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liminix-fork/THOUGHTS.txt
Daniel Barlow e0bd64b80f week source
2023-03-28 16:14:00 +01:00

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Thu Sep 22 00:12:42 BST 2022
Making quite reasonable progress, though only running under emulation.
Since almost everything so far has been a recap of nixwrt, that's to
be expected.
The example config starts some services at boot, or at least attempts
to. Next we shoud
- add some network config to run-qemu
- implement udhcp and odhcp properly to write outputs
and create resolv.conf and all that
- write some kind of test so we can refactor the crap
- not let the tests write random junk everywhere
Thu Sep 22 12:46:36 BST 2022
We can store outputs in the s6 scan directory, it seems:
> There is, however, a guarantee that s6-supervise will never touch subdirectories named data or env. So if you need to store user information in the service directory with the guarantee that it will never be mistaken for a configuration file, no matter the version of s6, you should store that information in the data or env subdirectories of the service directory.
https://skarnet.org/software/s6/servicedir.html
> process 'store/pj0b27l5728cypa5mmagz0q8ibzpik0h-execline-mips-unknown-linux-musl-2.9.0.1-bin/bin/execlineb' started with executable stack
https://skarnet.org/lists/skaware/1550.html
Thu Sep 22 16:14:49 BST 2022
what network peers do we want to model for testing?
- wan: pppoe
- wan: ip over ethernet, w/ dhcp service provided
- wan: l2tp over (ip over ethernet, w/ dhcp service provided)
- lan: something with a dhcp client
https://accel-ppp.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ could use this for testing
pppoe and l2tp?
Thu Sep 22 22:57:47 BST 2022
To build a nixos vm with accel-ppp installed (not yet configured)
nix-build '<nixpkgs/nixos>' -A vm -I nixos-config=./tests/ppp-server-configuration.nix -o ppp-server
QEMU_OPTS="-display none -serial mon:stdio -nographic" ./ppp-server/bin/run-nixos-vm
To test it's configured I thought I'd run it against an OpenWrt qemu
install, so, fun with qemu networking ensues. This config in ../openwrt-qemu
is using two multicast socket networks -
nix-shell -p qemu --run "./run.sh ./openwrt-22.03.0-x86-64-generic-kernel.bin openwrt-22.03.0-x86-64-generic-ext4-rootfs.img "
so hopefully we can spin up other VMs connected either to its lan or
its wan: *however* we do first need to configure its wan to use pppoe
uci set network.wan=interface
uci set network.wan.device='eth1'
uci set network.wan.proto='pppoe'
uci set network.wan.username='db123@a.1'
uci set network.wan.password='NotReallyTheSecret'
(it's ext4 so this will probably stick)
Fri Sep 23 10:27:22 BST 2022
* mcast=230.0.0.1:1234 : access (interconnect between router and isp)
* mcast=230.0.0.1:1235 : lan
* mcast=230.0.0.1:1236 : world (the internet)
Sun Sep 25 20:56:28 BST 2022
TODO - bugs, missing bits, other infelicities as they occur to me:
DONE 1) shutdown doesn't work as its using the busybox one not s6.
2) perhaps we shouldn't have process-based services like dhcp, ppp
implement "address provider interface" - instead have a separate
service for interface address that depends on the service and uses its
output
* ppp is not like dhcp because dhcp finds addresses for an existing
interface but ppp makes a new one
3) when I killed ppp it restarted, but I don't think it reran
defaultroute which is supposed to depend on it. (Might be important
e.g. if we'd been assigned a different IP address). Investigate
semantics of s6-rc service dependencies
DONE 4) make the pppoe test run unattended
5) write a test for udhcp
6) squashfs size is ~ 14MB for a configuration with not much in it,
look for obvious wastes of space
7) some of the pppoe config should be moved into a ppp service
8) some of configuration.nix (e.g. defining routes) should be moved into
tools
DONE 9) split tools up instead of having it all one file
10) is it OK to depend on squashfs pseudofiles if we might want to
switch to ubifs? will there always be a squashfs underneath? might
we want to change the pseudofiles in an overlay?
11) haven't done (overlayfs) overlays at all
12) overlay.nix needs splitting up
13) upgrade ppp to something with an ipv6-up-script option
14) add ipv6 support generally
15) "ip address add" seems to magically recognise v4 vs v6 but
is that specified or fluke?
16) tighten up the module specs. (DONE) services.foo should be a s6-rc
service, (DONE) kernel config should be checked in some way
DONE 17) rename nixwrt references in kernel builder
18) maybe stop suffixing all the service names with .service
19) syslogd - use busybox or s6?
chat -s -S ogin:--ogin: root / "ip address show dev ppp0 | grep ppp0" 192.168.100.1 "/nix/store/*-s6-linux-init-*/bin/s6-linux-init-hpr -p"
Working towards a general goal of having a derivation we can
usefully run `nix path-info` on - or some other tool that will
tell us what's making the images big. The squashfs doesn't
have this information.
Towards that end (really? can't remember how ...) what would be a
way for packages to declare "I want to add files to /etc"? Is that
even a good idea?
Thinking we should turn s6-init-files back into a real derivation.
Tue Sep 27 00:31:45 BST 2022
> Thinking we should turn s6-init-files back into a real derivation.
This turns out to be Not That Simple, because it contains weird shit
(sticky bits and fifos).
Tue Sep 27 09:50:44 BST 2022
* allow modules to register activation scripts that are run on the
root filesystem once all packages are installed
- do they run on build or on host? if we're upgrading in place
how do we ship filesystem changes to the host?
or:
* allow modules to declare environment.*, use pseudofile on build and
create real files on host. will need to keep the implementation on
host faily simple because restricted environment
Tue Sep 27 16:14:18 BST 2022
TODO list is getting both longer and shorter, though longer on
average.
2) perhaps we shouldn't use process-based services like [ou]dhcp as
queryable endpoint for interface addresses (e.g. when adding routes).
Instead have a separate service for interface address that depends on
the *dhcp and uses its output
3) when I killed ppp it restarted, but I don't think it reran
defaultroute which is supposed to depend on it. (Might be important
e.g. if we'd been assigned a different IP address). Investigate
semantics of s6-rc service dependencies
4) figure out a nice way to fit ppp into this model as it actually
creates the interface instead of using an existing unconfigured one
5) write a test for udhcp
7) some of the pppoe config should be moved into a ppp service
11) haven't done (overlayfs) overlays at all
13) upgrade ppp to something with an ipv6-up-script option, move ppp and pppoe derivations into their own files
14) add ipv6 support generally
15) "ip address add" seems to magically recognise v4 vs v6 but
is that specified or fluke?
19) ship logs somehow to log collection system
21) dhcp, dns, hostap service for lan
22) support real hardware
Tue Sep 27 22:00:36 BST 2022
Found the cause of huge image size: rp-pppoe ships with scripts that
reference build-time packages, so we have x86-64 glibc in there
We don't need syslog just to accommodate ppp, there's an underdocumented
option for it to log to a file descriptor
Wed Sep 28 16:04:02 BST 2022
Based on https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/431953 if we can forge
ethernet packets we might be able to write tests for e.g. "is the vm
running a dhcp server"
Wed Sep 28 21:29:05 BST 2022
We can use Python "scapy" to generate dhcp request packets, and Python
'socket' model to send them encapsulated in UDP. Win
It's extremely janky python
Thu Sep 29 15:24:37 BST 2022
Two points to ponder
1) where service config depends on outputs of other services, we
do that rather ugly "$(cat ${output ....})" construct. Can we improve on
that? Maybe we could have some kind of tooling to read them as environment
variables ...
2) we have given no consideration yet to secrets. we want the secrets to
be not in the store; we want some way of refreshing them when they change
Sat Oct 1 14:24:21 BST 2022
The MAC80211_HWSIM kernel config creates virtual wlan[01] devices
which hostapd will work with, and a hwsim0 which we can use to monitor
(though not inject) trafic. Could we use this for wifi tests? How do
we make the guest hwsim0 visible to the host?
Sat Oct 1 18:41:31 BST 2022
virtual serial ports: I struggled with qemu for ages to get this to work.
You also need the unhelpfully named CONFIG_VIRTIO_CONSOLE option in
kconfig
QEMU_OPTIONS="-nodefaults -chardev socket,path=/tmp/wlan,server=on,wait=off,id=wlan -device virtio-serial-pci -device virtserialport,name=wlan,chardev=wlan"
Sun Oct 2 09:34:48 BST 2022
We could implement the secrets store as a service, then the secrets
are outputs.
Things we can do in qemu
1) make interface address service that depends on dhcp, instead of
being set by it directly
2) check out restart behaviour of dependent services when depended-on
service dies
3) pppd _creates_ an interface, work out how to fit it into this model
5) add bridge support for lan
8) upgrade ppp to something with an ipv6-up-script option, move ppp and pppoe derivations into their own files
9) get ipv6 address from pppoe
10) get ipv6 delegation from pppoe and add prefix to lan
11) support dhcp6 in dnsmasq, and advertise prefix on lan
12) firewalling and nat
- default deny or zero trust?
14) write secrets holder as a service with outputs
20) should we check that references to outputs actually correspond with
those provided by a service
Things we probably do on hardware
6) writable filesystem (ubifs?)
7) overlay with squashfs/ubifs - useful? think about workflows for
how this thing is installed
16) gl-ar750
17) mediatek device - gl-mt300 or whatever I have lying around
18) some kind of arm (banana pi router?)
19) should we give routeros a hardware ethernet and maybe an l2tp upstream,
then we could dogfood the hardware devices. we could run an l2tp service
at mythic-beasts, got a /48 there
https://skarnet.org/software/s6/s6-fghack.html looks like a handy thing
we hope we'll never have to use
Sun Oct 2 22:22:17 BST 2022
> make interface address service that depends on dhcp, instead of being set by it directly
We can do this for dhcp, but we can't do it for ppp. Running the ppp service
creates a ppp[012n] interface and assigns it an ipv4 address and there's not
a whole lot we can easily do to unbundle that.
So
- the ppp service needs to behave as if it were a "link" service
- either it *also* needs to behave as an address service, or we could
have an address service that subscribes to it and does nothing other than
translate output formats
Note regarding that second bullet: at the moment the static address
service has no outputs anyway!
Tue Oct 4 22:43:02 BST 2022
While trying to make the TFTP workflow not awful I seem to have written
a TFTP server.
Thu Oct 6 19:26:40 BST 2022
We have a booting kernel on gl-ar750, but we aren't at a point that it can
find a root filesystem
I'd *like* to be able to use the same delivery mechanism (kernel uimage
concatenated monolithic
Sat Oct 8 11:12:09 BST 2022
We have it booting on hardware, mounting root fs, running getty :-)
For NixWRT TFTP boots we used a single image with both kernel and squashfs, and
relied on CONFIG_MTD_SPLIT_FIRMWARE to identify where the boundary was and create
/dev/mdtn devices at the right offsets so that the kernel could find the
squashfs
For Liminix we're not going to do that.
* CONFIG_MTD_SPLIT_FIRMWARE is only available in OpenWrt patches
* it's an uncomfortable level of automagic just to save us doing two TFTPs
instea of one
* the generated image is anyway not the one we'd write to flash (has unneeded
PHRAM support)
* it means we need to memmap out enough ram for the whole image inc kernel when really
all we need to reserve is the rootfs bit
Sat Oct 8 11:23:08 BST 2022
"halt" and "reboot" don't work on gl-ar750
Sat Oct 8 13:10:00 BST 2022
Where do we go with this ar750?
- wired networking
- wifi
Sun Oct 9 09:57:35 BST 2022
We want to be able to package kernel modules as regular derivations, so that
they get added to the filesystem
This means they need access to kernel.modulesupport
This means kernel.modulesupport needs to be in pkgs too?
This is fine, probably, but we'd like to avoid closing over vmlinux because
there's no need for it to be in the filesystem
Mon Oct 10 22:57:23 BST 2022
The problem is that kernel kconfig options are manipulated in the
liminix modules, which means that data must be (transitively) available
to modules, so they can't be regular packages as they're tied so tightly
to the exact config. Unless we define a second overlay that references
the configuration object, but my head hurts when I start to think about that
so maybe not.
Tue Oct 11 00:00:13 BST 2022
Building ag71xx (ethernet driver) as a module doesn't work because
it references a symbol ath79_pll_base in the kernel that hasn't been
marked with EXPORT_SYMBOL.
We could forge an object file that "declares" it with a gross and disgusting hack like this
$ echo > empty # not actually "empty", objcopy complains about that
$ grep ath79_pll_base /nix/store/jcc114cd13xa8aa4mil35rlnmxnlmv09-vmlinux-mips-unknown-linux-musl-modulesupport/System.map
ffffffff807b2094 B ath79_pll_base
$ mips-unknown-linux-musl-objcopy -I binary -O elf32-big --add-section .bss=empty --add-symbol ath79_pll_base=.bss:0x807b2094 empty f.o
I don't claim this is a good idea, just an idea. Thought was that we would not
have to declare its type this way. Also it might not work with kaslr
https://stackoverflow.com/a/68903503
Backstory: why are we trying to build this as a module? because the
openwrt fork of it seems to be a bit more advanced than the mainline,
and I *suspect* that the mainline version doesn't work with our
openwrt-based device tree which ahs the mdio as a nested node inside
the ag71xx node - in mainline the driver seems to have all the mdio
stuff inline. So, could we build the openwrt driver without patching
the crap out of our kernel
Sun Oct 16 15:25:33 BST 2022
Executive decision: let's use the openwrt kernel (at least for
gl-ar750). Mainline kernel doesn’t have devicetree support for this
device or the SoC it’s based on, and the OpenWrt dts for it doesn’t
have the same "compatible"s, which makes me think that an indefinite
amount of patching will be necessary to make dts/modules for one of
them work with a kernel for the other
As a result: now we have eth0 appearing, but not eth1? Guessing we
need to add some kconfig for the switch
Mon Oct 17 21:23:37 BST 2022
we are spending ridiculous amounts of cpu/io time copying kernel source
trees from place to place, because we have kernel tree preparation
and actual building as two separate derivations.
I think the answer is to have a generic kernel build derivation
in the overlay, and then have the device overlays override it with
an additional phase to do openwrt patching or whatever else they
need to do.
Tue Oct 18 23:02:43 BST 2022
* previous TODO list is Aug 02, need to review
* dts is hardcoded to gl-ar750, that needs cleaning up
* figure out persistent addresses for ethernet
* fix halt/reboot
* "link" services have a "device" attribute, would much rather
have everything referenced using outputs than having two
different mechanisms for reading similar things
* Kconfig.local do we still need it?
* check all config instead of differentiating config/checkedConfig
Sun Feb 5 18:14:02 GMT 2023
We have resumed.
commit eb4efab6a215bf03cf5aab10d4ac909e83e9c148
Author: Daniel Barlow <dan@telent.net>
Date: Sat Jan 28 23:18:28 2023 +0000
* find out what works
* add that stuff to hydra
* fix the rest
* add that stuff to hydra
* convert to flake
* check if routeros can be run interactively
* some per-device docs in a form that can be transcluded for website
ci builds
* each of the tests has hardcoded device/config/etc
* build an "empty" configuration for each target device
* build an unstable configuration for qemu
Wed Feb 8 16:52:22 GMT 2023
We have hydra builds for all the previously-working devices, though we
don't yet know if any of those builds actually boots or does anything
useful.
[DONE] Would be nice to clean up the run-qemu and connect-qemu scripts
and put them in the buildEnv
Some thought needed about how to hook up the gl-ar750 to the internets,
ideally in a way that mirrors typical real uses. AAISP have an L2TP
service, but I would prefer to use pppoe on the device, so how to
translate one to t'other on an intermediary/gateway machine?
https://www.rfc-archive.org/getrfc.php?rfc=3817#gsc.tab=0 exists
as an RFC but I can't find anything that actually implements it
Actual Documentation (e.g. user and developer manuals) should live in
the liminix repo so it corresponds with the code, and can be rsynced
from there to the web site, maybe with a deploy hook or something.
Haven't decided what a good doc format is yet
If we create a flake for Hydra to run on, that _more or less_ means we
don't have any manual hydra jobset configuration to document.
There are still some tests that need adding to CI
[DONE] Should the per-device config be a module not an overlay? Given that
half of what's in it is kernel config (a module could set this)
and the rest is source tarball download specs (needs nixpkgs,
a module has this and could set it too) I wonder why it isn't already
[ALREADY DOES] Can we make Hydra report output sizes so we can plot closure size
trends and see if it all goes awful?
Thu Feb 9 08:14:39 GMT 2023
For better developer experience, I am thinking that either (1)
swap tasks 2 and 3 (writable filesystem before module system)
or (2) add NBD support so I can iterate on a real device without
full rebuilds every time
Fri Feb 10 06:18:25 PM GMT 2023
did the overlay->module thing
[DONE] Need to fix all the configuration around PHRAM, I can't see how it
would ever work
Sat Feb 11 14:37:45 GMT 2023
Consolidated TODO
* figure out persistent addresses for ethernet (?)
[SEEMS DONE] * fix halt/reboot
[DONE, NO] * Kconfig.local do we still need it?
[DONE] * check all config instead of differentiating config/checkedConfig
Things we can do in qemu
* "link" services have a "device" attribute, would much rather
have everything referenced using outputs than having two
different mechanisms for reading similar things
1) make interface address service that depends on dhcp, instead of
being set by it directly
2) check out restart behaviour of dependent services when depended-on
service dies
3) pppd _creates_ an interface, work out how to fit it into this model
5) add bridge support for lan
8) upgrade ppp to something with an ipv6-up-script option, move ppp and pppoe derivations into their own files
9) get ipv6 address from pppoe
10) get ipv6 delegation from pppoe and add prefix to lan
11) support dhcp6 in dnsmasq, and advertise prefix on lan
12) firewalling and nat
- default deny or zero trust?
14) write secrets holder as a service with outputs
20) should we check that references to outputs actually correspond with
those provided by a service
* Actual Documentation (e.g. user and developer manuals)
* make a flake
* There are still some tests that need adding to CI
Things we probably do on hardware
[DONE] * dts is hardcoded to gl-ar750, that needs cleaning up
6) writable filesystem (ubifs?)
7) overlay with squashfs/ubifs - useful? think about workflows for
how this thing is installed
16) gl-ar750
[DONE] * decide how to hook up the gl-ar750 to the internets
17) mediatek device - gl-mt300 or whatever I have lying around
18) some kind of arm (banana pi router?)
[DONE DIFERENTLY] 19) should we give routeros a hardware ethernet and maybe an l2tp upstream,
then we could dogfood the hardware devices. we could run an l2tp service
at mythic-beasts, got a /48 there
Sat Feb 11 15:57:31 GMT 2023
The reason we would like to run PPPoE instead of L2TP on the "rotuer" device is
- closer to real world scenario
- means no need to run dhcp client on the wan interface before we
even get to start the l2tpd
Sun Feb 12 14:57:28 GMT 2023
https://github.com/katalix/go-l2tp#kpppoed
Mon Feb 13 04:44:09 PM GMT 2023
if the gl-ar750 is connected to an ethernet card that linux is ignoring,
we're going to have to set up _some_ qemu thing just to run tftp from.
Tue Feb 14 17:59:34 GMT 2023
We should do a derivation that creates an ISO image and a qemu shell
script based on a configuration.nix, and put it in buildEnv. We'll
call it "borderNetVm" :
> A broadband remote access server (BRAS, B-RAS or BBRAS) routes
traffic to and from broadband remote access devices such as digital
subscriber line access multiplexers (DSLAM) on an Internet service
provider's (ISP) network.[1][2] BRAS can also be referred to as a
broadband network gateway or border network gateway (BNG).[3]
(for consistency we should rename the "access" qemu socket network to
match whatever we call this)
rm border.qcow2 ; nix-shell --argstr liminix `pwd` --argstr nixpkgs `pwd`/../nixpkgs --argstr unstable `pwd`/../unstable-nixpkgs/ ci.nix -A buildEnv --run "run-border-vm"
Wed Feb 15 22:56:59 GMT 2023
configuration for border vm needs to come from somewhere so it's good
for more people than just me
- pci device for setting up the ethernet
- lns address
- uid so it can do 9p shares? do we need to map things here?
also need to document the host-side bits so that people can set up
their spare ethernet as vfio
next step for hacking is to figure out what I was doing with pppoe
Wed Feb 15 22:59:56 GMT 2023
docs ...
* introduction
* user guide
** how to build it
** how to flash it on your device
** what to put in configuration.nix
** modules
* developer guide
** building/running with qemu
*** emulated upstream
** building/running on hardware
*** run in place with TFTP
*** emulated upstream
** CI
** Roadmap
** Contributing
nix-shell -p sphinx --run "make -C doc html"
https://francis.begyn.be/blog/nixos-home-router contains information about avahi reflector
Fri Feb 17 00:09:34 GMT 2023
29 11.282085831 81.187.76.242 → 8.8.8.8 ICMP 106 Echo (ping) request id=0x0187, seq=2/512, 4
30 11.286314642 90.155.53.19 → 81.187.76.242 ICMP 78 Destination unreachable (Communication admin)
We're getting packets over the pppoe-l2tp relay thing. Just have to
work out now why we're not routing
Fri Feb 17 16:54:41 GMT 2023
Haha. We weren't routing because we'd used the wrong CHAP password
Fri Feb 17 16:58:27 GMT 2023
This TODO is for nlnet task 1 and for bits of subsequent tasks that
are annoying enough that I might poke at them anyway:
1) gl-ar750, why do we get "ag71xx 19000000.eth: invalid MAC address, using random address"
2) gl-ar750, wifi
3) document services so I can remember how they work. Refer back to Oct 18 for notes that no longer make sense
4) check out restart behaviour of dependent services when depended-on service dies
5) pppd _creates_ an interface, work out how to fit it into this model
6) add bridge support for lan
7) upgrade ppp to something with an ipv6-up-script option, move ppp and pppoe derivations into their own files
8) get ipv6 address from pppoe
9) get ipv6 delegation from pppoe and add prefix to lan
10) support dhcp6 in dnsmasq, and advertise prefix on lan
11) firewalling and nat - default deny or zero trust?
13) should we check that references to outputs actually correspond with
14) make a flake?
15) see if there are other tests that need adding to CI
15a) is bordervm derivation tested?
18) gl-mt300a
19) gl-mt300n-v2
20) publish the manual using CI
12) write secrets holder as a service with outputs
16) writable filesystem (ubifs?)
17) overlay with squashfs/ubifs - useful? think about workflows for how this thing is installed
I could plug tninkpad into the gl-ar750 LAN port to dogfood the wired
networking
Sat Feb 18 14:26:45 GMT 2023
Apparently we're not currently doing anything special with busybox,
just using the default nixos build with the default applets.
We'd like to be able to say in modules which applets they need,
so that we build all necessary applets but don't waste any space.
But we don't want to build a busybox for each module because that
would be a big waste of space.
One option:
- add busybox configuration to `config` so that modules can maul it
- add a busybox module that builds it with union of all config and
adds link in /bin
- make everything else look in /bin instead of referencing pkgs.busybox
It would be good if services could assert somehow that their required
config is present
Sat Feb 18 23:45:13 GMT 2023
# lsmod
cd /lib/modules/mac80211
insmod ./compat/compat.ko
insmod ./net/wireless/cfg80211.ko
insmod ./net/mac80211/mac80211.ko
insmod ./drivers/net/wireless/ath/ath.ko
insmod ./drivers/net/wireless/ath/ath9k/ath9k_hw.ko
insmod ./drivers/net/wireless/ath/ath9k/ath9k_common.ko
insmod ./drivers/net/wireless/ath/ath9k/ath9k.ko
insmod ./drivers/net/wireless/ath/ath10k/ath10k_core.ko
insmod ./drivers/net/wireless/ath/ath10k/ath10k_pci.ko
[21.344930] ath9k 18100000.wmac: failed to load calibration data from mtd device
[21.352728] ath: phy0: parsing configuration from OF node
[21.362576] ath: phy0: serialize_regmode is 0
[21.367092] ath: phy0: UNDEFINED -> AWAKE
[21.372051] ath: phy0: Trying EEPROM access at Address 0x03ff
[21.377999] ath: phy0: Trying EEPROM access at Address 0x0fff
[21.383940] ath: phy0: Trying EEPROM access at Address 0x01ff
[21.389879] ath: phy0: Trying OTP access at Address 0x03ff
[21.400396] Data bus error, epc == 8027964c, ra == 83125880
[21.406156] Oops[#1]:
Sun Feb 19 18:15:27 GMT 2023
We have ath9k listening for packets. To make this ready to use:
- need to load the modules
- enable bridging lan with wlan
- packet forwarding
- firewall
Mon Feb 20 20:41:17 GMT 2023
need to fix all the other broken ci jobs :-(
The wlan test is failing because we moved mac80211 to a module and
there's nothing running to insmod it
Wed Feb 22 18:17:17 GMT 2023
bridge is e2b3738d0f8c3f2fd76ebcef65612de502a7b121 but it's the wrong
way around: the master interface needs to be up whether or not all
of its children are, so members depend on master not vice versa
Next steps:
- re-implement bridge, enable bridging lan with wlan
- packet forwarding
- firewall
- ath10k
- ipv6
Fri Feb 24 23:37:56 GMT 2023
bridging wlan was made complex because can't add a device to a bridge
until it's operational, and wlan0 is not operational until hostapd
has churned awhile. Therefore, "waitup" listens for netlink messages
and notifies s6 readiness stuff
we have a firewall nft script but we're not running it on boot
we have forwarding but no dns, maybe because we haven't told
dnsmasq about any upstream servers
Sun Feb 26 21:08:47 GMT 2023
to add firmware we need to put files in /lib/firmware, which means
a module
i guess we should do that in the device module
we can create the firmware files as packages
for the cal data we would like to get it from the device MTD "art"
partition at
boot time.
f
====from openwrt
case "$FIRMWARE" in
"ath10k/cal-pci-0000:00:00.0.bin")
case $board in
allnet,all-wap02860ac|\
araknis,an-500-ap-i-ac|\
araknis,an-700-ap-i-ac|\
engenius,eap1200h|\
engenius,enstationac-v1|\
glinet,gl-x750|\
watchguard,ap300)
caldata_extract "art" 0x5000 0x844
ath10k_patch_mac $(macaddr_add $(mtd_get_mac_binary art 0x0) 2)
caldata_extract part offset count
caldata_dd $mtd /lib/firmware/$FIRMWARE $count $offset || \
caldata_die "failed to extract calibration data from $mtd"
dd if=$source of=$target iflag=skip_bytes,fullblock bs=$count skip=$offset count=1 2>/dev/null
=======
part=$(basename $(dirname $(grep -l art /sys/class/mtd/*/name)))
dd if=/dev/$part \
of=/run/cal-pci-0000:00:00.0.bin iflag=skip_bytes,fullblock \
bs=0x844 skip=0x5000 count=1
Mon Feb 27 22:46:37 GMT 2023
Found and fixed a bunchg of things that were stopping ath10k from
working. The remaining problem is (I think) that insmod is not
synchronous, so "ip link set up dev wlan1" doesn't work immediately
after the module is inserted. Maybe we need another netlink thing
to wait until the interface is present.
Wed Mar 1 18:26:44 GMT 2023
ath10k works, but the wlan module loading stuff is quite kludgey
I wonder if wlan0, wlan1, eth0, eth1 etc should be defined per-device
- how does the aplication config know which devices exist? If we
decide to switch to some form of persistent device naming, the names
will differ from one device to the next. Perhaps the device should
also provide standard names where possible?
services.network.links = {
lan = interface { ... };
wan = interface { ... };
wlan_24 = interface { ... };
wlan_5 = interface { ... };
}
Thu Mar 2 22:45:11 GMT 2023
We have a flashable image!
Now we can use the gl-ar750 for internet access in the shed, we can
apppropriate the other device that's in there and try Liminix on it
Fri Mar 3 23:08:58 GMT 2023
If we're going to unplug serial console from the gl-ar750 maybe we
should install an ssh server first.
0) set a root password
1) allow setting a root password from configuration.nix
(means defining config.users properly)
2) allow authorizedKeys per user
3) dropbear service
4) see if the wired lan works! :-)
Sat Mar 4 12:31:07 GMT 2023
To improve logging, each service should have its own s6-log service
which prefixes the service name onto the log line and then sends to
stdout
https://skarnet.org/software/s6/servicedir.html
https://skarnet.org/software/s6/s6-log.html
As far as I can tell, the `log` directory inside the service
directory should itself be a service directory for the s6-log
process that does this
.... hahaha no that doesn't work
s6-rc, for some reason, ignores the `log` directory and requires
that loggers be done with consumer-for and producer-for instead
Sat Mar 4 23:27:00 GMT 2023
notes for this week's news update
* ath10k kernel support and and firmware
- 5GHz wifi works
- need to retrieve the firmware from a special - partition on the
device itself, so we do that using a service that - the wlan
interface depends on
* replace waitup with more generally useful ifwait
to make the ath10k load at boot, we need to insert the module and then
wait for it to do something or other in the background before we can
configure the interface. so we need something like waitup but
for presence not operational state
it turns out that a program that just waits for a particular interface
state and then exits is quite simple to add into run scripts and
we don't need all that notification-fd stuff anyway
* move FW_LOADER* config to modules/base
* rejig config a bit.
- device hardware characteristics are now under
the `hardware` key and include the available network interfaces.
- options for users and groups are now defined a bit more
specifically than "attrset", making it possible to e.g. set a
root password
- dts is moved from `boot` to `hardware`
* now producing flashable images, so you can generate a liminix config
and write it to the device instead of having to boot using TFTP and
a serial console every time
* ssh support
* prefix logs with the service name
Sun Mar 5 22:51:21 GMT 2023
Added swconfig: it was a straight copy from nixwrt and hasn't changed
upstream since. But don't need it, because the lan port works fine
without it (I assume both lan ports and the cpu are all connected
untagged)
Mon Mar 6 09:42:33 GMT 2023
Today I plugged in the mt300a.
echo 17 >/sys/class/gpio/export
echo out >/sys/class/gpio/gpio17/direction
why are our images getting big
- lua links ncurses
- hostapd links openssl and sqlite
- nftables needs
- iptables?
- jansson? what is that?
- libedit/readline
- ifwait needs bash
File: result/squashfs
Size: 10371072 Blocks: 20256 IO Block: 4096 regular file
with smaller nftables: 9617408 Blocks: 18784
hostapd wqithout sqlite 9003008 Blocks: 17584
without bash: 8622080 Blocks: 16840 IO Block: 4096 regular file
without lua readline: bigger?! 8769536 Blocks: 17128 IO Block: 4096 regular file
Mon Mar 6 20:57:49 GMT 2023
[ 0.539992] mtk_soc_eth 10100000.ethernet: mdio-bus disabled
[ 10.493918] platform regulatory.0: Direct firmware load for regulatory.db fail
ed with error -2
[ 10.502828] cfg80211: failed to load regulatory.db
Check in morning, but whichever port the ethernet cable is plugged into,
is considered by the kernel as port 0 - which I think we should treat as
WAN
VLAN 1:
vid: 1
ports: 1 2 3 4 5 6t
VLAN 2:
vid: 2
ports: 0 6t
ip link add link eth0 name lan type vlan id 1
ip link add link eth0 name wan type vlan id 2
figure out how to add these to gl-mt300a device config
then extedner.nix can add a bridge
Tue Mar 7 20:13:15 GMT 2023
We need NTP or some other way to get accurate time
[done] Need to add regulatory.db somewhere standard, maybe modules/wlan?
Tue Mar 7 21:43:56 GMT 2023
When we get to phase 2, need to review how network interfaces and
their addresses interplay. It should be possible to have a network
interface and interrogate the addresses associated with it - esp
with ipv6 where there are multiple addresses for the device
This thought prompted by looking at the loopback interface, which is
a bundle of addresses and therefore we can't see what any of them are
Tue Mar 7 22:05:44 GMT 2023
[phase 1]
20) publish the manual using CI
30) document flashing process
31) go through all the unexpected dmesg and triage it
25) ntp or some other accurate time source
[phase 1.5]
26) ssh keys
8) get ipv6 address from pppoe
9) get ipv6 delegation from pppoe and add prefix to lan
10) support dhcp6 in dnsmasq, and advertise prefix on lan
11) firewalling and nat - default deny or zero trust?
7) upgrade ppp to something with an ipv6-up-script option, move ppp and pppoe derivations into their own files
32) set up iperf and do some performance measurement
35) also we need to check our wireless country code
[phase 2]
3) document services so I can remember how they work. Refer back to Oct 18 for notes that no longer make sense
4) check out restart behaviour of dependent services when depended-on service dies
13) check that references to outputs correspond with declared outputs
33) network interfaces vs the services that manage their addresses
34) write a short guide explaining how to use s6-svc
[phase n]
12) write secrets holder as a service with outputs
16) writable filesystem (ubifs?)
17) overlay with squashfs/ubifs - useful? think about workflows for how this thing is installed
dmesg lines to investigate for gl-mt300a:
[ 0.467314] OF: Bad cell count for /palmbus@10000000/spi@b00/flash@0/partition
[ 0.539709] mtk_soc_eth 10100000.ethernet: mdio-bus disabled ?
[ 8.778513] compat: loading out-of-tree module taints kernel.
[ 17.686561] ieee80211 phy0: rt2800_wait_bbp_rf_ready: Error - BBP/RF register access failed, aborting
[ 17.696025] ieee80211 phy0: rt2800_loft_iq_calibration: Warning - RF RX busy in LOFT IQ calibration
[ 17.875147] ieee80211 phy0: rt2800_rxiq_calibration: Warning - Timeout waiting for MAC status in RXIQ calibration
for gl-ar750:
[ 0.000000] Unknown kernel command line parameters "earlyprintk=serial,ttyS0", will be passed to user space.
[ 0.416679] OF: Bad cell count for /ahb/spi@1f000000/flash@0/partitions
[ 0.825495] ag71xx 19000000.eth: Could not connect to PHY device. Deferring probe.
[ 1.632700] pci_bus 0000:00: root bus resource [mem 0x10000000-0x13ffffff]
[ 1.639824] pci_bus 0000:00: root bus resource [io 0x0000]
[ 1.645601] pci_bus 0000:00: No busn resource found for root bus, will use [bus 00-ff]
[ 32.032326] ath10k_pci 0000:00:00.0: pdev param 0 not supported by firmware
[ 36.627844] ath10k_pci 0000:00:00.0: failed to receive initialized event from target: 00000000
Fri Mar 10 13:17:56 GMT 2023
Lunchtime notes on images for real devices, vs ci.nix
* successfully building an image doesn't mean that the image boots
or does anything useful
* don't want to faff with serial wires on every device every time
to test it. so
* ideally, build ram-based images of rotuer, extneder, arhcive in CI
with a watchdog timer that will reboot if it can't see the network
* figure out how to boot into the new image from an ssh connection. I
assume the challenging bit here is grabbing x MB of contiguous phys
mem after boot: I think we'd have to reserve it at _first_ boot and
then somehow copy into it before rebooting
An easier first goal might be a tool to flash from the shell command line,
but that runs a greater risk of bricking
Fri Mar 10 14:35:40 GMT 2023
programs.busybox = {
enable = true;
applets = [... ];
config = {
};
}
Fri Mar 10 23:49:04 GMT 2023
Well, we have the backup host config up and running - though haven't
plugged it back into its disk yet.
For task 1 what remains is
1) ntp sync
2) write up the flashing procedure
3) a video?
Sat Mar 11 13:58:20 GMT 2023
================== for video
what is liminix
- nix-based system for creating OS images for routers
- not "nixos on your router"
- nixos-like module system,
- musl for libc
- s6/s6-rc for services
- entirely cross-compiled
why am i making a video?
- unless you have a suitable spare device to install on,
and you want to take it apart, it's currently hard to
take liminix for a spin
- I have these things, so I can give you a tour
let's have a look at how the hardware's hooked up
web site & manual
a config file:
- observe the comments:
- not going to spend ages on this because it's not in its final form.
- as we get more configs for more use cases, we will
get a better feel for what can be abstracted
- that will come later: work so far has been on the
hardware support side
to show that it builds, we're going to add a package. otherwise,
everything from this build is probably already cached
build the config
tftpboot on hardware
flash on hardware
show ci
show a qemu target
Mon Mar 13 22:46:46 GMT 2023
1) rsync on arhcive is failing because no nogroup group
"/nix/store/gfzzl157r8xyp38lpcfxydkiiy6zrs3c-rsync-3.2.6/bin/rsync" "--verbose" "--stats" "--password-file" "/etc/nixos/secrets/arhcive-rsync" "-rltgoDz" "/var/spool/backup" "backup@arhcive.lan::srv/"
@ERROR: invalid gid nogroup
rsync error: error starting client-server protocol (code 5) at main.c(1837) [sender=3.2.6]
2) we can run findfs in a loop until the disk appears
3) still haven't decided how to do ntp but maybe we should just use
the busybox one
4) some way to do upgrades over the wire
- boot with reserved mem and a phram device at 110-128MB even in the
flashable version
- watchdog timer in kernel
- kexec in kernel
- userland service to feed the dog as long as local network is up
(may need to start it a couple of minutes after boot, how do we
do that?)
- can we use flashcp on a phram mtd?
5) maybe setup a vhost for hydra or something
[nix-shell:~/t]$ wget --reject-regex '\?' -D localhost -N -r --exclude-directories=/api --level=2 --convert-links -e robots=off http://localhost:3003/jobset/liminix/build/
is almost a mirror
Tue Mar 14 20:17:35 GMT 2023
- do we have a phram mtd? need config for size and location
- how do we set the boot device
- for first boot need to boot real flash, use dtb, ignore bootloader args
- for kexec, boot phram, specify args somehow (could rewrite dtb)
=> can use same kernel for both if we can give kexec a dtb with
different params, which seems to be possible
so we need a module for the initial kernel to say
- create phram mtd
- boot from real mtd (will be index + 1)
- enable KEXEC in kernel
- add kexec-tools
and for the kernel we boot into
- most of the above
- except for the boot device
- create an output with objects that kexec(8) can parse
Could be same module for both with different outputs
what do we call this thing? "revertable"
Wed Mar 15 19:11:09 GMT 2023
"revertable" implies mtd support for the rootfs and a ramdisk at
defined location
"tftpboot" implies "revertable", because it will use the same ramdisk
Fri Mar 17 11:44:40 GMT 2023
- patch the kernel kexec code to pass DTB to new kernel unconditionally
- unpatch pernel to pass command line to kexec (breaks DTB passing)
- decide how we specify rootfs. doing it by number is awkward
- may be phram
- may be real mtd root
- may be real mtd root but renumbered becuase phram exists
Wild idea: we could probably get rid of the need for declaring a phram
device in the first kernel, if we can use kexec to copy the squashfs into
physical ram. As far as I can see this is a simple(sic) matter of
specifying it as a segment, but we would have to extend kexec-tools
to do this and it's quite a niche option if we make it do all the
mtd setup.
kexec --dtb=foo.dtb --map-file=squashfs@0x120000
Sat Mar 18 18:02:26 GMT 2023
What if: we added derivations for "apply openwrt changes" as packages,
which could then be called from the kernel derivation's extraPatchPhase?
There could be one for generic and one for each openwrt targetop
Mon Mar 20 18:40:53 GMT 2023
- kexec patch is sent to mailing list, keep an eye for replies
- watchdog
- ntp
- rebuild images for live devices
- can we build a static busybox with flashcp applet and scp it
to arhcive etc?
- [DONE] install mailman and hyperkitty on myhtic, create mailing list
Tue Mar 21 22:59:54 GMT 2023
I haven't found a way to arm the watchdog before userland runs, which
would be really nice: although there's WATCHDOG_HANDLE_BOOT_ENABLED
and WATCHDOG_OPEN_TIMEOUT it doesn't seem to be sufficient, Maybe
those options work only when the hardware watchdog is already
armed. It might not be completely awful insofar as any failure to
mount root usually results in panic anyway, so provided we start
watching early in boot then there's not a big window for anything
to go wrong
What should the watchdog service do? Ideally we want something that
"ratchets" : can be started in early boot and signals health as long
as the system is starting up, then once the system is in "steady
state" it stops pinging as soon as any part of that steady state
becomes unhealthy. This feels like a refinement for a much later
phase though.
Maybe the health criteria might be
(sshd and lan services are running) or (time since boot < 120s)
Thu Mar 23 00:11:23 GMT 2023
tftpboot and (kexecboot || flashable) have incompatible DTB-finding
strategies which is painful if you add both modules and then
expect tftp booting to still work
Maybe we could patch the kernel to use some better strategy for when
to use/ignore the bootloader command line: e.g "only if it
contains the string 'liminix'". Could do this by patching
arch/mips/kernel/setup.c bootcmdline_init to
if(strstr(arcs_cmdline, "liminix") == NULL) arcs_cmdline[0] = '\0'
and then defining CONFIG_MIPS_CMDLINE_DTB_EXTEND. The
bootloader command line then needs to specify only the
_additional_ parameters that weren't in the DTB
(later: that turned out to be quite straighforward)
Fri Mar 24 23:45:12 GMT 2023
- add ntp support
- [DONE] expose hydra to internet
- check MAC address weirdness?
- call Task 1 "done"
Sun Mar 26 00:19:15 GMT 2023
Would be nice to have a flash.sh built in outputs.flashable
Sun Mar 26 15:27:14 BST 2023
Let's think about services and modules.
Module
+ can change global config
* add users, groups etc
* change kernel config
* change busybox config
+ well-typed parameters
- is a "singleton": can't have the same module included twice
with different config. e.g. can't have two hostap modules running on
different wlan radios.
- can't express dependencies: a depends on b
suppose:
* modules add service functions to the config? then there's no
way to define a service while forgetting to import the module
* we use the lib.types stuff for service function arguments
* maybe we stop naming services.foo for every damn thing
* but remember, s6 services do need unique names
imports = [ ../modules/dhcp4 ];
services.dhcp4 = config.services.udhcp {
interface = lan.device;
options = {
foo = true;
bar = 42;
};
depends = [ services.some_other_thing ];
}
modules/dhcp4 udhcp fn needs to define a type for its argument, then
use something like
if arg_type.check def.value then res
else throw "The option value `${showOption loc}' in `${def.file}' is not a ${arg_type.name}.")
(where def comes from I don't know yet)
Tue Mar 28 10:44:40 BST 2023
we should reserve the name "service" for actual instantiated
services. This means we need a name for the functions that
make services. "class", "template", "fn", "maker", "factory"?
And a namespace name so they're not interleaved with real
services, which sort of suggests they are packages
if we want to do services = {
foo = longrun { ... };
bar = longrun { ... };
}
without repeating the `name` as an attribute of the longrun,
then longrun can't return a derivation: it has to return some
function that accepts `name` as a parameter.
where services.a depends on services.b, at the time its builder is run
it needs to know what name s6-rc will use for service b
maybe an s6 service definition should be an attrset not a derivation.
maybe this is outside scope for phase 2
Tue Mar 28 13:22:06 BST 2023
Reading nixos/doc/manual/development/building-parts.chapter.md it
suggests to me that we should rename config.outputs to
config.system.outputs. The more general question here is whether it's
good to be augmenting a variable called "config" with all this
generated stuff that is patently not configuration - perhaps putting
it under a "system" key will keep it all in one place
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