Sunday, June 18, 2017

Tweaking binaries with elfedit

On Solaris and illumos, you can inspect shared objects (binaries and libraries) with elfdump. In the most common case, you're simply looking for what shared libraries you're linked against, in which case it's elfdump -d (or, for those of us who were doing this years before elfdump came into existence, dump -Lv). For example:

% elfdump -d /bin/true

Dynamic Section:  .dynamic
     index  tag                value
       [0]  NEEDED            0x1d6               libc.so.1
       [1]  INIT              0x8050d20          

and it goes on a bit. But basically you're looking at the NEEDED lines to see which shared libraries you need. (The other field that's generally of interest for a shared library is the SONAME field.)

However, you can go beyond this, and use elfedit to manipulate what's present here. You can essentially replicate the above with:

elfedit -r -e dyn:dump /bin/true

Here the -r flag says read-only (we're just looking), and -e says execute the command that follows, which is dyn:dump - or just show the dynamic section.

If you look around, you'll see that the classic example is to set the runpath (which you might see as RPATH or RUNPATH in the dump output). This was used to fix up binaries that had been built incorrectly, or where you've moved the libraries somewhere other than where the binary normally looks for them. Which might look like:

elfedit -e 'dyn:runpath /my/local/lib' prog

This is the first example in the man page, and the standard example wherever you look. (Note the quotes - that's a single command input to elfedit.)

However, another common case I come across is where libtool has completely mangled the link so the full pathname of the library (at build time, no less) has been embedded in the binary (either in absolute or relative form). In other words, rather than the NEEDED section being

libfoo.so.1

it ends up being

/home/ptribble/build/bar/.libs/libfoo.so.1

With this sort of error, no amount of tinkering with RPATH is going to help the binary find the library. Fortunately, elfedit can help us here too.

First you need to work out which element you want to modify. Back to elfedit again to dump out the structure

% elfedit -r -e dyn:dump /bin/baz
     index  tag                value
       [0]  POSFLAG_1         0x1                 [ LAZY ]
       [1]  NEEDED            0x8e2               /home/.../libfoo.so.1

It might be further down, of course. But the entry we want to edit is index number 1. We can narrow down the output just to this element by using the -dynndx flag to the dyn:dump command, for example

elfedit -r -e 'dyn:dump -dynndx 1' /bin/baz

or, equivalently, using dyn:value

elfedit -r -e 'dyn:value -dynndx 1' /bin/baz

And we can actually set the value as well. This requires the -s flag to set a string, but you end up with:

elfedit -e 'dyn:value -dynndx -s 1 libfoo.so.1' /bin/baz

and then if you use elfdump or elfedit or ldd to look at the binary, it should pick up the library correctly.

This is really very simple (the hardest part is having to work out what the index of the right entry is). I didn't find anything when searching that actually describes how simple it is, so I thought it worth documenting for the next time I need it.


Friday, June 09, 2017

On Tribblix Milestone 20

Having released a new update for Tribblix, I thought I would add a little commentary on the progress that's being made and the direction things are going in.

This goes beyond the rather dry release notes and list of what's changed.

The big structural change is that the ISO has been built as a single root archive, rather than the old way with a split-off /usr that's lofi-mounted from a compressed image.

The original reason for doing this (and I experimented with it a while ago) was to allow installation on systems without drivers for the device that you're booting from. This might be a system with only USB3 ports, or I've had problems with laptops where illumos doesn't recognize the CD drive. The boot loader (and BIOS) load the initial boot archive, so if you don't need to ever talk to the media device again you're in much better shape.

While we now have USB3 support, this simplified boot is a good thing in any case, and it allows some neat tricks like iPXE boot.

Another logical change is in the release mechanism itself. I've discussed the Tribblix package repositories before. The snag with the traditional repository layout was that the packages that defined a release were in the main Tribblix repository. So, every time I make a new release I end up having to create a whole new Tribblix repository. Every time I update the illumos packages, I needed a new Tribblix repository. Creating a new one isn't too bad; ongoing support for multiple repositories is a lot of unnecessary work.

The way to fix this is to split out the packages (there are 3 of them) that define the properties of a release into their own separate repo. This allows at least 2 new possibilities:

  1. I can release updated illumos packages without spinning a whole new Tribblix release. It would still use the same upgrade mechanism, but the main Tribblix repo is shared and it's a much lighter release process.
  2. I could create variants or spins. For example, I could create a variant that has LX (see omnitribblix). This would just have a different set of illumos packages but shares everything else. Or I could build a 32-bit or 64-bit only distro.
I haven't yet done either of those things, but it's going to happen.

Behind the scenes I've been gradually working to get more packages - especially those that deliver libraries - built as both 32-bit and 64-bit.

Tribblix is fairly clear that it will continue to support 32-bit and 64-bit hardware, at least for a while. (Whereas both OmniOS and OpenIndiana have effectively dropped 32-bit compatibility, mostly by neglect rather than design.) Of course, there is a reasonable amount of software now that's only 64-bit (anything built with go, for example, or OpenJDK 8), but there's a reasonable chance the people using 32-bit hardware aren't necessarily going to want the latest and greatest applications. (This isn't 100% true, by the way - sometime you have to interoperate with other facilities in the environment.) But eventually we're going to have to make a full 64-bit transition, and it would be good to be ready.

That gives a rough idea of the work that's currently underway. Looking ahead, there are a whole long list of packages that need adding or updating (such is a maintainer's life). The one significant place I have been falling behind is that I haven't updated gcc, so that needs work. And, of course, I'm trying to get SPARC into some sort of reasonable shape. But, overall, Tribblix is now pretty solid and a bit more polish and attention to detail would benefit it greatly.

Wednesday, June 07, 2017

Installing Tribblix on Vultr using iPXE

One of the new features introduced in Tribblix 0m20 is that booting and installing using iPXE now works.

Updated: Over time, I retire older versions of Tribblix. I've updated the text here, but not the images, to cover versions that are currently supported. Check the current list of available versions that can be installed using iPXE.

Here's an example of using this functionality to install a server running Tribblix in the Vultr cloud. A similar mechanism ought to work for any other provider that allows iPXE boot.

I'm assuming you have signed up and logged in, then go to deploy a server.

First choose where you want to deploy the server. I'm in the UK, so London is a good choice.


Then the critical bit, selecting the Server Type. The bit you want here is in a slightly confusing location, under the "Upload ISO" tab. But then select the "iPXE" radio button and put in the value http://pkgs.tribblix.org/m33/ipxe.txt


The other key option is Server Size. As with many providers, there's a simple scale. For testing, an instance with 1G of memory is more than adequate.


The deploy it. After a few seconds of installing you can then click the link to manage the server (or the 3 dots at the right), and then view the console, which uses VNC.

If you're reasonably quick you get to see the initial iPXE screen, and can see it downloading the images:


What you can see here is that it's downloaded the original ipxe script we specified. This looks like:

#!ipxe
dhcp
kernel /m33/platform/i86pc/kernel/amd64/unix
initrd /m33/platform/i86pc/boot_archive
boot
 
Which just says to set up the network using dhcp (this might have already been done, but if you're booting off an ipxe iso it may not have been, so we do it anyway), then download the kernel and the boot archive, then boot from what you've just downloaded.

The kernel and the boot archive are on the iso, I've just unpacked them on the server (so the URL given above for the ipxe script will be reasonably permanent for anybody to use). The only slight tweak I've had to make is that the original boot archive is actually gzip compressed and iPXE can't handle that, so it's been uncompressed. The boot archive also now contains the /usr file system as well, rather than it being split off as before. While I'm sure you could mangle the system to download it and sort things out, it's so much easier to put it inside the boot archive.

Then you get into the normal installer, so log in as jack, su to root, and see what disk(s) are available using the new diskinfo tool. Then you can install Tribblix to that disk:



Don't bother adding additional overlays at this point. It won't work - and you'll get an error about not being able to install overlays (you'll get the error anyway because the installer always tries to add some packages that aren't needed in the live environment). This will be fixed in a future update, but it's relatively harmless.

The other thing you should do before the installation is to change the passwords for root and jack. If you change them before running the installer then the change will propagate to the installed system (because all it's doing is a copy). You really don't want the system to boot up wide open to the internet with the default (and well known) passwords.

Once the (pretty quick) install finishes, it'll look like this:


That's just like a normal install, other than the missing overlays. Then just reboot and you'll soon see the new loader, followed by the system booting.

Due to the missing overlays, you'll get an error about the intrd service failing. You'll have to log in (ssh will work at this point) and then add at least the base overlay:

zap install-overlay base

Plus whatever other overlays you might want. Then you can clear the intrd service and you're good to go.

Friday, June 02, 2017

Tribblix memory requirements

Compared to the other illumos distributions, Tribblix has lower memory requirements.

I'm not talking about crazy stunts like running in 48M; here I'm talking about running a fully fledged system.

I've been doing a bit of testing of the upcoming release, which includes running the install under a range of configurations. The test here is to boot the ISO image in VirtualBox with a range of memory sizes and then install the kitchen sink.
  • The live image won't boot at all on a 256M system
  • The live image will boot on a 512M system, but installing to zfs will fail
  • However, installing to ufs works on a 512M system
  • With 768M, installation to zfs is rather slow
  • With 1G or more, you're fine
The upcoming release is going to be built slightly differently, in that it's no longer a split-off /usr configuration. (I discussed how that worked and those strange zlib files some time ago.) The latest OmniOS is a single image; SmartOS likewise. It's just so much easier to construct, and far more reliable.

That change explains the 256M failure - the ramdisk is about 300M, so it simply won't fit. It's likely to have an impact on the 512M case too - in the old scenario you only paged in the bits of the /usr filesystem as and if you needed them, now it's locked into memory.

On a limited memory system there's a way to make things a bit easier. Simply install the base (no additional overlays) from the installer, then add the rest of the overlays and packages later. The point here is that running from disk doesn't lock up anywhere near as much memory as the full OS being resident in RAM does. And some of the packages in the kitchen sink are rather large, which causes problems.

Once you've got Tribblix installed, how well does it cope? Surprisingly well, to be honest. The Xfce desktop runs quite well in either 512M or 768M of memory. I can run firefox on the 768M system without too many problems (given the way it consumes memory, probably not for a long intensive browsing session), while firefox on a 512M system does run, but it's clearly starting to grind. Java applications work, some smaller ones at least. You need to be realistic in your expectations, but the point is that smaller systems do work.

The most limited systems would tend to be older, possibly 32-bit hardware. I could build a 32-bit only image which would be quite a bit smaller - maybe only two-thirds the size. (And if you really wanted to you could get it even smaller - but then you're in the realms of building custom images using mvi or the like.)

However, the aim of keeping Tribblix viable on smallish systems isn't just to allow the use of old hardware, beneficial though that is. If you're running a service on a cloud or hosting provider then being able to use a 1G server instead of a 2G server will halve your costs, and that's a very good thing to be able to do.