elfuse-syscall

name

elfuse-syscall

description

Adding or changing a Linux syscall in elfuse. Covers dispatch.tbl, sc_ wrappers, the translation boundary, path and filename resolution, fd classes, lock order, and the coverage gate. Use when touching src/syscall/ or the syscall side of src/runtime/, adding a syscall number, or debugging a guest ENOSYS/EINVAL/EPERM. If the change also alters what the guest observes on return (registers, page permissions, the EL0 return path), read elfuse-guest-abi as well.

Adding a syscall to elfuse

src/syscall/dispatch.tbl is the authoritative list. Everything else follows from an entry there.

This skill covers the host side of the boundary: taking guest arguments, translating them, and calling macOS. Anything that changes what the guest sees when it comes back is elfuse-guest-abi, even when the file lives under src/syscall/.

The steps

1. Add one line to src/syscall/dispatch.tbl:

   SYS_<name> sc_<wrapper> <extra>
   

   <extra> becomes needs_extra_regs in syscall_table (src/syscall/syscall.c). The dispatcher always fetches X0-X2 and fetches X3/X4/X5 only when it is set, so the criterion is whether the wrapper expression consumes x3, x4, or x5 - not the syscall's documented argument count. Several three-argument entries carry 1.

   The dispatcher zero-initializes x3-x5, so a wrapper that reads them with <extra> left at 0 sees a deterministic 0, not a stale register: a syscall whose 4th argument silently behaves as NULL or 0 on every call is the symptom to recognize.

   Section comments (# I/O: ...) and blank lines are preserved into the generated header, so put the entry in the right block.

2. scripts/gen-syscall-dispatch.py regenerates the header; make check-format runs it, via its check-syscall-dispatch prerequisite. Never hand-edit the generated file.

3. Implement it in two pieces. The sc_ wrapper and the sys_ function are not the same thing and do not live in the same file.

   3a. The wrapper goes in src/syscall/syscall.c, as one line built by the SC_FORWARD / SC_LOCKED / SC_STUB macros. It exists to unpack x0-x5 into typed arguments. SC_LOCKED is the variant that holds mmap_lock across the call.

   SC_FORWARD(sc_read,  sys_read(g, (int) x0, x1, x2))
   SC_FORWARD(sc_dup3,  sys_dup3((int) x0, (int) x1, (int) x2))
   

   Every sc_ symbol in the tree is here. The domain files contain none, so defining one there gets you a dead symbol the dispatch table never reaches.

   3b. The sys_ implementation goes in the domain file whose name says so: ls src/syscall/ is the list, and read/write/ioctl in io.c, brk/mmap/mprotect in mem.c, sockets in the net*.c family are representative. New code goes in the existing domain file; shared declarations go in internal.h, not a new header.

   Two domains sit outside src/syscall/ because they are runtime state rather than syscall surface: clone and fork in src/runtime/forkipc.c, futex in src/runtime/futex.c. Both carry guest-ABI rules on top of what is here.

4. Add a test that names the syscall, or the build fails. See the coverage gate below.

The translation boundary

One rule generates this whole section: nothing crosses the boundary unconverted. A guest number is a Linux number until a translator turns it into a macOS one, and every translator lives in translate.c. Adding a conversion inline in a domain file is how the next syscall gets it wrong.

The axes that actually diverge, which is the part you cannot derive by reading either kernel's headers alone:

• errno. Return -linux_errno(errno). The two agree below roughly 35 and diverge above it (macOS EAGAIN is 35, Linux EAGAIN is 11), so a copied constant is silently right in testing and wrong in production.
• AT_* flags. translate_at_flags() before any macOS call, with one exception that is not derivable: Linux puts AT_EACCESS on the same bit as AT_REMOVEDIR, so faccessat paths use translate_faccessat_flags() instead. A blanket "always call translate_at_flags()" produces a wrong-but-plausible faccessat.
• open flags. aarch64-linux differs from x86_64-linux, not just from macOS, so a value cribbed from x86_64 documentation is wrong.
• clock ids. translate_clockid().
• UTIME_NOW / UTIME_OMIT.
• socket type flags. SOCK_NONBLOCK and SOCK_CLOEXEC are ORed into the type argument on Linux and must be stripped out before socket().
• sockaddr. linux_to_mac_sockaddr / mac_to_linux_sockaddr. Linux has no sa_len byte, and the address families do not share numbering.

The numeric values are in src/syscall/abi.h and translate.c. Read them there rather than from a copy: a stale constant in a document is worse than no constant, because it looks like it was checked.

Paths and filenames

Every guest path goes through path_translate_at (path.c), including the at-family, so an absolute path handed to fchmodat, utimensat, or an xattr call cannot bypass the sysroot redirect. Calling a host path syscall on a raw guest string is the bug this prevents.

Calling the right function is necessary and not sufficient. The resolver upholds invariants that a caller can still break by resolving twice, by re-deriving a path from a resolved one, or by following a link the resolver deliberately did not:

• .. is clamped at the guest root, and the containment check is rechecked for relative paths rather than assumed from the first resolution.
• Some paths are resolved never-follow by design. Turning one into a follow-resolution to "fix" a symlink is how containment is lost.
• The no-symlinks precheck has no component budget, on purpose.

Read the "Path Resolution" sections of docs/internals.md before changing anything in path.c or adding a caller that resolves a path itself.

Guest filenames that collide under case-insensitive APFS are kept distinct by the case-fold codec (casefold.c, casefold-walk.c), which has a real on-disk format with golden vectors: a red test-casefold-host means the format moved, not that the test is flaky. docs/filenames.md is the specification.

Guest memory access

Reads and writes of guest pointers go through the guest_read/guest_write path, which uses proved/gva.h. Do not open-code a GVA-to-host-pointer conversion: gva_translate_perm is what refuses MEM_PERM_EL1_ONLY descriptors on EL0's behalf, and that refusal is the only thing stopping read(fd, shim_data_gva, n) from leaking the EL1 cache.

If your bounds math is non-trivial (a parser over guest-supplied lengths, a packer emitting into a guest buffer), it belongs in src/proved/ with a proof target. See the elfuse-verify skill.

FDs and locks

Guest fds are not host fds. Allocate through the bitmap allocator in fdtable.c; classify with the helpers in fd.c and fd.h (socket, pidfd, eventfd, timerfd, signalfd). A class check that reads the raw fd number is wrong after a dup.

The lock order is the comment at the top of internal.h. Acquire in the order it lists, and add a new lock to that comment before using it in a second module. Three constraints in it are not derivable from the ordering:

• The per-epoll-instance lock is taken under fd_lock by the close hook, but taken alone by epoll_ctl and epoll_pwait. This is the one a summary usually drops, and it is the deadlock-prone one.
• sfd_lock is never held together with thread_lock.
• FUSE takes fuse_lock first, then the per-session lock.

Subsystems with rules of their own

Three areas under src/syscall/ are not ordinary domain files, and a change that treats them as such tends to compile and then deadlock or leak:

• FUSE (fuse.c) runs a whole filesystem transport inside the guest. Sessions are refcounted so an in-flight read pins the session against daemon exit, and the wait paths have to honor SA_RESTART rather than returning EINTR blindly.
• procfs, sysfs, and device emulation (src/runtime/procemu.c) run as an interception layer: the resolver goes first and hands it a normalized guest path, and proc_intercept_open and friends are consulted before the host filesystem is touched, returning PROC_NOT_INTERCEPTED to fall through. A path that looks host-backed may be synthesized, so a new file-touching syscall has to offer it the intercept rather than assuming a real file.
• Abstract Unix sockets, SCM_RIGHTS, and netlink each carry their own serialization format over guest-supplied lengths, which is why several of them have proof targets.

docs/internals.md has a section for each.

The coverage gate

scripts/check-syscall-coverage.py runs inside make check and fails when a dispatch.tbl entry has no direct or aliased test reference. Two ways out, one of them correct:

• Write the test (correct).
• Add to INDIRECT_COVERAGE in the script with a real reason (only when success-path coverage is genuinely filesystem- or host-dependent, e.g. the xattr family). The script also fails on a stale allowlist entry, so a name that later gains a real test must be removed from the dict.

When the change is not only host-side

Read elfuse-guest-abi too if your change touches any of these, whatever directory the file is in: page permissions or mappings (mem.c), signal delivery or rt_sigreturn (signal.c), fork and clone state transfer (src/runtime/forkipc.c, thread.c), or anything that writes guest registers on the return path.

Authoritative sources

This skill is a working summary. These are tracked and survive a fresh clone, so prefer them when the two disagree:

• src/syscall/internal.h - the lock order comment at the top.
• src/syscall/dispatch.tbl - the syscall list itself.
• docs/internals.md - syscall dispatch, the lock map, path resolution, FUSE, and procfs emulation in full.
• docs/filenames.md - the sidecar codec and its golden vectors.

Verifying

docs/testing.md, section "Validation Strategy By Change Type", maps the area you touched to the minimum command set. Use it rather than a habit; see elfuse-verify for what the lanes mean and elfuse-debug for localizing a failure in one.