CS202: Lab 4: WeensyOS

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CS202: Lab 4: WeensyOS
Introduction
In this lab, you will implement process memory isolation, virtual memory, and a system call (fork()) in a tiny
(but real!) operating system, called WeensyOS.
This will introduce you to virtual memory and reinforce some of the concepts that we have covered this
semester.
The WeensyOS kernel runs on x86-64 CPUs. Because the OS kernel runs on the “bare” hardware, debugging
kernel code can be tough: if a bug causes misconfiguration of the hardware, the usual result is a crash of the
entire kernel (and all the applications running on top of it). And because the kernel itself provides the most
basic system services (for example, causing the display hardware to display error messages), deducing what
led to a kernel crash can be particularly challenging. In the old days, the usual way to develop code for an OS
(whether as part of a class, in a research lab, or in industry) was to boot it on a physical CPU. The lives of
kernel developers have gotten much better since. You will run WeensyOS in QEMU.
QEMU is a software-based x86-64 emulator: it “looks” to WeensyOS just like a physical x86-64 CPU with a
particular hardware configuration. However, if your WeensyOS code-in-progress wedges the (virtual)
hardware, QEMU itself and the whole OS that is running on the “real” hardware (that is, the “real” Linux OS that
QEMU is running on) survive unscathed (“real” is in quotation marks for reasons that will be unpacked in the
next paragraph). So, for example, your last few debugging printf()s before a kernel crash will still get logged
to disk (by QEMU running on Linux), and “rebooting” the kernel youʼre developing amounts to re-running the
QEMU emulator application.
What is the actual software/hardware stack here? The answer is different for students with x86-64 computers
(for example, Windows machines and older Macs) and ARMs. All students are running a host OS (on your
computer) on top of either x86-64 or ARM hardware (ARM being the architecture for so-called Apple silicon,
namely M1 and M2 chips). Then, the Docker containerization environment runs on top of the host OS (as a
process). That environment, loosely speaking, emulates either an x86 or an ARM CPU, and running on top of
that emulated CPU is Ubuntu Linux, targeted to x86-64 or ARM. Running on top of Ubuntu is QEMU. QEMU
presents an emulated x86-64 interface, and QEMU itself is either an x86-64 or ARM binary, again depending
on the underlying hardware. Finally, WeensyOS is exclusively an x86-64 binary, and that of course runs on
QEMU (though if you have some x86-64 hardware sitting around, you can try installing WeensyOS and
running it “bare”). Taking that same progression, now top-down: if you have an ARM CPU, that means you are
running the WeensyOS kernelʼs x86-64 instructions in QEMU, a software-emulated x86-64 CPU that is an
ARM binary, on top of Linux (targeted to ARM), running in the Docker containerization environment (also itself
an ARM binary), on macOS, running on an ARM hardware CPU.
Heads up. As always, itʼs important to start on time. In this case, on time means 3 weeks before the
assignment is due, as you will almost certainly need all of the allotted time to complete the lab. Kernel
development is less forgiving than developing user-level applications; tiny deviations in the configuration of
hardware (such as the MMU) by the OS tend to bring the whole (emulated) machine to a halt.
To save yourself headaches later, read this lab writeup in its entirety before you begin.
Resources.
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You may want to look at Chapter 9 of CSAPP3e (from which our x86-64 virtual memory handout is
borrowed). The book is on reserve at the Courant library. Section 9.7 in particular describes the 64-bit
virtual memory architecture of the x86-64 CPU. Figure 9.23 and Section 9.7.1 show and discuss the
PTE_P, PTE_W, and PTE_U bits; these are flags in the x86-64 hardwareʼs page table entries that play a
central role in this lab.
You may find yourself during the lab wanting to understand particular assembly instructions. Here are
two guides to x86-64 instructions, from Brown and CMU. The former is more digestible; the latter is
more comprehensive. The supplied code also uses certain assembly instructions like iret; see here
for a reference.
Getting Started
Youʼll be working in the Docker container as usual. We assume that you have set up the upstream as described
in the lab setup. Then run the following on your local machine (Mac users can do this on their local machine or
within the Docker container; Windows and CIMS users should do this from outside the container):
$ cd ~/cs202
$ git fetch upstream
$ git merge upstream/main
This labʼs files are located in the lab4 subdirectory.
If you have any “conflicts” from lab 3, resolve them before continuing further. Run git push to save your work
back to your personal repository.
Another heads up. Given the complexity of this lab, and the possibility of breaking the functionality of the
kernel if you code in some errors, make sure to commit and push your code often! It's very important that
your commits have working versions of the code, so if something goes wrong, you can always go back to a
previous commit and get back a working copy! At the very least, for this lab, you should be committing
once per step (and probably more often), so you can go back to the last step if necessary.
Goal
You will implement complete and correct memory isolation for WeensyOS processes. Then you'll implement
full virtual memory, which will improve utilization. You'll implement fork() (creating new processes at runtime)
and for extra credit, youʼll implement exit() (destroying processes at runtime).
Weʼve provided you with a lot of support code for this assignment; the code you will need to write is in fact
limited in extent. Our complete solution (for all 5 stages) consists of well under 300 lines of code beyond what
we initially hand out to you. All the code you write will go in kernel.c (except for part of step 6).
Testing, checking, and validation
For this assignment, your primary checking method will be to run your instance of Weensy OS and visually
compare it to the images you see below in the assignment.
Studying these graphical memory maps carefully is the best way to determine whether your WeensyOS code
for each stage is working correctly. Therefore, you will definitely want to make sure you understand how to
read these maps before you startto code.
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We supply some grading scripts, outlined at the end of the lab, but those will not be your principal source of
feedback. For the most part, they indicate only whether a given step is passing or failing; look to the memory
maps to understand why.
Initial state
Enter the Docker environment:
$ ./cs202-run-docker
cs202-user@172b6e333e91:~/cs202-labs$ cd lab4/
cs202-user@172b6e333e91:~/cs202-labs/lab4$ make run
The rest of these instructions presume that you are in the Docker environment. We omit the cs202-
user@172b6e333e91:~/cs202-labs part of the prompt.
make run should cause you to see something like the below, which shows four processes running in parallel,
each running a version of the program in p-allocator:
This image loops forever; in an actual run, the bars will move to the right and stay there. Don't worry if your
image has different numbers of K's or otherwise has different details.
If your bars run painfully slowly, edit the p-allocator.c file and reduce the ALLOC_SLOWDOWN constant.
Stop now to read and understand p-allocator.c.
Hereʼs how to interpret the memory map display:
WeensyOS displays the current state of physical and virtual memory. Each character represents 4 KB
of memory: a single page. There are 2 MB of physical memory in total. (Ask yourself: how many pages
is this?)
WeensyOS runs four processes, 1 through 4. Each process is compiled from the same source code (pallocator.c), but linked to use a different region of memory.
Each process asks the kernel for more heap memory, one page at a time, until it runs out of room. As
usual, each process's heap begins just above its code and global data, and ends just below its stack.
The processes allocate heap memory at different rates: compared to Process 1, Process 2 allocates
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twice as quickly, Process 3 goes three times faster, and Process 4 goes four times faster. (A random
number generator is used, so the exact rates may vary.) The marching rows of numbers show how
quickly the heap spaces for processes 1, 2, 3, and 4 are allocated.
Here are two labeled memory diagrams, showing what the characters mean and how memory is arranged.
The virtual memory display is similar.
The virtual memory display cycles successively among the four processesʼ address spaces. In the
base version of the WeensyOS code we give you to start from, all four processesʼ address spaces are
the same (your job will be to change that!).
Blank spaces in the virtual memory display correspond to unmapped addresses. If a process (or the
kernel) tries to access such an address, the processor will page fault.
The character shown at address X in the virtual memory display identifies the owner of the
corresponding physical page.
In the virtual memory display, a character is reverse video if an application process is allowed to
access the corresponding address. Initially, any process can modify all of physical memory, including
the kernel. Memory is not properly isolated.
Running WeensyOS
Read the README-OS.md file for information on how to run WeensyOS.
There are several ways to debug WeensyOS. We recommend adding log_printf statements to your code.
The output of log_printf is written to the file /tmp/log.txt outside QEMU. We also recommend that you use
assertions (of which we saw a few in lab 1) to catch problems early. For example, call the helper functions
weʼve provided, check_page_table_mappings and check_page_table_ownership to test a page table for
obvious errors.
Finally, you can and should use gdb, which we cover at the end of this section.
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Memory system layout
The WeensyOS memory system layout is defined by several constants:
Constant Meaning
KERNEL_START_
ADDR
Start of kernel code.
KERNEL_STACK_
TOP
Top of kernel stack. The kernel stack is one page long.
console Address of CGA console memory.
PROC_START_AD
DR
Start of application code. Applications should not be able to access memory below this
address, except for the single page at console.
MEMSIZE_PHYSI
CAL
Size of physical memory in bytes. WeensyOS does not support physical addresses ≥
this value. Defined as 0x200000 (2MB).
MEMSIZE_VIRTU
AL
Size of virtual memory. WeensyOS does not support virtual addresses ≥ this value.
Defined as 0x300000 (3MB).
Writing expressions for addresses
WeensyOS uses several C macros to handle addresses. They are defined at the top of x86-64.h. The most
important include:
Macro Meaning
PAGESIZE Size of a memory page. Equals 4096 (or, equivalently, 1 << 12).
PAGENUMBER(addr) Page number for the page containing addr. Expands to an expression analogous
to addr / PAGESIZE.
PAGEADDRESS(pn) The initial address (zeroth byte) in page number pn. Expands to an expression
analogous to pn * PAGESIZE.
PAGEINDEX(addr, le
vel)
The index in the levelth page table for addr. level must be between 0 and 3; 0
returns the level-1 page table index (address bits 39–47), 1 returns the level-2
index (bits 30–38), 2 returns the level-3 index (bits 21–29), and 3 returns the
level-4 index (bits 12–20).
PTE_ADDR(pe) The physical address contained in page table entry pe. Obtained by masking off
the flag bits (setting the low-order 12 bits to zero).
Before you begin coding, you should both understand what these macros represent and be able to derive
values for them if you were given a different page size.
Kernel and process address spaces
The version of WeensyOS you receive at the start of lab4 places the kernel and all processes in a single,
shared address space. This address space is defined by the kernel_pagetable page table.
kernel_pagetable is initialized to the identity mapping: virtual address X maps to physical address X.
As you work through the lab, you will shift processes to using their own independent address spaces, where
each process can access only a subset of physical memory.
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The kernel, though, must remain able to access any location in physical memory. Therefore, all kernel functions
run using the kernel_pagetable page table. Thus, in kernel functions, each virtual address maps to the
physical address with the same number. The exception() function explicitly installs kernel_pagetable when
it begins.
WeensyOS system calls are more expensive than they need to be, since every system call switches address
spaces twice (once to kernel_pagetable and once back to the processʼs page table). Real-world operating
systems avoid this overhead. To do so, real-world kernels access memory using process page tables, rather
than a kernel-specific kernel_pagetable. This makes a kernelʼs code more complicated, since kernels canʼt
always access all of physical memory directly under that design.
Using tmux
It will be handy to be able to “see” multiple sessions within Docker at the same time. A good tool for this is
called tmux.
We suggest reading, and typing along with, this excellent tmux tutorial. It should take no more than 10 minutes
and will be well worth it. Our debugging instructions below will assume that you have done so. Other tmux
resources:
MITʼs missing semester: Search for the section called “Terminal Multiplexers”.
Cheatsheet: This is a more comprehensive list of commands, though the formatting is not the best, being
interspersed with ads.
If you find yourself needing to exit tmux, either exit all of the panes in the current window, or do: C-b :killsession<return>. (The C-b is the usual Ctrl-b, and then you type :kill-session and press return or enter.)
Using gdb
The debugger that we have seen, gdb, can be used to debug an already running process, even one over a
network. QEMU supports this facility (see here). As a result, you can use gdb to single-step the software that is
running on top of the emulated processor created by QEMU.
Here are the steps. These steps assume that (1) you have taken the 10 minutes to work through the tmux
tutorial above, and (2) you are working within the directory lab4 underneath cs202-labs inside the Docker
container.
We will start by creating two side-by-side panes in tmux. The C-b % means “type Ctrl-b together, let go, and
then type the % key”. Please see the tmux tutorial above for more.
$ tmux
C-b %
At this point, you should have two side-by-side panes, with the active one being the one on the right. Go back
to the one on the left.
C-b <left> # refers to the left arrow key
If youʼre having trouble with C-b (which, again, refers to Ctrl-b), please again see the tmux tutorial in the prior
section. At this point you should be in the left pane. The next command runs QEMU in a mode where it expects
a debugger to attach:
$ make run-gdb
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You will see “VGA Blank mode”. Now, get back to the right-hand pane:
C-b <right> # refers to the right arrow key
In that terminal, invoke gdb. Do this via the script gdb-wrapper.sh, which will invoke the correct version of gdb
(handling the case of M1/M2 hardware). You donʼt need to tell gdb what you are debugging and how to
connect over the network, because the .gdbinit file in that directory tells gdb about these things for you. So
you type:
$ ./gdb-wrapper.sh
Make sure you see:
...
The target architecture is set to "i386:x86-64".
add symbol table from file "obj/bootsector.full" at
 .text_addr = 0x7c00
add symbol table from file "obj/p-allocator.full" at
 .text_addr = 0x100000
add symbol table from file "obj/p-allocator2.full" at
 .text_addr = 0x140000
add symbol table from file "obj/p-allocator3.full" at
 .text_addr = 0x180000
add symbol table from file "obj/p-allocator4.full" at
 .text_addr = 0x1c0000
add symbol table from file "obj/p-fork.full" at
 .text_addr = 0x100000
add symbol table from file "obj/p-forkexit.full" at
 .text_addr = 0x100000
If you do not see something like that, then it means that you did not load the appropriate debugging
information into gdb; likely, you are not running from within the lab4 directory.
Now, set a breakpoint, for example at the function kernel() (or whatever function you want to break at):
(gdb) break kernel
Breakpoint 1 at 0x40167: file kernel.c, line 86.
Now run the “remote” software (really, the WeensyOS kernel in the left-hand pane). Do this by telling gdb to
continue, via the c command:
(gdb) c
You should see in the right-hand pane:
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Continuing.
Breakpoint 1, kernel (command=0x0) at kernel.c:86
86 void kernel(const char* command) {
1: x/5i $pc
=> 0x40167 <kernel>: endbr64
 0x4016b <kernel+4>: push %rbp
 0x4016c <kernel+5>: mov %rsp,%rbp
 0x4016f <kernel+8>: sub $0x20,%rsp
 0x40173 <kernel+12>: mov %rdi,-0x18(%rbp)
(gdb)
You will also see the kernel begin to execute in the left-hand pane.
Now, you can and should use the existing facilities of gdb to poke around. gdb understands the hardware very
well. So can, for example, ask it to print out the value of %cr3:
(gdb) info registers cr3
cr3 0x8000 [ PDBR=8 PCID=0 ]
You are encouraged to use gdbʼs facilities. Type help at the (gdb) prompt to get a menu.
See the tmux section above for how to exit tmux.
Step 1: Kernel isolation
In the starting code weʼve given you, WeensyOS processes could stomp all over the kernelʼs memory if they
wanted to. Better prevent that. Change kernel(), the kernel initialization function, so that kernel memory is
inaccessible to applications, except for the memory holding the CGA console (the single page at (uintptr_t)
console == 0xB8000).
When you are done, WeensyOS should look like the below. In the virtual map, kernel memory is no longer
reverse-video, since the user canʼt access it. Note the lonely CGA console memory block in reverse video in
the virtual address space.
Hints:
1
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Use virtual_memory_map. A description of this function is in kernel.h. You will benefit from reading all
the function descriptions in kernel.h. You can supply NULL for the allocator argument for now.
If you really want to look at the code for virtual_memory_map, it is in k-hardware.c, along with many
other hardware-related functions.
The perm argument to virtual_memory_map is a bitwise-or of zero or more PTE flags, PTE_P, PTE_W, and
PTE_U. PTE_P marks Present pages (pages that are mapped). PTE_W marks Writable pages. PTE_U marks
User-accessible pages—pages accessible to applications. You want kernel memory to be mapped with
permissions PTE_P|PTE_W, which will prevent applications from reading or writing the memory, while
allowing the kernel to both read and write.
Make sure that your sys_page_alloc system call preserves kernel isolation: Applications shouldnʼt be
able to use sys_page_alloc to screw up the kernel.
When you're done with this step, make sure to commit and push your code!
Step 2: Isolated address spaces
Implement process isolation by giving each process its own independent page table. Your OS memory map
should look something like this when youʼre done:
(Yours wonʼt look exactly like that; in the first line of physical and virtual memory, instead of having the pattern
R11223344, yours will probably have a pattern like R1111222233334444. This is because the gif is from a 32-bit
architecture; recall that on a 64-bit architecture, there are four levels of page table required.)
That is, each process only has permission to access its own pages. You can tell this because only its own
pages are shown in reverse video.
What goes in per-process page tables:
The initial mappings for addresses less than PROC_START_ADDR should be copied from those in
kernel_pagetable. You can use a loop with virtual_memory_lookup and virtual_memory_map to copy
them. Alternately, you can copy the mappings from the kernelʼs page table into the new page tables; this
is faster, but make sure you copy the right data!
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The initial mappings for the user area—addresses greater than or equal to PROC_START_ADDR—should be
inaccessible to user processes (that is, PTE_U should not be set for these PTEs). In our solution (shown
above), these addresses are totally inaccessible (so they show as blank), but you can also change this so
that the mappings are still there, but accessible only to the kernel, as in this diagram:
The reverse video shows that this OS also implements process isolation correctly.
[Note: This second approach will pass the automated tests for step 2 but not for steps 3 and beyond. Thus,
we recommend taking the first approach, namely total inaccessibility.]
How to implement per-process page tables:
Change process_setup to create per-process page tables.
We suggest you write a copy_pagetable(x86_64_pagetable* pagetable, int8_t owner) function
that allocates and returns a new page table, initialized as a full copy of pagetable (including all mappings
from pagetable). This function will be useful in Step 5. In process_setup you can modify the page table
returned by copy_pagetable according to the requirements above. Your function can use pageinfo to
find free pages to use for page tables. Read about pageinfo at the top of kernel.c.
Remember that the x86-64 architecture uses four-level page tables.
The easiest way to copy page tables involves an allocator function suitable for passing to
virtual_memory_map.
Youʼll need at least to allocate a level-1 page table and initialize it to zero. You can also set up the whole
four-level page table skeleton (for addresses 0…MEMSIZE_VIRTUAL - 1) yourself; then you donʼt need an
allocator function.
A physical page is free if pageinfo[PAGENUMBER].refcount == 0. Look at the other code in kernel.c for
some hints on how to examine the pageinfo[] array.
All of process Pʼs page table pages must have pageinfo[...].owner == P or WeensyOSʼs consistencychecking functions will fail. This will affect your allocator function. (Hint: Donʼt forget that global variables
are allowed in your code!)
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If you create an incorrect page table, WeensyOS might crazily reboot. Donʼt panic! Add log_printf
statements. Another useful technique that may at first seem counterintuitive: add infinite loops to your
kernel to track down exactly where a fault occurs. (If the OS hangs without crashing once youʼve added an
infinite loop, then the crash youʼre debugging must occur after the infinite loop.)
Again, once finished with step 2, commit and push!
Step 3: Virtual page allocation
Up to this point in the lab, WeensyOS processes have used physical page allocation: the page with physical
address X is used to satisfy the sys_page_alloc(X) allocation request for virtual address X. This strategy is
inflexible and limits utilization. Change the implementation of the INT_SYS_PAGE_ALLOC system call so that it
can use any free physical page to satisfy a sys_page_alloc(X) request.
Your new INT_SYS_PAGE_ALLOC code must perform the following tasks.
Find a free physical page using the pageinfo[] array. Return -1 to the application if you canʼt find one.
Use any algorithm you like to find a free physical page; our solution just returns the first one we find.
Record the physical pageʼs allocation in pageinfo[].
Map that physical page at the requested virtual address.
Donʼt modify the assign_physical_page helper function, which is also used by the program loader. You can
write a new function if you need to.
Hereʼs how our OS looks after this step.
Now commit and push your code before moving on to step 4!
Step 4: Overlapping address spaces
Now the processes are isolated, which is awesome. But theyʼre still not taking full advantage of virtual memory.
Isolated address spaces can use the same virtual addresses for different physical memory. Thereʼs no need to
keep the four process address spaces disjoint.
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In this step, change each processʼs stack to start from address 0x300000 == MEMSIZE_VIRTUAL. Now the
processes have enough heap room to use up all of physical memory! Hereʼs how the memory map will look
after youʼve done it successfully:
Notice the single reverse video page in the bottom right, for all processes. This is their stack page: each
process has the same virtual address for its stack page, but (if youʼve implemented it correctly) different
physical pages.
If thereʼs no physical memory available, sys_page_alloc should return an error to the caller (by returning -1).
Our solution additionally prints “Out of physical memory!” to the console when this happens; you donʼt
need to.
As always, make sure to commit and push after finishing this step!
Step 5: Fork
The fork() system call is one of Unixʼs great ideas. It starts a new process as a copy of an existing one. The
fork() system call appears to return twice, once to each process. To the child process, it returns 0. To the
parent process, it returns the childʼs process ID.
Run WeensyOS with make run or make run-console. At any time, press the ‘fʼ key. This will soft-reboot
WeensyOS and ask it to run a single process from the p-fork application, rather than the gang of allocator
processes. You should see something like this in the memory map:
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Thatʼs because you havenʼt implemented fork() yet.
How to implement fork():
When a process calls fork(), look for a free process slot in the processes[] array. Donʼt use slot 0. If no
free slot exists, return -1 to the caller.
If a free slot is found, make a copy of current->p_pagetable, the forking processʼs page table, using
your function from earlier.
But you must also copy the process data in every application page shared by the two processes. The
processes should not share any writable memory except the console (otherwise they wouldnʼt be
isolated). So fork() must examine every virtual address in the old page table. Whenever the parent
process has an application-writable page at virtual address V, then fork() must allocate a new physical
page P; copy the data from the parentʼs page into P, using memcpy(); and finally map page P at address V
in the child processʼs page table. (memcpy() works like the one installed on your Linux dev box; use the
man pages for reference.)
The child processʼs registers are initialized as a copy of the parent processʼs registers, except for reg_rax.
Use virtual_memory_lookup to query the mapping between virtual and physical addresses in a page
table.
When youʼre done, you should see something like the below after pressing ‘fʼ.
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An image like the below, however, means that you forgot to copy the data for some pages, so the processes
are actually sharing stack and/or data pages when they should not:
Other hints.
Make sure youʼre setting the owner correctly when allocating new page tables.
Failing this step of the lab does not mean that the bug is actually in this step. Itʼs very common that a
studentʼs step 5 code fails because of errors made in any of the earlier steps.
Don't forget to commit and push after finishing fork!
(Extra credit) Step 6: Shared read-only memory
This extra credit and the next are challenging—and the point values will not be commensurate to the extra
effort. We supply these for completeness, and for those who want to go deeper into the material.
Itʼs wasteful for fork() to copy all of a processʼs memory. For example, most processes, including p-fork,
never change their code. So what if we shared the memory containing the code? Thatʼd be fine for process
isolation, as long as neither process could write the code.
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Step A: change the process loader in k-loader.c to detect read-only program segments and map them as
read-only for applications (PTE_P|PTE_U). A program segment ph is read-only iff (ph->p_flags &
ELF_PFLAG_WRITE) == 0.
Step B: From step 5, your fork() code already shouldnʼt copy shareable pages. But make sure in this step that
your code keeps track accurately of the number of active references to each user page. Specifically, if
pageinfo[pn].refcount > 0 and pageinfo[pn].owner > 0, then pageinfo[pn].refcount should equal
the number of times pn is mapped in process page tables.
When youʼre done, running p-fork should look like this:
Hint:
Mark a program segment read-only after the memcpy and memset operations that add data to the
segment. Otherwise youʼll get a fault.
Again, commit and push!
(Extra credit) Step 7: Freeing memory
So far none of your test programs have ever freed memory or exited. Memory allocationʼs pretty easy until you
add free! So letʼs do that, by allowing applications to exit. In this exercise youʼll implement the sys_exit()
system call, which exits the current process.
This exercise is challenging: freeing memory will tend to expose weaknesses and problems in your other code.
To test your work, use make run and then type ‘eʼ. This reboots WeensyOS to run the p-forkexit program.
(Initially itʼll crash because sys_exit() isnʼt implemented yet.) p-forkexit combines two types of behavior:
Process 1 forks children indefinitely.
The child processes, #2 and up, are memory allocators, as in the previous parts of the lab. But with small
probability at each step, each child process either exits or attempts to fork a new child.
The result is that once your code is correct, p-forkexit makes crazy patterns forever. An example:
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Your picture might look a little different; for example, thanks to Step 6, your processes should share a code
page, which would appear as a darker-colored “1”.
Hereʼs your task.
sys_exit() should mark a process as free and free all of its memory. This includes the processʼs code,
data, heap, and stack pages, as well as the pages used for its paging structures.
In p-forkexit, unlike in previous parts of the lab, sys_fork() can run when there isnʼt quite enough
memory to create a new process. Your code should handle this case. If there isnʼt enough free memory to
allocate a process, fork() should clean up after itself (i.e., free any memory that was allocated for the
new process before memory ran out, including pages that were allocated as part of the paging
structures), and then return -1 to the caller. There should be no memory leaks.
The check_virtual_memory function, which runs periodically, should help catch some errors. Feel free to add
checks of your own.
Further study (extra-extra credit)
If you are finished and can't wait to do more of this type of work, try the following. These will receive only token
points, and are for you to explore, if youʼre interested:
Copy-on-write page allocation!
Faster system calls, for instance using the syscall and sysexit instructions!
Running the grading tests
As stated at the start of this lab, the visual memory map displayed by QEMU as your WeensyOS kernel runs is
the best way to determine how your code is behaving.
However, we provide automated tests, to help us grade, and for you to confirm that youʼve completed a step.
The tests are not dispositive: there will be cases where your code passes the tests but is not ultimately correct
(and will lose points on manual inspection during grading). We have not seen the reverse, however: cases
where your code fails the tests but is correct. Thus, if the tests are failing, you almost certainly have a bug.
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The bottom line: run with make run or make run-console (or make run-gdb) to visualize how memory is
being used while you are coding and validating your design. Then, switch to the automated tests described
below when you think youʼve completed a step and want to double-check.
There are five tests, one for each step. You can run each of them with the shell commands make grade-one
through grade-five. Note that the step numbers are written out in text and not using digits. Each stepʼs result
is all-or-nothing.
There are three invariants in all five stepsʼ tests that your code must satisfy. These invariants are:
The CGA console must be accessible by all processes (this requirement is discussed in the text above on
step 1).
If we consider process P, there should be no virtual page in Pʼs page table at a user-space address (that
is, whose address is above the kernel/user virtual address split point) that is owned by P but not
accessible by P.
When we run our tests, we configure the WeensyOS kernel to exit after 10 seconds of execution (1000
WeensyOS kernel “ticks”). If a bug in your code makes the kernel crash before 1000 WeensyOS kernel
ticks, youʼll fail the test on which that happens. Alternatively, if your kernel enters an infinite loop, and thus
never reaches our exit at 1000 ticks, the VM will get stuck in the infinite loop and never exit, so the tests
will hang and youʼll need to terminate your hung kernel. Do so by opening another terminal window and
issuing the command make kill, which will kill all QEMU processes you have running.
These invariants are reasonable: regardless of what your memory map display looks like, a good solution
should neither crash nor enter an infinite loop.
Our tests are cumulative: each stepʼs test runs all prior stepsʼ tests. If any of the prior stepsʼ tests fail, the
“current” stepʼs test is deemed to have failed. As a consequence, if you have a regression bug—for example,
code in a current step re-introduces a bug in an earlier step—you can lose points not only for the current step
you are working on, but also for prior steps. If you need to submit and find this has happened, donʼt despair:
simply revert your code to the last good version before your regression (using the history provided by GitHub
—so, once again, make sure you commit and push often!).
Using gdb in “grading” mode
The make grade-X scripts pass slightly different options to QEMU than make run. If you find that youʼre failing
the grading tests, you can run with the grading options, under gdb. To do so, follow the gdb instructions above,
except where it says make run-gdb, type instead make grade-gdb.
Miscellaneous tips
The kernel defines a constant, HZ, which determines how many times per second the kernelʼs clock ticks. Donʼt
change this value—there is absolutely no need to do so while solving the lab, and doing so will likely cause
your code to fail our tests!
After you run any of our per-stage make grade-N tests, if you happen to examine the /tmp/log.txt file, youʼll
see a vast amount of output therein that we generate for use in the automated tests. You can ignore it (and it
will be absent when you run with make run while you are developing, so it wonʼt clutter your own debugging
logprintf()s in those runs).
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Submission
Handing in consists of three steps:
1. Executing this checklist:
Make sure your code builds, with no compiler warnings.
Make sure youʼve used git add to add any files that youʼve created.
Fill out the top of the answers.txt file, including your name and NYU Id
Make sure youʼve answered every question in answers.txt
Make sure you have answered all code exercises in the files.
Create a file called slack.txt noting how many slack days you have used for this assignment. (This
is to help us agree on the number that you have used.) Include this file even if you didnʼt use any
slack days.
git add and commit the slack.txt file
2. Push your code to GitHub, so we have it (from outside the container or, if on Mac, this will also work
from within the container):
$ cd ~/cs202/lab4
$ make clean
$ git commit -am "hand in lab4"
$ git push origin
Counting objects: ...
....
To git@github.com:nyu-cs202/labs-24sp-<YourGithubUsername>.git
 7337116..ceed758 main -> main
3. Actually submit, by timestamping and identifying your pushed code:
Decide which git commit you want us to grade, and copy its id (you will paste it in the next sub-step).
A commit id is a 40-character hexadecimal string. Usually the commit id that you want will be the one
that you created last. The easiest way to obtain the commit id for the last commit is by running the
command git log -1 --format=oneline. This prints both the commit id and the initial line of the
commit message. If you want to submit a previous commit, there are multiple ways to get the commit
id for an earlier commit. One way is to use the tool gitk. Another is git log -p, as explained here, or
git show.
Now go to NYU Brightspace; there will be an entry for this lab. Paste only the commit id that you just
copied.
You can submit as many times as you want; we will grade the last commit id submitted to
Brightspace.
NOTE: Ground truth is what and when you submitted to Brightspace. Thus, a non-existent commit id in
Brightspace means that you have not submitted the lab, regardless of what you have pushed to GitHub. And,
the time of your submission for the purposes of tracking lateness is the time when you upload the id to
Brightspace, not the time when you executed git commit.
This completes the lab.
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Acknowledgments
This lab is due to Eddie Kohler, with modifications and some infrastructure due to Brad Karp and Nikola
Gvozdiev.
1. Making the console accessible in this way, by making the range of RAM where the contents of the display
are held directly accessible to applications, is a throwback to the days of DOS, whose applications
typically generated console output in precisely this way. DOS couldnʼt run more than one application at
once, so there wasnʼt any risk of multiple concurrent applications clobbering one anotherʼs display writes
to the same screen locations. We borrow this primitive console design to keep WeensyOS simple and

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