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Hacking on systemd
Contributing
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Hacking on systemd

We welcome all contributions to systemd. If you notice a bug or a missing feature, please feel invited to fix it, and submit your work as a GitHub Pull Request (PR).

Please make sure to follow our Coding Style when submitting patches. Also have a look at our Contribution Guidelines.

When adding new functionality, tests should be added. For shared functionality (in src/basic/ and src/shared/) unit tests should be sufficient. The general policy is to keep tests in matching files underneath src/test/, e.g. src/test/test-path-util.c contains tests for any functions in src/basic/path-util.c. If adding a new source file, consider adding a matching test executable. For features at a higher level, tests in src/test/ are very strongly recommended. If that is not possible, integration tests in test/ are encouraged.

Please also have a look at our list of code quality tools we have setup for systemd, to ensure our codebase stays in good shape.

Please always test your work before submitting a PR. For many of the components of systemd testing is straightforward as you can simply compile systemd and run the relevant tool from the build directory.

For some components (most importantly, systemd/PID 1 itself) this is not possible, however. In order to simplify testing for cases like this we provide a set of mkosi build files directly in the source tree. mkosi is a tool for building clean OS images from an upstream distribution in combination with a fresh build of the project in the local working directory. To make use of this, please install mkosi from the GitHub repository. mkosi will build an image for the host distro by default. Currently, the latest github commit is required. mkosi also requires systemd v253 (unreleased) or newer. If systemd v253 is not available, mkosi will automatically use executables from the systemd build directory if it's executed from the systemd repository root directory. First, run mkosi genkey to generate a key and certificate to be used for secure boot and verity signing. After that is done, it is sufficient to type mkosi in the systemd project directory to generate a disk image you can boot either in systemd-nspawn or in a UEFI-capable VM:

$ sudo mkosi boot # nspawn still needs sudo for now

or:

$ mkosi qemu

Every time you rerun the mkosi command a fresh image is built, incorporating all current changes you made to the project tree.

If you want to do a local build without mkosi, most distributions also provide very simple and convenient ways to install all development packages necessary to build systemd:

# Fedora
$ sudo dnf builddep systemd
# Debian/Ubuntu
$ sudo apt-get build-dep systemd
# Arch
$ sudo pacman -S asp
$ asp checkout systemd
$ cd systemd/trunk
$ makepkg -seoc

Putting this all together, here's a series of commands for preparing a patch for systemd:

# Install build dependencies (see above)
# Install mkosi from the github repository
$ git clone https://github.com/systemd/systemd.git
$ cd systemd
$ git checkout -b <BRANCH>        # where BRANCH is the name of the branch
$ vim src/core/main.c             # or wherever you'd like to make your changes
$ meson setup build -Danalyze=true -Drepart=true -Defi=true -Dbootloader=true -Dukify=true # configure the build
$ ninja -C build                  # build it locally, see if everything compiles fine
$ meson test -C build             # run some simple regression tests
$ cd ..
$ git clone https://github.com/systemd/mkosi.git
$ ln -s mkosi/bin/mkosi ~/.local/bin/mkosi # Make sure ~/.local/bin is in $PATH
$ cd systemd
$ mkosi                           # build the test image
$ mkosi qemu                      # boot up the test image in qemu
$ git add -p                      # interactively put together your patch
$ git commit                      # commit it
$ git push -u <REMOTE>            # where REMOTE is your "fork" on GitHub

And after that, head over to your repo on GitHub and click "Compare & pull request"

Happy hacking!

Templating engines in .in files

Some source files are generated during build. We use two templating engines:

{% raw %}

  • most files are rendered using jinja2, with {{VARIABLE}} and {% if … %}, {% elif … %}, {% else … %}, {% endif … %} blocks. {# … #} is a jinja2 comment, i.e. that block will not be visible in the rendered output. {% raw %} … {% endraw %}{{ '{' }}{{ '% endraw %' }}} creates a block where jinja2 syntax is not interpreted.

    See the Jinja Template Designer Documentation for details.

Please note that files for both template engines use the .in extension.

Developer and release modes

In the default meson configuration (-Dmode=developer), certain checks are enabled that are suitable when hacking on systemd (such as internal documentation consistency checks). Those are not useful when compiling for distribution and can be disabled by setting -Dmode=release.

Sanitizers in mkosi

See Testing systemd using sanitizers for more information on how to build with sanitizers enabled in mkosi.

Fuzzers

systemd includes fuzzers in src/fuzz/ that use libFuzzer and are automatically run by OSS-Fuzz with sanitizers. To add a fuzz target, create a new src/fuzz/fuzz-foo.c file with a LLVMFuzzerTestOneInput function and add it to the list in src/fuzz/meson.build.

Whenever possible, a seed corpus and a dictionary should also be added with new fuzz targets. The dictionary should be named src/fuzz/fuzz-foo.dict and the seed corpus should be built and exported as $OUT/fuzz-foo_seed_corpus.zip in tools/oss-fuzz.sh.

The fuzzers can be built locally if you have libFuzzer installed by running tools/oss-fuzz.sh. You should also confirm that the fuzzers can be built and run using the OSS-Fuzz toolchain:

path_to_systemd=...

git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/google/oss-fuzz
cd oss-fuzz

for sanitizer in address undefined memory; do
  for engine in libfuzzer afl honggfuzz; do
    ./infra/helper.py build_fuzzers --sanitizer "$sanitizer" --engine "$engine" \
       --clean systemd "$path_to_systemd"

    ./infra/helper.py check_build --sanitizer "$sanitizer" --engine "$engine" \
      -e ALLOWED_BROKEN_TARGETS_PERCENTAGE=0 systemd
  done
done

./infra/helper.py build_fuzzers --clean --architecture i386 systemd "$path_to_systemd"
./infra/helper.py check_build --architecture i386 -e ALLOWED_BROKEN_TARGETS_PERCENTAGE=0 systemd

./infra/helper.py build_fuzzers --clean --sanitizer coverage systemd "$path_to_systemd"
./infra/helper.py coverage --no-corpus-download systemd

If you find a bug that impacts the security of systemd, please follow the guidance in CONTRIBUTING.md on how to report a security vulnerability.

For more details on building fuzzers and integrating with OSS-Fuzz, visit:

Debugging binaries that need to run as root in vscode

When trying to debug binaries that need to run as root, we need to do some custom configuration in vscode to have it try to run the applications as root and to ask the user for the root password when trying to start the binary. To achieve this, we'll use a custom debugger path which points to a script that starts gdb as root using pkexec. pkexec will prompt the user for their root password via a graphical interface. This guide assumes the C/C++ extension is used for debugging.

First, create a file sgdb in the root of the systemd repository with the following contents and make it executable:

#!/bin/sh
exec pkexec gdb "$@"

Then, open launch.json in vscode, and set miDebuggerPath to ${workspaceFolder}/sgdb for the corresponding debug configuration. Now, whenever you try to debug the application, vscode will try to start gdb as root via pkexec which will prompt you for your password via a graphical interface. After entering your password, vscode should be able to start debugging the application.

For more information on how to set up a debug configuration for C binaries, please refer to the official vscode documentation here

Debugging systemd with mkosi + vscode

To simplify debugging systemd when testing changes using mkosi, we're going to show how to attach VSCode's debugger to an instance of systemd running in a mkosi image using QEMU.

To allow VSCode's debugger to attach to systemd running in a mkosi image, we have to make sure it can access the virtual machine spawned by mkosi where systemd is running. mkosi makes this possible via a handy SSH option that makes the generated image accessible via SSH when booted. Thus you must build the image with mkosi --ssh. The easiest way to set the option is to create a file 20-local.conf in mkosi.conf.d/ (in the directory you ran mkosi in) and add the following contents:

[Host]
Ssh=yes

Also make sure that the SSH agent is running on your system and that you've added your SSH key to it with ssh-add.

After rebuilding the image and booting it with mkosi qemu, you should now be able to connect to it by running mkosi ssh from the same directory in another terminal window.

Now we need to configure VSCode. First, make sure the C/C++ extension is installed. If you're already using a different extension for code completion and other IDE features for C in VSCode, make sure to disable the corresponding parts of the C/C++ extension in your VSCode user settings by adding the following entries:

"C_Cpp.formatting": "Disabled",
"C_Cpp.intelliSenseEngine": "Disabled",
"C_Cpp.enhancedColorization": "Disabled",
"C_Cpp.suggestSnippets": false,

With the extension set up, we can create the launch.json file in the .vscode/ directory to tell the VSCode debugger how to attach to the systemd instance running in our mkosi container/VM. Create the file, and possibly the directory, and add the following contents:

{
    "version": "0.2.0",
    "configurations": [
        {
            "type": "cppdbg",
            "program": "/usr/lib/systemd/systemd",
            "processId": "${command:pickRemoteProcess}",
            "request": "attach",
            "name": "systemd",
            "pipeTransport": {
                "pipeProgram": "mkosi",
                "pipeArgs": [
                    "-C",
                    "/path/to/systemd/repo/directory/on/host/system/",
                    "ssh"
                ],
                "debuggerPath": "/usr/bin/gdb"
            },
            "MIMode": "gdb",
            "sourceFileMap": {
                "/work/build/../src": {
                    "editorPath": "${workspaceFolder}",
                    "useForBreakpoints": false
                },
                "/work/build/*": {
                    "editorPath": "${workspaceFolder}/mkosi.builddir",
                    "useForBreakpoints": false
                }
            }
        }
    ]
}

Now that the debugger knows how to connect to our process in the container/VM and we've set up the necessary source mappings, go to the "Run and Debug" window and run the "systemd" debug configuration. If everything goes well, the debugger should now be attached to the systemd instance running in the container/VM. You can attach breakpoints from the editor and enjoy all the other features of VSCode's debugger.

To debug systemd components other than PID 1, set "program" to the full path of the component you want to debug and set "processId" to "${command:pickProcess}". Now, when starting the debugger, VSCode will ask you the PID of the process you want to debug. Run systemctl show --property MainPID --value <component> in the container to figure out the PID and enter it when asked and VSCode will attach to that process instead.

Debugging systemd-boot

During boot, systemd-boot and the stub loader will output messages like systemd-boot@0x0A and systemd-stub@0x0B, providing the base of the loaded code. This location can then be used to attach to a QEMU session (provided it was run with -s). See debug-sd-boot.sh script in the tools folder which automates this processes.

If the debugger is too slow to attach to examine an early boot code passage, the call to DEFINE_EFI_MAIN_FUNCTION() can be modified to enable waiting. As soon as the debugger has control, we can then run set variable wait = 0 or return to continue. Once the debugger has attached, setting breakpoints will work like usual.

To debug systemd-boot in an IDE such as VSCode we can use a launch configuration like this:

{
    "name": "systemd-boot",
    "type": "cppdbg",
    "request": "launch",
    "program": "${workspaceFolder}/build/src/boot/efi/systemd-bootx64.efi",
    "cwd": "${workspaceFolder}",
    "MIMode": "gdb",
    "miDebuggerServerAddress": ":1234",
    "setupCommands": [
        { "text": "shell mkfifo /tmp/sdboot.{in,out}" },
        { "text": "shell qemu-system-x86_64 [...] -s -serial pipe:/tmp/sdboot" },
        { "text": "shell ${workspaceFolder}/tools/debug-sd-boot.sh ${workspaceFolder}/build/src/boot/efi/systemd-bootx64.efi /tmp/sdboot.out systemd-boot.gdb" },
        { "text": "source /tmp/systemd-boot.gdb" },
    ]
}

Hacking on the kernel + systemd

If you're hacking on the kernel in tandem with systemd, you can clone a kernel repository in mkosi.kernel/ in the systemd repository, and mkosi will automatically build that kernel and install it into the final image. To prevent the distribution's kernel from being installed (which isn't necessary since we're building our own kernel), you can add the following snippets to mkosi.conf.d/20-local.conf:

(This snippet is for Fedora, the list of packages will need to be changed for other distributions)

[Distribution]
CacheInitrd=no

[Content]
BasePackages=conditional
Packages=systemd
         util-linux
         dracut