Best workaround for broken packages in depot?

r-freilach · July 3, 2025, 9:41am

Dear genodians,

(The following serves as a mere example.)

I tested the current sculpt-25.04 release:

$ sha256sum ~/Downloads/sculpt-25-04.img 
54e8bd5f3b7c5ebf0fac84aa2c103d8bb8efa62ef6bcb5a08f2cad42cc29c366  /home/user/Downloads/sculpt-25-04.img

Upon adding the “acpi support” package through the “+” launcher, the “acpi” component immediatly died with the error
message from the bug reported in:

github.com/genodelabs/genode

acpica: Error: illegal READ

opened 10:32AM - 20 Jun 25 UTC

rite

bug fixed

At least with QEMU, `run/acpica` fails with the following log output (here with …base-hw, but it also fails with base-nova): ``` Genode 25.05-1-g952ab94352 755 MiB RAM and 63256 caps assigned to init [init -> acpica] 0x1000000 .. 0x14ffffff: linker area [init -> acpica] 0x40000000 .. 0x4fffffff: stack area [init -> acpica] 0x30000 .. 0x15cfff: ld.lib.so [init -> acpi] Found MADT [init -> acpi] MADT IRQ 0 -> GSI 2 flags: 0 [init -> acpi] MADT IRQ 5 -> GSI 5 flags: 13 [init -> acpi] MADT IRQ 9 -> GSI 9 flags: 13 [init -> acpi] MADT IRQ 10 -> GSI 10 flags: 13 [init -> acpi] MADT IRQ 11 -> GSI 11 flags: 13 [init -> acpi] Found MCFG [init -> acpi] MCFG BASE 0xb0000000 seg 0x0 bus 0x0-0xff [init -> acpi] RSDT OEM 'BOCHS ', table id 'BXPC ', revision 1, creator 'BXPC' (1) [init -> acpi] SMBIOS table (entry point: 0x166560 structures: 0xf6580) [init -> event_dump] Input event #0 PRESS KEY_BATTERY 65534 key count: 1 [init -> event_dump] Input event #1 RELEASE KEY_BATTERY key count: 0 [init -> ps2] Using keyboard with scan code set 1 (xlate) [init -> acpica -> debug] ACPI: RSDP 0x0000000000000001 000024 (v2 Faked ) [init -> acpica -> debug] ACPI: RSDT 0x0000000031fe2351 000038 (v1 BOCHS BXPC 00000001 BXPC 00000001) [init -> ps2] detected ExPS/2 mouse - activating scroll-wheel and 5-button support [init -> acpica -> debug] ACPI: FACP 0x0000000031fe2149 0000f4 (v3 BOCHS BXPC 00000001 BXPC 00000001) [init -> acpica -> debug] ACPI: DSDT 0x0000000031fe0040 002109 (v1 BOCHS BXPC 00000001 BXPC 00000001) [init -> acpica -> debug] ACPI: FACS 0x0000000031fe0000 000040 Error: illegal READ at address 0x17379 by pager_object: pd='init -> acpica' thread='ep' ip=0x105f180 ``` `git bisect` shows that this is a regression introduced with 1ef80e86e29292538bdc5a2401b9f3cb7d42562a.

As a result I can not poweroff my machine.

As other packages can obviously also have bugs, what is the preferred way to replace the malfunctioning package?

Downgrading to an older version like the following:
https://depot.genode.org/genodelabs/pkg/acpica/2024-12-10.tar.xz
did result in another error:

[init -> runtime -> acpica] Error: LD: jump slot relocation failed for symbol: 'Genode::Heap::Heap(Genode::Ram_allocator*, Genode::Region_map*, unsigned long, void*, unsigned long)'
[init -> runtime -> acpica] Error: Uncaught exception of type 'Linker::Not_found'
[init -> runtime -> acpica] Warning: abort called - thread: ep

So my questions would be:

Is my last option for having a working package, to wait for a fix in the master branch of
GitHub - genodelabs/genode: Genode OS Framework
and package the fixed version myself?
Can I do this easily through goa? (goa looks like it’s more for 3rd party packages, than rebuilding core packages)
Is there another way, a package downgrade may be successful?
How do I know a package is compatible with current sculpt release? Can there be user friendly message / meta data?
Can there be a “genodelabs-testing” sibling depot, with to be tested bug fixes?

Thanks a lot and kind regards

nfeske · July 3, 2025, 1:53pm

To solve your problem, someone needs to backport the acpica fix to the a branch based on the sculpt-25.04 tag. The one can indeed be you!

Applying the fix could be as easy as creating a fresh branch and cherry-picking the single commit. If app/acpica builds successfully that is already a good sign.

To create a package for the fixed version, you can then use the depot/create tool:

genode$ ./tool/depot/create r-freilach/bin/x86_64/acpica UPDATE_VERSIONS=1 -j8
...
...
...
created r-freilach/pkg/x86_64/acpica/2025-07-03

Now, what’s missing is publishing the result. Here, the depot/publish tool comes into play:

genode$ ./tool/depot/publish r-freilach/bin/x86_64/acpica/2025-07-03

You may need to tell the tool about your public key by copying it to repos/gems/sculpt/depot/r-freilach/pubkey. Your private key must be on your GPG keychain. If the key is available, the publish tool creates the archive and signature files.

publish public/r-freilach/api/format/2024-08-28.tar.xz
publish public/r-freilach/api/os/2025-07-03.tar.xz
publish public/r-freilach/api/platform_session/2025-07-03.tar.xz
publish public/r-freilach/api/report_session/2024-08-28.tar.xz
publish public/r-freilach/api/timer_session/2025-05-26.tar.xz
publish public/r-freilach/bin/x86_64/acpica/2025-07-03.tar.xz
publish public/r-freilach/src/acpica/2025-07-03.tar.xz
publish public/r-freilach/pkg/acpica/2025-07-03.tar.xz

(You can find more details about these tools in the package-management section of the Foundations book).
Now, you can sync the resulting public/r-freilach/ directory to a web server.

On the Sculpt-OS side, you need to place your pubkey and download files at /rw/depot/r-freilach/ so that Sculpt knows where to download from and how validate the downloaded depot content.

To one-off install it on your Sculpt machine, you can create an index file at /rw/depot/local/index/25.04 (maybe start with copy of genodelabs’) and add a <pkg> entry referring to your r-freilach/pkg/acpica/2025-07-03 package. Now, you should be able add you component using the + menu and selecting “local” as software provider.
To make the fixed package available for others, you may opt to publish your index file as well and make your download URL and pubkey known.

If these steps are too many hoops to jump through, let me know. Then, I will add an updated version of the acpica pkg to my index for your convenience.

r-freilach · July 4, 2025, 10:32am

Dear nfeske,

Thank you a lot for the detailed and helpful steps! I will try to practice this approach, so I may apply it other situations too. So no new package upload from your side is necessary. Thank you for the offer.

I hope your howto-esque answer can be of use for other people too.

Success or failure will be reported at the beginning of next week.

r-freilach · July 7, 2025, 2:19pm

Above approach worked just fine. Thank you again!

Here is what I did exactly:
(I can not use/provide a webserver in my very constrained setup.)

Build fixed package and copy to /depot:

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/genodelabs/genode/54568f33b95fb511b6ae96070585355c221fec0d/repos/libports/src/lib/acpica/iomem.cc
cp iomem.cc /root/genode/repos/libports/src/lib/acpica/iomem.cc
cd /root/genode
/root/genode/tool/ports/prepare_port acpica
/root/genode/tool/depot/create user/bin/x86_64/acpica UPDATE_VERSIONS=1
/root/genode/tool/depot/create user/pkg/acpica UPDATE_VERSIONS=1
cp -vnpr /root/genode/depot/* /depot

Add the following to your /config/25.04/deploy:

	<start name="acpica" pkg="user/pkg/acpica/2025-07-07">
		<route>
			<service name="Report"> <parent/> </service>
			<service name="ROM" label="platform_info"> <parent label="platform_info"/> </service>
			<service name="ROM" label_last="system">
				<parent label="config -> managed/system"/>
			</service>
			<service name="Platform">   <parent/> </service>
			<service name="IO_MEM">   <parent/> </service>
			<service name="IO_PORT">   <parent/> </service>
		</route>
	</start>

Then reboot into Sculpt-OS.

Sculpt-OS starts, my custom shell starts, executes uname -a and echo '<system state="poweroff"/>' > /config/system finally shuts the system down. All in under 9.5s.

Concerning the question about the genodelabs-testing depot:
Would you be open to rebuilding all available packages (that have updates/fixes) from the staging branch of GitHub - genodelabs/genode: Genode OS Framework nightly and provide them through such testing repository?
And if yes, how could I assist and should I create a ticket for this on the issue tracker?

Have a nice week and kind regards