up a new compilation and qemu/virtme env
  • getting desperate as nothing works that used to work
• Day 2
  • getting to call the invocation of loading the early kernel from __init after kcsan_init()

• Day 3

  • fix problem of memdup not being able to alloc so much memory... use 64K page sizes for now
  • code refactoring
  • I'm now able to load the crash kernel
  • When using virtme I can boot into the crash kernel, also it doesn't boot completely (major milestone!), crash in elfcorehdr_read_notes()

• Day 4

  • crash systems crashes (no pun intended) in copy_old_mempage() link; will need to understand elfcorehdr...
  • call path vmcore_init() -> parse_crash_elf_headers() -> elfcorehdr_read() -> read_from_oldmem() -> copy_oldmem_page() -> copy_to_iter()

• Day 5

  • hacking arch/arm64/kernel/crash_dump.c:copy_old_mempage() to see if crash system really starts. It does.
  • fun fact: retested with more reserved memory and with UEFI FW, host kernel crashes in init but directly starts the crash kernel, so it works (somehow) \o/

• TODOs

  • fix elfcorehdr so that we actually can make use of all this...
  • test where in the boot __init() chain we can/should call kexec_early_dump()

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Create a DRM driver for VGA video cards by tdz

Yes, those VGA video cards. The goal of this project is to implement a DRM graphics driver for such devices. While actual hardware is hard to obtain or even run today, qemu emulates VGA output.

VGA has a number of limitations, which make this project interesting.

• There are only 640x480 pixels (or less) on the screen. That resolution is also a soft lower limit imposed by DRM. It's mostly a problem for desktop environments though.
• Desktop environments assume 16 million colors, but there are only 16 colors with VGA. VGA's 256 color palette is not available at 640x480. We can choose those 16 colors freely. The interesting part is how to choose them. We have to build a palette for the displayed frame and map each color to one of the palette's 16 entries. This is called dithering, and VGA's limitations are a good opportunity to learn about dithering algorithms.
• VGA has an interesting memory layout. Most graphics devices use linear framebuffers, which store the pixels byte by byte. VGA uses 4 bitplanes instead. Plane 0 holds all bits 0 of all pixels. Plane 1 holds all bits 1 of all pixels, and so on.

The driver will probably not be useful to many people. But, if finished, it can serve as test environment for low-level hardware. There's some interest in supporting old Amiga and Atari framebuffers in DRM. Those systems have similar limitations as VGA, but are harder to obtain and test with. With qemu, the VGA driver could fill this gap.

Apart from the Wikipedia entry, good resources on VGA are at osdev.net and FreeVGA

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Modularization and Modernization of cifs.ko for Enhanced SMB Protocol Support by hcarvalho

Creator:
Enzo Matsumiya ematsumiya@suse.de @ SUSE Samba team
Members:
Henrique Carvalho henrique.carvalho@suse.com @ SUSE Samba team

Description

Split cifs.ko in 2 separate modules; one for SMB 1.0 and 2.0.x, and another for SMB 2.1, 3.0, and 3.1.1.

Goals

Primary

Start phasing out/deprecation of older SMB versions

Secondary

• Clean up of the code (with focus on the newer versions)
• Update cifs-utils
• Update documentation
• Improve backport workflow (see below)

Technical details

Ideas for the implementation.

• fs/smb/client/{old,new}.c to generate the respective modules
  • Maybe don't create separate folders? (re-evaluate as things progresses!)
• Remove server->{ops,vals} if possible
• Clean up fs_context.* -- merge duplicate options into one, handle them in userspace utils
• Reduce code in smb2pdu.c -- tons of functions with very similar init/setup -> send/recv -> handle/free flow
• Restructure multichannel
  • Treat initial connection as "channel 0" regardless of multichannel enabled/negotiated status, proceed with extra channels accordingly
  • Extra channel just point to "channel 0" as the primary server, no need to allocate an extra TCPServerInfo for each one
• Authentication mechanisms
  • Modernize algorithms (references: himmelblau, IAKERB/Local KDC, SCRAM, oauth2 (Azure), etc.

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Contributing to Linux Kernel security by pperego

Description

A couple of weeks ago, I found this blog post by Gustavo Silva, a Linux Kernel contributor.

I always strived to start again into hacking the Linux Kernel, so I asked Coverity scan dashboard access and I want to contribute to Linux Kernel by fixing some minor issues.

I want also to create a Linux Kernel fuzzing lab using qemu and syzkaller

Goals

1. Fix at least 2 security bugs
2. Create the fuzzing lab and having it running

The story so far

• Day 1: setting up a virtual machine for kernel development using Tumbleweed. Reading a lot of documentation, taking confidence with Coverity dashboard and with procedures to submit a kernel patch
• Day 2: I read really a lot of documentation and I triaged some findings on Coverity SAST dashboard. I have to confirm that SAST tool are great false positives generator, even for low hanging fruits.
• Day 3: Working on trivial changes after I read this blog post: https://www.toblux.com/posts/2024/02/linux-kernel-patches.html. I have to take confidence with the patch preparation and submit process yet.
  • First trivial patch sent: using strtruefalse() macro instead of hard-coded strings in a staging driver for a lcd display
  • Fix for a dereference before null check issue discovered by Coverity (CID 1601566) https://scan7.scan.coverity.com/#/project-view/52110/11354?selectedIssue=1601566
• Day 4: Triaging more issues found by Coverity.
  • The patch for CID 1601566 was refused. The check against the NULL pointer was pointless so I prepared a version 2 of the patch removing the check.
  • Fixed another dereference before NULL check in iwlmvmparsewowlaninfo_notif() routine (CID 1601547). This one was already submitted by another kernel hacker :(
• Day 5: Wrapping up. I had to do some minor rework on patch for CID 1601566. I found a stalker bothering me in private emails and people I interacted with me, advised he is a well known bothering person. Markus Elfring for the record.

• Wrapping up: being back doing kernel hacking is amazing and I don't want to stop it. My battery pack is completely drained but changing the scope gave me a great twist and I really want to feel this energy not doing a single task for months.

  I failed in setting up a fuzzing lab but I was too optimistic for the patch submission process.

The patches

1

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YQPkg - Bringing the Single Package Selection Back to Life by shundhammer

tl;dr

Rip out the high-level YQPackageSelector widget from YaST and make it a standalone Qt program without any YaST dependencies.

See section "Result" at the bottom for the current status after the hack week.

Current Status

See the development status issue at the GitHub repo.

tl;dr: It's usable now with all the key features.

It does real package installation / removal / update with reasonable user feedback.

The Past and the Present

We used to have and still have a powerful software selection with the YaST sw_single module (and the YaST patterns counterpart): You can select software down to the package level, you can easily select one of many available package versions, you can select entire patterns - or just view them and pick individual packages from patterns.

You can search packages based on name, description, "requires" or "provides" level, and many more things.

The Future

YaST is on its way out, to be replaced by the new Agama installer and Cockpit for system administration. Those tools can do many things, but fine-grained package selection is not among them. And there are also no other Open Source tools available for that purpose that even come close to the YaST package selection.

Many aspects of YaST have become obsolete over the years; many subsystems now come with a good default configuration, or they can configure themselves automatically. Just think about sound or X11 configuration; when did you last need to touch them?

For others, the desktops bring their own tools (e.g. printers), or there are FOSS configuration tools (NetworkManager, BlueMan). Most YaST modules are no longer needed, and for many others there is a replacement in tools like Cockpit.

But no longer having a powerful fine-grained package selection like in YaST sw_single will hurt. Big time. At least until there is an adequate replacement, many users will want to keep it.

The Idea

YaST sw_single always revolved around a powerful high-level widget on the abstract UI level. Libyui has low-level widgets like YPushButton, YCheckBox, YInputField, more advanced ones like YTable, YTree; and some few very high-level ones like YPackageSelector and YPatternSelector that do the whole package selection thing alone, working just on the libzypp level and changing the status of packages or patterns there.

For the YaST Qt UI, the YQPackageSelector / YQPatternSelector widgets work purely on the Qt and libzypp level; no other YaST infrastructure involved, in particular no Ruby (or formerly YCP) interpreter, no libyui-level widgets, no bindings between Qt / C++ and Ruby / YaST-core, nothing. So it's not too hard to rip all that part out of YaST and create a standalone program from it.

For the NCurses UI, the NCPackageSelector / NCPatternSelector create a lot of libyui widgets (inheriting YWidget / NCWidget) and use a lot of libyui calls to glue them together; and all that of course still needs a lot of YaST / libyui / libyui-ncurses infrastructure. So NCurses is out of scope here.

Preparatory Work: Initializing the Package Subsystem

To see if this is feasible at all, the existing UI examples needed some fixing to check what is needed on that level. That was the make-or-break decision: Would it be realistically possible to set the needed environment in libzypp up (without being stranded in the middle of that task alone at the end of the hack week)?

Yes, it is: That part is already working:

https://github.com/yast/yast-ycp-ui-bindings/pull/71

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Port some classic game to Linux by MDoucha

Let's pick some old classic game, reverse engineer the data formats and game rules and write an open source engine for it from scratch. Some games from 1990s are simple enough that we could have a playable prototype by the end of the week.

Write which games you'd like to hack on in the comments. Don't forget to check e.g. on Open Source Game Clones, Github and SourceForge whether the game is ported already.

Hack Week 24 - Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares & Chaos Overlords

Work on Master of Orion II continues but we can hack more than one game. Chaos Overlords is a dystopian, lighthearted, cyberpunk turn-based strategy game originally released in 1996 for Windows 95 and Mac OS. The player takes on the role of a Chaos Overlord, attempting to control a city. Gameplay involves hiring mercenary gangs and deploying them on an 8-by-8 grid of city sectors to generate income, occupy sectors and take over the city.

How to ~~install & play~~ observe the decompilation progress:

• Clone the Git repository
• A playable reimplementation does not exist yet, but when it does, it will be linked in the repository mentioned above.

Further work needed:

• Analyze the remaining unknown data structures, most of which are related to the AI.
• Decompile the AI completely. The strong AI is part of the appeal of the game. It cannot be left out.
• Reimplement the game.

Hack Week 20, 21, 22 & 23 - Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares

Master of Orion II is one of the greatest turn-based 4X games of the 1990s. Explore the galaxy, colonize planets, research new technologies, fight space monsters and alien empires and in the end, become the ruler of the galaxy one way or another.

How to install & play:

• Clone the Git repository
• Run ./bootstrap; ./configure; make && make install
• Copy all *.LBX files from the original Master of Orion II to the installation data directory (/usr/local/share/openorion2 by default)
• Run openorion2

Further work needed:

• Analyze the rest of the original savegame format and a few remaining data files.
• Implement most of the game. The open source engine currently supports only loading saved games from the original version and viewing the galaxy map, fleet management and list of known planets.

Hack Week 19 - Signus: The Artifact Wars

Signus is a Czech turn-based strategy game similar to Panzer General or Battle Isle series. Originally published in 1998 and open-sourced by the original developers in 2003.

How to install & play:

• Clone the Git repository
• Run ./bootstrap; ./configure; make && make install in both signus and signus-data directories.
• Run signus

Further work needed:

• Create openSUSE package
• Implement full support for original game data (the open source version uses slightly different data file contents but original game data can be converted using a script).

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New KDE Plasma notification app/applet by apappas

Description

My memory is terrible so I depend a lot on notifications to carry me through the workday. As a plasma user I am ok with the current applet, but I don't love it. It is too small for the centrality it has in my day. Also I dislike how you can not go back to notifications you have dismissed

Goals

Develop a plasma app that * must gather notifications without disrupting the existing notification app * must offer the ablity to refer to dismissed/archived/seen notification up to some defined point in the past * must allow deletion of notifications

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