Migrating from FreeNAS to FreeBSD

I love FreeNAS. Its awesome, well built, well-supported. But as my needs increased, I wanted to use my FreeNAS box for more than the basics. In particular, I was moving towards a single host to run as a:

1. Family NAS server
2. Development server
3. IRC client
4. VM server
5. Web server
6. Email Server
7. Git Server
8. Home Firewall
9. Home IPv6 gateway
10. IPv6 VPN and Jump box

FreeNAS could easily do all of this. But I found myself using the device for everything but a NAS server. Also, as my experience on FreeBSD reaching proficient-status, I wanted to jump in the deep end and manually configure a production system from scratch. So I thanked FreeNAS for their contribution, yanked out the USB disks and installed FreeBSD 11.1 on a separate USB disk.

During installation, I was careful not to touch the /dev/ada devices, as that would destroy my precious files. Instead, I installed to the second USB disk, /dev/da1, while the installation medium was /dev/da0. This was obviously a problem, because at reboot the USB disk would become /dev/da0 and the kernel would panic upon not finding a /dev/da1. So I dropped to the terminal and mounted zroot/ROOT/default volume,  which is the / directory, to /tmp/root as follows.

zfs set mountpoint=/tmp/root zroot/ROOT/default
zfs mount zroot/ROOT/default


Then I edited /tmp/root/etc/fstab and changed /dev/da1p2 to /dev/da0p2, umounted, reset the machine and FreeBSD booted without a glitch.

As mentioned, I plan on using this system fairly heavily going forward so the 8 GB USB disk would definitely not be sufficient. FreeBSD has an amazing feature where it isolates the base system from any user-installed applications or configurations. Rather than using symlink magic, my strategy was to store all application data on my two 4TB NAS disks.

First things first, I imported the pool as follows:

zpool import -f tank

The -f flag was necessary because for whatever reason ZFS thought tank was currently utilized. A quick zfs list revealed that FreeNAS had been mounting my disks to /tank. Unfortunately, the /tank directory is not utilized by default by FreeBSD. Therefore, I renamed each ZFS volume to a new /usr/local as follows. First, I created a zfs volume for tank/usr/share as follows.

zfs create tank/usr/local

Then I renamed the old paths to map to my new intended directory structure, as follows

zfs rename tank/old/path tank/usr/local/new/path
zfs set mountpoint=/usr/local/new/path tank/usr/local/new/path

This took a bit of time, but after completing these for all partitions, I ran:

zfs mount -a

With that, all ZFS shares were mounted as /usr/local subdirectories. All of my data was successfully migrated over without a single bit of data loss!

From here, I needed to re-create the jails. FreeNAS’s excellent jail web-based GUI allows you to create jails with their own independent network stack. This feature is called VIMAGE and is useful to isolate network services from the host FreeBSD system. VIMAGE is pre-compiled into the FreeNAS kernel. It is on by default on FreeBSD 12.0, but not 11.x and must be compiled in. To do this, you need to download and uncompress the src distribution, edit /usr/src/sys/amd64/conf/GENERIC and add in the following line:

options VIMAGE

Next, compile the kernel and install it as follows.

make -j 5 buildkernel
make installkernel

The -j 5 is because this machine is an i3 with 4 cores – feel free to adjust this depending on the number of cores you have.

With a successful reboot, I was now ready to migrate the jails over. I did so by moving the zfs jails volume to /usr/local/jail, such that my IRC client jail was /usr/local/jail/irc. Now the complicated part: Configuring the jails!

Since a jail using VIMAGE has a completely separate network stack, by default it renders a jail unable to communicate outside of itself. The way to allow communication you have to create an epair(4) pair and pass one side to the jail, as follows:

ifconfig epair create
ifconfig epair0a vnet JAILNAME

In this configuration epair0a would belong to the jail while epair0b would belong to the base FreeBSD host, such that they could communicate. But how to setup connectivity? I had a lot of options to have the jails connect outside, including:

• Being on the same subnet (192.168.1.0/24)
• Being on a separate VLAN from the rest of the network (might be the long-term plan)
• Have a single VLAN, have legacy IPv4 addresses identifiably different for ease, but have a single IPv6 network. I opted for this for now. Its simple and works.

This means creating an if_bridge(4) and attaching the network interface card, in my case an em(4) card and epairXb. Any frame to the bridge is relayed to the relevant epair(4). (Note, this not a route). I set my jail IP range as 192.168.100.0/24, just for organizational purposes. I also set the ISPs IP subnet to be 192.168.0.0/16, otherwise it would drop packets from 192.168.100.0/24. I am using TunnelBroker for my IPv6 traffic, as Verizon Fios does not offer IPv6. (As an side, this may be a good thing, since ISPs typically blocks ports, whereas TunnelBroker is completely unfiltered.) With that, Boom, network connectivity!

But…I wanted something repeatable per reboot, in the event of a power failure or loss. This meant I needed to go a little further. And here’s the complicated part. It took me about 4 hours to properly configure /etc/jail.conf:

/* Template */
host.hostname = "${name}.my.domain.prefix";

$ip4_route      = "192.168.100.1";
$ip6_route      = "IPV6PREFIX::1";

vnet;
vnet.interface = "epair${if}b";

persist;
allow.mount;
mount.devfs;
allow.sysvipc;

exec.prestart =  "ifconfig epair${if} create up";
exec.prestart += "ifconfig epair${if}a up";
exec.prestart += "ifconfig bridge0 addm epair${if}a up";

#exec.start += "/sbin/ifconfig epair${if}b up";
exec.start += "/sbin/ifconfig epair${if}b inet  ${ip4_addr}/24 up";
exec.start += "/sbin/ifconfig epair${if}b inet6 ${ip6_addr} prefixlen 64 up";

exec.start += "/sbin/route -4 add default ${ip4_route}";
exec.start += "/sbin/route -6 add default ${ip6_route}";

exec.start += "/sbin/ifconfig epair${if}b down";
exec.start += "/sbin/ifconfig epair${if}b up";

exec.start += "/bin/sh /etc/rc";

exec.stop = "/bin/sh /etc/rc.shutdown";
exec.poststop = "ifconfig bridge0 deletem epair${if}a";
exec.poststop = "ifconfig epair${if}a destroy";

irc {
        path = /usr/local/jail/irc;
	$if = "0";
	$ip4_addr 	= "192.168.100.2";
	$ip6_addr 	= "IPV6PREFIX::2";
}

www {
        path = /usr/local/jail/www;
	$if = "1";
	$ip4_addr 	= "192.168.100.3";
	$ip6_addr 	= "IPV6PREFIX::3";
}

In short, upon initialization, this creates a new epair(4) as specified by $if, attaches it to the jail, assigns the relevant IPv4/IPv6 information, and starts the init scripts. Shutdown is a mere detachment from the bridge and destruction of the epair(4). I also needed to assign the legacy IPv4 address to my em(4) interface.

Finally, I added the following sysctl(8) settings to /etc/sysctl.conf:

net.inet.ip.forwarding: 1
net.inet6.ip6.forwarding: 1

I did a lot of testing, reboot, restarting the jail, etc, and every time it worked. From the jails’ perspective, they didn’t even “know” they were migrated from one system to another. I wish I had tested if a FreeNAS plugin survived the migration, but I never used FreeNAS plugins anyways (what is this Plex I keep hearing about?).

Going forward, I plan:

• Place the jails on a properly separate VLAN to segment the network
• Consider use pfSense running in bhyve(8) to function as the Jail’s firewall of choice
• Look into vale(4) to replace if_bridge(4). But I can’t find any documentation on it!
• Figure out why TunnelBroker is failing on FreeBSD, but works just fine on my Linux Raspberry Pi – likely the fault of the ISP router.

My only regret: not installing HardenedBSD with LibreSSL.

Thoughts?

FreeBSD kernel Makefile variables SRCTOP and SYSDIR

I am currently writing a FreeBSD device driver and find myself lugging around the entire src. As you can imagine, this is quite large, especially if you are using any sort of version tracking system. So following the example here, I extracted out:

/usr/src/sys/modules/rtwn/
/usr/src/sys/dev/rtwn/

into

/home/user/src/rtwn/sys/modules/rtwn/
/home/user/src/rtwn/sys/dev/rtwn/

However, when I ran make(1) in the /home/user/src/rtwn/sys/modules/rtwn, I received an error saying:

make: don't know how to make r92c_attach.c. Stop

This error message is extremely non-descriptive of the actual issue. After reviewing the aforementioned functioning Makefiles, I identified that the SRCTOP and SYSDIR were not set correctly.

SRCTOP is the equivalent of /usr/src. If your src directory differs from /usr/src, such as $HOME/src/freebsd12src, you would set SYSDIR to $HOME/src/freebsd12src/.

SYSDIR is similar. Ordinarily it would be /usr/src/sys, but now it might be $HOME/src/freebsd12src/sys/.

This can be resolved two ways:

1. Command-line over-ride. I am doing this:
   make VARIABLE="something"
   For me, that would be:
   make SRCTOP=$HOME/src/freebsd12src/ SYSDIR=$HOME/src/freebsd12/sys/ -C sys/modules/rtwn load.
2. Permanent method: Edit the Makefile in question, in my case sys/modules/rtwn/Makefile.
   SRCTOP="/home/user/src/freebsd12src/"
SYSDIR="/home/user/src/freebsd12src/sys"

And of course, you have to have at least one correct src directory in order to compile a kernel object. This is pretty simple, but it confused me for a while. Hope this helps! Keep writing that BSD code!

Linux kernel code vs FreeBSD kernel code

Linux driver code contains some serious garbage. I heard this refrain, but I did not realize how bad it was until I looked at it myself. Here is just one example.

Device drivers typically read static memory, typically known as EEPROM or ROM, from the chip to identify version, hard-coded information, device capabilities, etc. These values are used throughout execution of the driver. The reading process is among the first things when the device is attached and powered on.

In the case of FreeBSD, after the kernel reads the ROM, it uses a struct pointer with all the variables pre-populated, and points it at the ROM blob data stored in memory. For example:

struct r88e_rom {
	uint8_t		reserved1[16];
	uint8_t		cck_tx_pwr[R88E_GROUP_2G];
	uint8_t		ht40_tx_pwr[R88E_GROUP_2G - 1];
	uint8_t		tx_pwr_diff;
	uint8_t		reserved2[156];
	uint8_t		channel_plan;
	uint8_t		crystalcap;
#define R88E_ROM_CRYSTALCAP_DEF		0x20

	uint8_t		thermal_meter;
	uint8_t		reserved3[6];
	uint8_t		rf_board_opt;
	uint8_t		rf_feature_opt;
	uint8_t		rf_bt_opt;
	uint8_t		version;
	uint8_t		customer_id;
	uint8_t		reserved4[3];
	uint8_t		rf_ant_opt;
	uint8_t		reserved5[6];
	uint16_t	vid;
	uint16_t	pid;
	uint8_t		usb_opt;
	uint8_t		reserved6[2];
	uint8_t		macaddr[IEEE80211_ADDR_LEN];
	uint8_t		reserved7[2];
	uint8_t		string[33];	/* "realtek 802.11n NIC" */
	uint8_t		reserved8[256];
} __packed;

_Static_assert(sizeof(struct r88e_rom) == R88E_EFUSE_MAP_LEN,
    "R88E_EFUSE_MAP_LEN must be equal to sizeof(struct r88e_rom)!");

Notice the assertion at the bottom, which ensures that the ROM struct’s size equals a pre-defined length. The code will fail to compile if this assertion is not valid. Later, the kernel will instantiate a struct pointer and point it to the ROM, stored in the variable buf, as follows:

struct r88e_rom *rom = (struct r88e_rom *)buf;

Now, rom->channel_plan is set to the correct value. Simple.

Unfortunately, this is not how the same code is written on Linux. As mentioned, the Linux driver also begins by reading the ROM blob and storing it in a value called hwinfo. But rather than creating an equivalent struct pointer, the Linux code uses offset values of the ROM on an as-needed basis. For example, the driver reads the channel_plan as follows:

rtlefuse->eeprom_version = *(u16 *)&hwinfo[params[7]];

In this example, params[7] comes from a list of ROM offsets values set in the previous calling function. (That alone made tracing difficult.) The rtlefuse->eeprom_version is now the same as FreeBSD’s rom->version. This manual process repeats for every variable in the ROM.

While that may be just annoying and require a negligible bit more CPU power, this is not be a problem if it was done all in one place. But instead, the driver reads from the hwinfo blob on a seemingly as-needed during execution. And because these as-needed instances are during normal execution, the driver reads-in the same static value from hwinfo every a simple WiFi function occurs, such as changing the channel.

Okay, but even that might not be too difficult…right? Here’s the real kicker.

Sometimes, the driver works by using incrementing offsets from the ROM blob. For example, consider at read_power_value_fromprom (in drivers/net/wireless/realtek/rtlwifi/hw.c). It initializes eeaddr as a u32 (uint32_t), then assigns it with the offset value EEPROM_TX_PWR_INX. So far so good. But then, rather than using new offsets for every successive value, it increments the eeaddr value in multiple doubly-nested for-loops. Here is a simplified version of the code:

for (rfpath = 0 ; rfpath < MAX_RF_PATH ; rfpath++) {
		/*2.4G default value*/
		for (group = 0 ; group < MAX_CHNL_GROUP_24G; group++) { pwrinfo24g->index_cck_base[rfpath][group] =
			  hwinfo[eeaddr++];
			if (pwrinfo24g->index_cck_base[rfpath][group] == 0xFF)
				pwrinfo24g->index_cck_base[rfpath][group] =
				  0x2D;
		}
}

Notice the line hwinfo[eeaddr++]! Merely reading in that variable changes the offset. Its the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle equivalent of code. This is a cleaned-up version of the 188-line function. The actual function has 6 nested for-loops, some with if-statements, each incrementing the eeaddr parameter as they go along.

Why would anyone do it this way? You are needlessly using up the CPU, making the code difficult to follow, repeatedly reading in static values and making any minor modifications and re-ordering or re-structuring will essentially break the entire function.

And perhaps the worst offender is when 20 functions deep you are not even working with hwinfo anymore. You are working to a pointer to hwinfo that has been incremented God-knows where, with their own offsets that are near impossible to track down.

In my efforts to port this driver to FreeBSD, I literally resorted to printing out the entire ROM, manually finding the memory, and backing into the equivalent offset. Other bizarre code: I have seen if-conditions that are impossible to reach, misplaced code that should go in the previous function, code that does bits of a tasks, while another function does the entire task – so repeat code, unnecessarily repeated code, etc.

How does this make it into the Linux Kernel?

To be fair, this does not appear to be the fault of Larry Finger, who maintains this driver. This is the fault of Realtek, for vomiting this terrible driver in the first place, providing absolutely zero documentation and refusing to respond to any contact attempts.

I hope my FreeBSD port is cleaner and more performant!

Wasteful Government Spending

A few weeks back my boss called us all in and said, “We have left-over money on this contract I need to spend $1 million in the next two weeks”.
So we ordered a whole bunch of hardware and software – a $60,000 server, 2 smaller $6,000 servers, 4 NAS appliances, switches, about 40 $15k monitors, lots of software, two racks, switches, firewalls, etc.
We set all this up, setup an infrastructure, VLANing, configured everything.
The government just came in and said none of this was properly approved and it needs to be shutdown.
That’s $1 million wasted.

My dad said the ATF was the most wasteful government agency he ever worked for. He said they once ordered hundreds of high-end radios (the MSRP was $2,000), warehoused them, never used them for 10 years, and then sold them on the open market.

This is why we are in debt. Programs are right, but spending is insane.

Switched from Ubuntu-based to Fedora

tl;dr: Fedora’s debugging packages work, Ubuntu’s are out of date.

Linux = Linux = Linux, whether Arch or Slackware or Ubuntu or OpenSUSE or Linux from scratch as I once did (before there were instructions!). Unless and until the kernel forks and someone decides to modify the syscall table, they all use the same basic syscalls, they typically share the same basic libraries and core utilities, etc. They’re all the same.

Why did I use Ubuntu-based distributions? (Note: Not Debian) Because Ubuntu came pre-configured with all the things I did not care to learn or manually configure: ACPI, firmware, X11, a pretty WM theme, etc. I did not particularly care whether I was running Mint, Elementary, Ubuntu MATE or basic Ubuntu (except Unity…nah). As long as it did not do strange things like remove /sbin/ifconfig or have a radically different file structure than I was used to. I felt at home with knowing where the standard file paths were, and knew how to administer my machine. Their package repository was pretty solid. It had almost everything I wanted – and what little was not on it was typically available in Debian-package format. The broader Linux community effectively standardized on this package format. This is crucial. Debian’s apt and FreeBSD’s pkg are in my muscle-memory at this point.

Literally one thing pushed me over: Ubuntu’s SystemTap was broken. Utterly broken!

I got into OS-level programming, specifically, porting a Linux WiFi driver to FreeBSD. I wanted to use SystemTap, Linux’s answer to DTrace, to help understand what is going on during live execution. But SystemTap does not work on Ubuntu – at least currently.

But wait, I thought Linux = Linux = Linux and programs from 20 years ago will still work. Why does SystemTap fail?

SystemTap works by producing C code for a kernel module, compiling it and loading it into memory. Sometime ago, the kernel team changed the get_user_pages() kernel API call. This meant that any code compiled against the old function definition failed. I encountered this in the professional space when the VMWare kernel modules failed to build and I hacked it until it worked. (They think I’m a wizard now). I was on Kernel 4.10 but the version of systemtap Ubuntu used was nearly 2 years old. This meant no one from the Ubuntu team was using it.

I submitted a bug report and installed Fedora 26.

SystemTap was developed by Red Hat and was trivial to get working under Fedora. And while not every single package is available (Bitcoin, Steam thus far), there is enough that moving over was trivial. Also, they come in Cinnamon, which I prefer, with a pretty theme. And it provides a clean terminal out-of-the-box. Which I need. (I would rather use stock XFCE if their terminal was clean than fully-loaded CentOS with an ugly terminal)

dnf took a little getting used to, but a hop-over from apt. So whatever on that front….

I would be willing to try OpenSUSE again, but the latest time I did, they got rid of /sbin/ifconfig for /sbin/ip, which is unacceptable. Silly, perhaps…Does it come in Cinammon? What does it offer? Are the packages as clean and up to date? I may never know, unless another business-need arises. I do not care to run any of these “hardware” distributions, like Arch. I paid my Linux dues around kernel 2.2 on Slackware and its time to move on from that.

Thoughts?

But look, if you’re 99% of the Linux world, any specific distribution is trivial. Pick one and go with it. Unless you’re doing very specific tasks like me, it really does not matter what you use. So stop Distro Hoping!

Anticipating questions from the “modern” Pakistanis

I am (was, it happened) scheduled to give an “Islamic Talk” before a group of largely non-practicing Muslims who are doing a fundraising dinner for Pakistan. How unfortunate of an audience that I was selected to give this talk. I do not mean this to be humble, I mean that sincerely, if they knew how dark and empty my inner-soul was, they be shocked. However, I was authorized by a Shaykh and maybe at least my outward can be of some benefit.

I know this crowd. They tend to have a fairly hostile approach towards outwardly religious people. I once wore a pakol and pashtun clothing (I am Pashtun) and a woman came up to me and asked me “Are you from the Taliban?” It was fairly rude, because she didn’t even greet me or know who I was. When I said no, mostly in shock, she said “okay, then you can stay”. It was worse because I am very much not cultural, so to have my fledgling expression attacked was disheartening. But I won’t play the victim.

Anyways, before any talk that I present, on any topic, I practice in my car. I also anticipate the sorts of questions that people will ask me afterwards. In particular with this audience, I anticipate someone coming to me and saying that they like Islam, but these Mullahs who study in madrassas are all intellectually backwards and come to foolish conclusions.

I plan to basically criticize modernity, but not do it from a position of ignorance.

Modernists are a very confused group of people. They differ on basic points of morality that I bet even you would disagree with. For example, did you know that they no longer say there is just male or female? Want me to justify it for you from their perspective? (Engage them in a little bit of back and forth, make points they cannot refute).

You think you’re being “modern”? All you’re doing is being a laughable imitation of European culture. Your sleeveless shalwar kameez is not “modern”, its just not Pakistani.

Do you think you’re being educated? Auntie, I have a Masters degree. I’m more educated than you.

Did you know that in modern society, men do not protect women? Men have no obligation towards their wives at all. After all, we’re all just people who happen to have different different biology.

You think technology is so great? Did you know that technological advancement has been slowing down? Most of what we have is basically implementation of existing technologies. The basic principles are the same.

You think we are a golden age of physics? Lets take physics. You argue that physics is a glory to our knowledge and insight. But in modern physics, you have two irreconcilable theories that both explain the world and stand up to empiric observation. How can this be? Similarly, every 100 years or so the entire scientific paradigm changes. And in every period, it is presumed that its current conclusions of science is eternal truth. Then those eternal truths change!

You need to re-evaluate the way you look at the world. This European idolization is backwards.

Custom Kernel Modules for Chromebook

Note: I wrote this about a year and a half ago, but I refer to it all the time. Hopefully the instructions have not changed too much! Enjoy!

I recently purchased a Chromebook. It’s great, it symbolizes the direction the PC market should head – inexpensive, low-powered ARM processor, defense in depth resistance to malware and simple for non-technical users. And with crouton, it functions quite cleanly as a Debian-based workstation.

With its simplicity and low price, there are certain key features that are lacking in the stripped down Linux kernel that can make it frustrating for a power-user. Unfortunately, Chromium addons have not or cannot satisfy some tasks that require kernel-level functionality. Even in crouton, you may find your ability limited to the user-space. Those looking for casual additions, recompiling the kernel may seem like daunting over-kill. Instead, compiling and inserting a single module may serve as an apt alternative. In this guide, I will explain how to compile a custom kernel module to add additional functionality to your Chromebook and how to circumvent the built-in security mechanisms that prevent you from adding into the kernel-space.. This guide is specifically written for an ARM-based CPU using kernel 3.10.18 for the CIFS (SMB) module, but can be trivially ported to any other architecture, kernel and module.

Compiling the Kernel Module

As mentioned, Chromium OS is a stripped down version of Linux. Therefore, you should be able to compile and dynamically link kernel modules from the stock kernel into Chromium.

Per Google’s documentation, you must compile the kernel and modules on an x86_64 CPU, even if you will be compiling an ARM or 32-bit x86 module. This is possible thanks to GNU C Compiler’s cross-platform capability. The documentation also specifies using Ubuntu, but it worked just fine on my Debian 8 workstation.

If you have not already done so, install git, subversion and perform the basic configurations:

sudo apt-get install git subversion
git config --global user.email “name@domain.tld”
git config --global user.name "Your Name"

Google manages its various git repositories with wrapper depot_tools, a custom git wrapper. You can clone the associated git repository and set your PATH environmental variable to include the wrapper scripts as follows.

git clone https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/tools/depot_tools.git

export PATH=`pwd`/depot_tools:"$PATH"

Next, make a directory where your Chromium OS build will reside, download the Chromium source, and synchronize it to the latest updates. This take around 30 minutes to complete.

mkdir chromiumos && cd chromiumos
repo init -u https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/manifest.git
repo sync

Once completed, you will need to download the cross-platform SDK environment, build the dependencies and enter a chroot(1) environment. This will take another 30 minutes.

cros_sdk

Now that you are inside the chroot(1) environment, you need to specify the hardware configuration for your Chromebook device, either x86-generic, amd64-generic or arm-generic. You can determine your architecture by running uname -m on your Chromebook. For my ARM-based CPU, I did the following:

export BOARD=arm-generic

Now you must prepare the core packages associated with your board.

./setup_board --board=${BOARD}
./build_packages --board=${BOARD}

Change directory to ~/trunk/src/third_party/kernel/ and then to whichever subdirectory is associated with your kernel (ie, v3.10 for 3.10.18). You can determine your kernel version by running uname -r on your Chromebook.

Next, we will need to tell the kernel which hardware platform you are on and start with the base configuration of the kernel. A list the options of base configurations by running find ./chromeos/config. In my case I am using NVIDIA’s Tegra motherboard, which is ./chromeos/config/armel/chromeos-tegra.flavour.config, so I use chromeos-tegra as follows:

./chromeos/scripts/prepareconfig chromeos-tegra

If you are compiling for a non x86_64 CPU, set the architecture and compiler settings as follows:

export ARCH=arm
export CROSS_COMPILE=armv7a-cros-linux-gnueabi-

This next portion is the same as compiling any other kernel module. Configure the kernel by running make menuconfig

Select whichever controls you would like to install and save. Once completed you will have a .config file that corresponds to your hardware. Since we are only compiling the kernel modules, you can either run make modules to compile all kernel modules, or make fs/cifs/cifs.ko to build only a specific module. I prefer the former because your module may require other dependencies in other modules, such as with crypto/md4.ko for cifs. You can verify that the file was built for the right architecture by running file fs/cifs/cifs.ko. Great! On to inserting the module!

ChromiumOS’s Security Mechanisms

ChromeOS is the official signed release of ChromiumOS, which is what you run in developer mode. Even in developer mode, Google implemented multiple defensive mechanisms to slow down a would-be attacker from gaining access the underlying system. To protect the kernel, Google utilized the Linux Security Module (LSM), which validates files from the root partition against a list of cryptographic hash values stored in the kernel, thereby preventing an attacker from loading a malicious kernel modules. In effect, the only way to insert a kernel module is to have it stored on the root partition. But by default, the root partition is set to read-only, so you cannot simply move a file to the root partition and load it.

Therefore, we must disable the root partition verification running the following script.

sudo /usr/share/vboot/bin/make_dev_ssd.sh --remove_rootfs_verification --partitions 4

Now, reboot the machine and from ChromiumOS remount the root partition to be read-writeable, as follows:

sudo mount -o remount,rw /

From here, you should be able to simply insert the kernel module with insmod. Now, you can install
Enjoy!

Draw this shape without picking up your pen

For many years, while in a meeting or in a moment of free time, I have tried to draw this shape without picking up my pen or drawing over the same two points twice.

At best I would get 1 line away, but never completed the shape.

I wanted to know if it was even possible. So I wrote some python code to try every possible combination.

But, the code is below.

#!/usr/bin/env python3

import copy
import sys

lines = {
        1:[2,3],
        2:[1,3,4,6,7],
        3:[1,2,5,6,7],
        4:[2,5,6,7],
        5:[3,7],
        6:[2,3,4,7,8],
        7:[2,3,5,6,8],
        8:[6,7]
    }

def check(cstate):
    for offset in lines:
        if sorted(lines[offset]) != sorted(cstate[offset]):
            return
    print("Solution!")
    sys.exit()

def iteration(clocation, cstate):

    if len(cstate) == 8:
        check(cstate)

    for ilocation in lines[clocation]:
        nstate = copy.deepcopy(cstate)
        y = nstate.get(clocation, [])
        x = nstate.get(ilocation, [])

        if ilocation in y:
            continue

        y = y + [ilocation]
        x = x + [clocation]

        nstate[clocation] = y
        nstate[ilocation] = x
        iteration(ilocation, nstate)

iteration(1, {})
iteration(2, {})

The lines list is an abstraction of the possible points in the shape and where they can connect to. Point 1 is the top point, 2 and 3 are the top corners of the square, 4 and 5 are the far left and right points of the triangle, etc.

Starting at points 1 and 2. Point 1 is functionally the same as points 4, 5 and 8, while point 2 is the same as 2, 3, 6 and 7. No need for unnecessary iterations. Give its current location, the code recursively builds lines to all possible connection points. If no points are available, it just returns.

It breaks when all possible links are met, as seen by the check function. This is done by checking if every point is touched at least one, and then iterating through all points to see if that point is connected to every possible other line.

Turns out it is not possible.

Sucks.

Atheists Cannot Make a Moral Claim

Yes, I mean it. Atheists cannot be moral.

Why? Because if they applied their lack-of-beliefs (for lack of a better words) to its logical conclusions, they would recognize that morality is not objective. It cannot be measured, observed, or even speculated about. It is a non-rational concept.

Typically, atheists appeal to things like “universally” accepted human rights or notions like “harm no one and do as you please”. But these concepts are arbitrarily, they have no basis. They do not rest upon anything tangible or objectively measurable.

Most atheists presume that, absent of religion, we will all fall into a secular utopia, where humanistic values are self-evident and adopted by all. But this isn’t true. Removing religion does not default to humanism, in fact it does not default to anything.

For this reason, when I hear “that is wrong” from an atheist, my immediate question is “wrong based by what standard?” And I never get an answer.

There only thing holding morality is the last vestiges of Christianity – although, even that is on a sharp decline.

May the “New Atheists” live to see the results of their project.

FreeBSD and Linux Remote Dual Booting

The following is a quick and dirty guide on how to setup remote dual booting for FreeBSD (12.0-CURRENT) and Linux (Ubuntu 16.04). Granted, this method is slightly a hack, but it works and suits my needs.

Why remote dual-booting? I am currently developing a FreeBSD kernel module for a PCIe card. The device is supported on Linux and I am using the Linux implementation as documentation. As such, I find myself frequently rebooting into Linux to look printk() outputs, or booting into FreeBSD to test kernel code. This device is located at my house, and I typically work on it during my downtime at work.

Why not use Grub? I would have preferred Grub! But for whatever reason, Grub failed to install on FreeBSD. I do not know why, but even a very minimalistic attempt gave a non-descriptive error message.

efibootmgr? Any change I made with efibootmgr failed to survive a reboot. This is apparently a known problem. Also, this tool only exists on Linux, as FreeBSD does not seem to have an efibootmgr equivalent.

Ugh, so what do I do???

The solution I came up with was to manually swap EFI files on the EFI partition no an as-needed basis.

First, I went into the BIOS and disabled legacy BIOS booting, enabled EFI booting, and disabled secure booting.

Then, I installed Ubuntu. I had to manually create the partition tables, since by default the installer would consume the entire disk. However, this does not automatically create the EFI partition. So, you must manually create one. I set mine to 200MBs as the first partition. After installation, I booted up, mounted the /dev/sda1. I found that ubuntu had created /EFI/ubuntu/grubx64.efi and other related files. Great!

Next, I installed FreeBSD and while manually setting up the partition tables, FreeBSD auto-created an EFI partition. One already exists, so I safely deleted it, and proceeded with the rest of the install. Right before rebooting, I mounted /dev/ada0p1 (sda1 on Linux) as /boot.local/ and /dev/da0p1 as /boot.installer/. I then copied /boot.installer/EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI too /boot.local/EFI/BOOT/EFIBOOT/BOOTX64.EFI (I think I had to re-create EFI/BOOT, I’m forgetting off-hand). Then I rebooted.

When I rebooted the machine, Ubuntu still came up. This is because Ubuntu edits the EFI boot order and places ubuntu as the first partition. Ordinarily you should be able to use efibootmgr here to boot into FreeBSD and use the non-existent FreeBSD equivalent to boot back, but with the lack of that option, I mounted the EFI partition (/dev/sda1) as /boot/efi, and when I wanted boot into FreeBSD, I renamed /boot/efi/EFI/ubuntu/grubx64.efi to ubuntu.efi and then copied /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI to /boot/efi/EFI/ubuntu/grubx64.efi. When I rebooted, FreeBSD came back up! Then on the FreeBSD side, I mounted /dev/sda1 to /boot/efi and did copied /boot/efi/EFI/ubuntu/ubuntu.efi to /boot/efi/EFI/ubuntu/grubx64.efi.

And that’s it! I can now remotely boot back and forth between the two systems.

Ugly? Yes. But it does the job.

Linux could fix this problem by debugging their efibootmgr utility and FreeBSD could fix this by having an efibootmgr equivalent at all.

Thoughts?