Ryan Houdek
1153c1a538
O_TMPFILE has a few minor problems that I have been thinking about for a
while. I just recently got reminded about this and remembered that most
problems get resolved by using memfd_create.
- O_TMPFILE is only supported on some filesystems.
- Supported filesystem must be the one mounted to the pathname being
opened.
- Only a minor inconvenience as tmpfs and all related filesystems
support this.
- An inode is actually created on whatever filesystem is backing the
folder.
- `/tmp/` must exist as a directory
- If this folder happened to not be mounted then these temporary
files wouldn't have been created.
- memfd_create doesn't have a folder that needs to exist.
- We were leaving the files open as read/write
- While we were rewinding the file offset, an misbehaving application
could have wrote garbage to the temp file.
- memfd sealing allows us to open the FD as RW and then seal its
capabilities, making it a read-only FD.
- We were leaking FDs opened with O_CLOEXEC
- We could have just opened the O_TMPFILE with O_CLOEXEC
- memfd also just supports this flag, so use it.
- No real issues, just nice to be sanitary here.
Overall this doesn't really change any behaviour, but it is nice to
cleanup some of the edges there.
FEX - Fast x86 emulation frontend
FEX allows you to run x86 and x86-64 binaries on an AArch64 host, similar to qemu-user and box86. It has native support for a rootfs overlay, so you don't need to chroot, as well as some thunklibs so it can forward things like GL to the host. FEX presents a Linux 5.0 interface to the guest, and supports both AArch64 and x86-64 as hosts. FEX is very much work in progress, so expect things to change.
Quick start guide
For Ubuntu 20.04, 21.04, 21.10, 22.04
Execute the following command in the terminal to install FEX through a PPA.
curl --silent https://raw.githubusercontent.com/FEX-Emu/FEX/main/Scripts/InstallFEX.py --output /tmp/InstallFEX.py && python3 /tmp/InstallFEX.py && rm /tmp/InstallFEX.py
This command will walk you through installing FEX through a PPA, and downloading a RootFS for use with FEX.
Ubuntu PPA is updated with our monthly releases.
For everyone else
Please see Building FEX.
Getting Started
FEX has been tested to build and run on ARMv8.0, ARMv8.1+, and x86-64(AVX or newer) hardware. ARMv7 and older x86 hardware will not work. Expected operating system usage is Linux. FEX has been tested with Ubuntu 20.04, 20.10, and 21.04. Also Arch Linux.
On AArch64 hosts the user MUST have an x86-64 RootFS Creating a RootFS.
Navigating the Source
See the Source Outline for more information.
Building FEX
Follow the guide on the official FEX-Emu Wiki here.
RootFS generation
AArch64 hosts require a rootfs for running applications. Follow the guide on the wiki page for seeing how to set up the rootfs from scratch https://wiki.fex-emu.com/index.php/Development:Setting_up_RootFS
