gsoc/ideas/valgrind: Rewrite according to recent IRC discussion

Note: I have doubts about the exercise task too... Probably needs
revisiting.

1 files changed, 66 insertions, 5 deletions

diff --git a/community/gsoc/project_ideas/valgrind.mdwn b/community/gsoc/project_ideas/valgrind.mdwn
index 319d33a7..c6fc7459 100644
--- a/community/gsoc/project_ideas/valgrind.mdwn
+++ b/community/gsoc/project_ideas/valgrind.mdwn
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-[[!meta copyright="Copyright © 2009 Free Software Foundation, Inc."]]
+[[!meta copyright="Copyright © 2009, 2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc."]]
 
 [[!meta license="""[[!toggle id="license" text="GFDL 1.2+"]][[!toggleable
 id="license" text="Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this
@@ -8,12 +8,73 @@ Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts.  A copy of the license
 is included in the section entitled
 [[GNU Free Documentation License|/fdl]]."]]"""]]
 
-[[!meta title="Porting valgrind to the Hurd"]]
+[[!meta title="Porting Valgrind to the Hurd"]]
 
-Valgrind is a very powerful tool to debunk bugs. However, in order to do so, it needs deep knowledge of the behavior of kernel traps. In the case of GNU/Hurd, there is a bunch of system calls that GNU Mach handles directly, but also all the MIG RPCs (Remote Procedure Calls) which return their result either inline or through memory allocated by the kernel.
+[Valgrind](http://valgrind.org/) is an extremely useful debugging tool for memory errors.
+(And some other kinds of hard-to-find errors too.)
+Aside from being useful for program development in general,
+a Hurd port will help finding out why certain programs segfault on the Hurd,
+although they work on Linux.
+Even more importantly, it will help finding bugs in the Hurd servers themselfs.
 
-The goal is thus to teach valgrind the exact semantics of all MIG RPCs, most probably in an automatic way from the .defs files.
+To keep track of memory use,
+Valgrind however needs to know how each system call affects the validity of memory regions.
+This knowledge is highly kernel-specific,
+and thus Valgrind needs to be explicitely ported for every system.
 
-As a starter, students can try to teach valgrind a couple of Linux ioctls, as this will make them learn how to use the read/write primitives of valgrind.
+Such a port involves two major steps:
+making Valgrind understand how kernel traps work in general on the system in question;
+and how all the individual kernel calls affect memory.
+The latter step is where most of the work is,
+as the behaviour of each single system call needs to be described.
+
+Compared to Linux,
+Mach (the microkernel used by the Hurd) has very few kernel traps.
+Almost all system calls are implemented as RPCs instead --
+either handled by Mach itself, or by the various Hurd servers.
+All RPCs use a pair of mach\_msg() invocations:
+one to send a request message, and one to receive a reply.
+However, while all RPCs use the same mach\_msg() trap,
+the actual effect of the call varies greatly depending on which RPC is invoked --
+similar to the ioctl() call on Linux.
+Each request thus must be handled individually.
+
+Unlike ioctl(),
+the RPC invocations have explicit type information for the parameters though,
+which can be retrieved from the message header.
+By analyzing the parameters of the RPC reply message,
+Valgrind can know exactly which memory regions are affected by that call,
+even without specific knowledge of the RPC in question.
+Thus implementing a general parser for the reply messages
+will already give Valgrind a fairly good approximation of memory validity --
+without having to specify the exact semantic of each RPC by hand.
+
+While this should make Valgrind quite usable on the Hurd already, it's not perfect:
+some RPCs might return a buffer that is only partially filled with valid data;
+or some reply parameters might be optional,
+and only contain valid data under certain conditions.
+Such specific semantics can't be deduced from the message headers alone.
+Thus for a complete port,
+it will still be necessary to go through the list of all known RPCs,
+and implement special handling in Valgrind for those RPCs that need it.
+
+The goal of this task is at minimum to make Valgrind grok Mach traps,
+and to implement the generic RPC handler.
+Ideally, specific handling for RPCs needing it should also be implemented.
+
+Completing this project will require digging into Valgrind's handling of system calls,
+and into Hurd RPCs.
+It is not an easy task, but a fairly predictable one --
+there shouldn't be any unexpected difficulties,
+and no major design work is necessary.
+It doesn't require any specific previous knowledge:
+only good programming skills in general.
+On the other hand,
+the student will obtain a good understanding of Hurd RPCs while working on this task,
+and thus perfect qualifications for Hurd development in general :-)
 
 Possible mentors: Samuel Thibault (youpi)
+
+Exercise: As a starter,
+students can try to teach valgrind a couple of Linux ioctls,
+as this will make them learn how to use the read/write primitives of valgrind.