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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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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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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Improve UML page fault handler by ptesarik

Description

Improve UML handling of segmentation faults in kernel mode. Although such page faults are generally caused by a kernel bug, it is annoying if they cause an infinite loop, or panic the kernel. More importantly, a robust implementation allows to write KUnit tests for various guard pages, preventing potential kernel self-protection regressions.

Goals

Convert the UML page fault handler to use oops_* helpers, go through a few review rounds and finally get my patch series merged in 6.14.

Resources

Wrong initial attempt: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20231215121431.680-1-petrtesarik@huaweicloud.com/T/

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Model checking the BPF verifier by shunghsiyu

Project Description

BPF verifier plays a crucial role in securing the system (though less so now that unprivileged BPF is disabled by default in both upstream and SLES), and bugs in the verifier has lead to privilege escalation vulnerabilities in the past (e.g. CVE-2021-3490).

One way to check whether the verifer has bugs to use model checking (a formal verification technique), in other words, build a abstract model of how the verifier operates, and then see if certain condition can occur (e.g. incorrect calculation during value tracking of registers) by giving both the model and condition to a solver.

For the solver I will be using the Z3 SMT solver to do the checking since it provide a Python binding that's relatively easy to use.

Goal for this Hackweek

Learn how to use the Z3 Python binding (i.e. Z3Py) to build a model of (part of) the BPF verifier, probably the part that's related to value tracking using tristate numbers (aka tnum), and then check that the algorithm work as intended.

Resources

• Formal Methods for the Informal Engineer: Tutorial #1 - The Z3 Theorem Prover and its accompanying notebook is a great introduction into Z3
  • Has a section specifically on model checking
• Software Verification and Analysis Using Z3 a great example of using Z3 for model checking
• Sound, Precise, and Fast Abstract Interpretation with Tristate Numbers - existing work that use formal verification to prove that the multiplication helper used for value tracking work as intended
• [PATCH v5 net-next 00/12] bpf: rewrite value tracking in verifier - initial patch set that adds tristate number to the verifier

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Remote control for Adam Audio active monitor speakers by dmach

Description

I own a pair of Adam Audio A7V active studio monitor speakers. They have ethernet connectors that allow changing their settings remotely using the A Control software. From Windows :-( I couldn't find any open source alternative for Linux besides AES70.js library.

Goals

• Create a command-line tool for controlling the speakers.
• Python is the language of choice.
• Implement only a simple tool with the desired functionality rather than a full coverage of AES70 standard.

TODO

• ✅ discover the device
• ❌ get device manufacturer and model
• ✅ get serial number
• ✅ get description
• ✅ set description
• ✅ set mute
• ✅ set sleep
• ✅ set input (XRL (balanced), RCA (unbalanced))
• ✅ set room adaptation
  • bass (1, 0, -1, -2)
  • desk (0, -1, -2)
  • presence (1, 0, -1)
  • treble (1, 0, -1)
• ✅ set voicing (Pure, UNR, Ext)
• ❌ the Ext voicing enables the following extended functionality:
  • gain
  • equalizer bands
  • on/off
  • type
  • freq
  • q
  • gain
• ❌ udev rules to sleep/wakeup the speakers together with the sound card

Resources

• https://www.adam-audio.com/en/a-series/a7v/
• https://www.adam-audio.com/en/technology/a-control-remote-software/
• https://github.com/DeutscheSoft/AES70.js
• https://www.aes.org/publications/standards/search.cfm?docID=101 - paid
• https://www.aes.org/standards/webinars/AESStandardsWebinarSC0212L20220531.pdf
• https://ocaalliance.github.io/downloads/AES143%20Network%20track%20NA10%20-%20AES70%20Controller.pdf

Result

• The code is available on GitHub: https://github.com/dmach/pacontrol

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Add a machine-readable output to dmidecode by jdelvare

Description

There have been repeated requests for a machine-friendly dmidecode output over the last decade. During Hack Week 19, 5 years ago, I prepared the code to support alternative output formats, but didn't have the time to go further. Last year, Jiri Hnidek from Red Hat Linux posted a proof-of-concept implementation to add JSON output support. This is a fairly large pull request which needs to be carefully reviewed and tested.

Goals

Review Jiri's work and provide constructive feedback. Merge the code if acceptable. Evaluate the costs and benefits of using a library such as json-c.

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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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FastFileCheck work by pstivanin

Description

FastFileCheck is a high-performance, multithreaded file integrity checker for Linux. Designed for speed and efficiency, it utilizes parallel processing and a lightweight database to quickly hash and verify large volumes of files, ensuring their integrity over time.

https://github.com/paolostivanin/FastFileCheck

Goals

• Release v1.0.0

Design overwiew:

• Main thread (producer): traverses directories and feeds the queue (one thread is more than enough for most use cases)
• Dedicated consumer thread: manages queue and distributes work to threadpool
• Worker threads: compute hashes in parallel

This separation of concerns is efficient because:

• Directory traversal is I/O bound and works well in a single thread
• Queue management is centralized, preventing race conditions
• Hash computation is CPU-intensive and properly parallelized

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ESETv2 Emulator / interpreter by m.crivellari

Description

ESETv2 is an intriguing challenge developed by ESET, available on their website under the "Challenge" menu. The challenge involves an "assembly-like" language and a Python compiler that generates .evm binary files.

This is an example using one of their samples (it prints N Fibonacci numbers):

.dataSize 0
.code

loadConst 0, r1 # first
loadConst 1, r2 # second

loadConst 1, r14 # loop helper

consoleRead r3

loop:
    jumpEqual end, r3, r15

    add r1, r2, r4
    mov r2, r1
    mov r4, r2

    consoleWrite r1

    sub r3, r14, r3
    jump loop
end:
hlt

This language also supports multi-threading. It includes instructions such as createThread to start a new thread, joinThread to wait until a thread completes, and lock/unlock to facilitate synchronization between threads.

Goals

• create a full interpreter able to run all the available samples provided by ESET.
• improve / optimize memory (eg. using bitfields where needed as well as avoid unnecessary memory allocations)

Resources

• Challenge URL: https://join.eset.com/en/challenges/core-software-engineer
• My github project: https://github.com/DispatchCode/eset_vm2 (not 100% complete)

Achivements

Project still not complete. Added lock / unlock instruction implementation but further debug is needed; there is a bug somewhere. Actually the code it works for almost all the examples in the samples folder. 1 of them is not yet runnable (due to a missing "write" opcode implementation), another will cause the bug to show up; still not investigated, anyhow.

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Testing and adding GNU/Linux distributions on Uyuni by juliogonzalezgil

Join the Gitter channel! https://gitter.im/uyuni-project/hackweek

Uyuni is a configuration and infrastructure management tool that saves you time and headaches when you have to manage and update tens, hundreds or even thousands of machines. It also manages configuration, can run audits, build image containers, monitor and much more!

Currently there are a few distributions that are completely untested on Uyuni or SUSE Manager (AFAIK) or just not tested since a long time, and could be interesting knowing how hard would be working with them and, if possible, fix whatever is broken.

For newcomers, the easiest distributions are those based on DEB or RPM packages. Distributions with other package formats are doable, but will require adapting the Python and Java code to be able to sync and analyze such packages (and if salt does not support those packages, it will need changes as well). So if you want a distribution with other packages, make sure you are comfortable handling such changes.

No developer experience? No worries! We had non-developers contributors in the past, and we are ready to help as long as you are willing to learn. If you don't want to code at all, you can also help us preparing the documentation after someone else has the initial code ready, or you could also help with testing :-)

The idea is testing Salt and Salt-ssh clients, but NOT traditional clients, which are deprecated.

To consider that a distribution has basic support, we should cover at least (points 3-6 are to be tested for both salt minions and salt ssh minions):

1. Reposync (this will require using spacewalk-common-channels and adding channels to the .ini file)
2. Onboarding (salt minion from UI, salt minion from bootstrap scritp, and salt-ssh minion) (this will probably require adding OS to the bootstrap repository creator)
3. Package management (install, remove, update...)
4. Patching
5. Applying any basic salt state (including a formula)
6. Salt remote commands
7. Bonus point: Java part for product identification, and monitoring enablement
8. Bonus point: sumaform enablement (https://github.com/uyuni-project/sumaform)
9. Bonus point: Documentation (https://github.com/uyuni-project/uyuni-docs)
10. Bonus point: testsuite enablement (https://github.com/uyuni-project/uyuni/tree/master/testsuite)

If something is breaking: we can try to fix it, but the main idea is research how supported it is right now. Beyond that it's up to each project member how much to hack :-)

• If you don't have knowledge about some of the steps: ask the team
• If you still don't know what to do: switch to another distribution and keep testing.

This card is for EVERYONE, not just developers. Seriously! We had people from other teams helping that were not developers, and added support for Debian and new SUSE Linux Enterprise and openSUSE Leap versions :-)

Pending

FUSS

FUSS is a complete GNU/Linux solution (server, client and desktop/standalone) based on Debian for managing an educational network.

https://fuss.bz.it/

Seems to be a Debian 12 derivative, so adding it could be quite easy.

• [W] Reposync (this will require using spacewalk-common-channels and adding channels to the .ini file)
• [W] Onboarding (salt minion from UI, salt minion from bootstrap script, and salt-ssh minion) (this will probably require adding OS to the bootstrap repository creator) --> Working for all 3 options (salt minion UI, salt minion bootstrap script and salt-ssh minion from the UI).
• [W] Package management (install, remove, update...) --> Installing a new package works, needs to test the rest.
• [I] Patching (if patch information is available, could require writing some code to parse it, but IIRC we have support for Ubuntu already). No patches detected. Do we support patches for Debian at all?
• [W] Applying any basic salt state (including a formula)
• [W] Salt remote commands
• [ ] Bonus point: Java part for product identification, and monitoring enablement

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Hack on isotest-ng - a rust port of isotovideo (os-autoinst aka testrunner of openQA) by szarate

Description

Some time ago, I managed to convince ByteOtter to hack something that resembles isotovideo but in Rust, not because I believe that Perl is dead, but more because there are certain limitations in the perl code (how it was written), and its always hard to add new functionalities when they are about implementing a new backend, or fixing bugs (Along with people complaining that Perl is dead, and that they don't like it)

In reality, I wanted to see if this could be done, and ByteOtter proved that it could be, while doing an amazing job at hacking a vnc console, and helping me understand better what RuPerl needs to work.

I plan to keep working on this for the next few years, and while I don't aim for feature completion or replacing isotovideo tih isotest-ng (name in progress), I do plan to be able to use it on a daily basis, using specialized tooling with interfaces, instead of reimplementing everything in the backend

Todo

• Add make targets for testability, e.g "spawn qemu and type"
• Add image search matching algorithm
• Add a Null test distribution provider
• Add a Perl Test Distribution Provider
• Fix unittests https://github.com/os-autoinst/isotest-ng/issues/5
• Research OpenTofu how to add new hypervisors/baremetal to OpenTofu
• Add an interface to openQA cli

Goals

• Implement at least one of the above, prepare proposals for GSoC
• Boot a system via it's BMC

Resources

See https://github.com/os-autoinst/isotest-ng

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Make more sense of openQA test results using AI by livdywan

Description

AI has the potential to help with something many of us spend a lot of time doing which is making sense of openQA logs when a job fails.

User Story

Allison Average has a puzzled look on their face while staring at log files that seem to make little sense. Is this a known issue, something completely new or maybe related to infrastructure changes?

Goals

• Leverage a chat interface to help Allison
• Create a model from scratch based on data from openQA
• Proof of concept for automated analysis of openQA test results

Bonus

• Use AI to suggest solutions to merge conflicts
  • This would need a merge conflict editor that can suggest solving the conflict
• Use image recognition for needles

Resources

• TensorFlow
• open-webui
• openQA instance of openSUSE
• openQA documentation

Timeline

Day 1

• Conversing with open-webui to teach me how to create a model based on openQA test results
  • Asking for example code using TensorFlow in Python
  • Discussing log files to explore what to analyze
  • Drafting a new project called Testimony (based on Implementing a containerized Python action) - the project name was also suggested by the assistant

Day 2

• Using NotebookLLM (Gemini) to produce conversational versions of blog posts
  • Writing openQA tests in Python
  • Developing in distrobox containers
• Researching the possibility of creating a project logo with AI
  • Asking open-webui, persons with prior experience and conducting a web search for advice

Highlights

• I briefly tested compared models to see if they would make me more productive. Between llama, gemma and mistral there was no amazing difference in the results for my case.
• Convincing the chat interface to produce code specific to my use case required very explicit instructions.
• Asking for advice on how to use open-webui itself better was frustratingly unfruitful both in trivial and more advanced regards.
• Documentation on source materials used by LLM's and tools for this purpose seems virtually non-existent - specifically if a logo can be generated based on particular licenses

Outcomes

• Chat interface-supported development is providing good starting points and open-webui being open source is more flexible than Gemini. Although currently some fancy features such as grounding and generated podcasts are missing.
• Allison still has to be very experienced with openQA to use a chat interface for test review. Publicly available system prompts would make that easier, though.

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Yearly Quality Engineering Ask me Anything - AMA for not-engineering by szarate

Goal

Get a closer look at how developers work on the Engineering team (R & D) of SUSE, and close the collaboration gap between GSI and Engineering

Why?

Santiago can go over different development workflows, and can do a deepdive into how Quality Engineering works (think of my QE Team, the advocates for your customers), The idea of this session is to help open the doors to opportunities for collaboration, and broaden our understanding of SUSE as a whole.

Objectives

• Give $audience a small window on how to get some questions answered either on the spot or within days of how some things at engineering are done
• Give Santiago Zarate from Quality Engineering a look into how $audience sees the engineering departments, and find out possibilities of further collaboration

How?

By running an "Ask me Anything" session, which is a format of a kind of open Q & A session, where participants ask the host multiple questions.

How to make it happen?

I'm happy to help joining a call or we can do it async (online/in person is more fun). Ping me over email-slack and lets make the magic happen!. Doesn't need to be during hackweek, but we gotta kickstart the idea during hackweek ;)

Rules

The rules are simple, the more questions the more fun it will be; while this will be only a window into engineering, it can also be the place to help all of us get to a similar level of understanding of the processes that are behind our respective areas of the organization.

Dynamics

The host will be monitoring the questions on some pre-agreed page, and try to answer to the best of their knowledge, if a question is too difficult or the host doesn't have the answer, he will do his best to provide an answer at a later date.

Atendees are encouraged to add questions beforehand; in the case there aren't any, we would be looking at how Quality Engineering tests new products or performs regression tests

Agenda

• Introduction of Santiago Zarate, Product Owner of Quality Engineering Core team
• Introduction of the Group/Team/Persons interested
• Ice breaker
• AMA time! Add your questions $PAGE
• Looking at QE Workflows: How is
  • A maintenance update being tested before being released to our customers
  • Products in development are tested before making it generally available
• Engineering Opportunity Board

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Drag Race - comparative performance testing for pull requests by balanza

Description

«Sophia, a backend developer, submitted a pull request with optimizations for a critical database query. Once she pushed her code, an automated load test ran, comparing her query against the main branch. Moments later, she saw a new comment automatically added to her PR: the comparison results showed reduced execution time and improved efficiency. Smiling, Sophia messaged her team, “Performance gains confirmed!”»

Goals

• To have a convenient and ergonomic framework to describe test scenarios, including environment and seed;
• to compare results from different tests
• to have a GitHub action that executes such tests on a CI environment

Resources

The MVP will be built on top of Preevy and K6.

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