faces-pfm

A reference implementation of the faces::AbsPageFrameManager trait.

faces-pfm provides a concrete, in‑memory page frame manager for operating system kernels built with the faces framework. It uses a static array of page frame metadata, initialised from the memory map provided by the Limine boot protocol, and implements all the required operations to manage physical page frames and their associated flags.

Overview

The faces crate defines a set of traits to unify low‑level system interfaces. One of these traits, AbsPageFrameManager, describes an abstract page frame manager that can:

Set, clear and check per‑frame flags.
Query the minimum and maximum valid page frame numbers.
Determine whether a given page frame is present.
Provide mutable access to a page frame’s metadata.

faces-pfm implements this trait with a concrete, spinlock‑protected array of PageFrame metadata entries, making it suitable for use in a real kernel environment that follows the Limine boot protocol.

Features

Per‑frame metadata: tracks flags, order, linked‑list pointers, reference count, and a kernel virtual address.
Flag management: full support for the standard page flags (LOCKED, DIRTY, UPTODATE, LRU, etc.).
Limine integration: uses the Limine memory map to discover available physical memory and locate a suitable region for the metadata array.
Thread‑safe access: each PageFrame is protected by a spin::Mutex, providing safe concurrent access.
no_std support: can be used in freestanding kernel environments.

Usage

Add this to your Cargo.toml:

[dependencies]
faces-pfm = "0.1.0"

If you are building a kernel that does not have access to the standard library, enable the no_std feature:

[dependencies]
faces-pfm = { version = "0.1", default-features = false, features = ["no_std"] }

Initialisation

Before any page frame operations can be performed, the manager must be initialised once, typically early in the kernel boot process:

use faces_pfm::PFM;

fn kernel_main() {
    // The PFM singleton must be initialised before use
    PFM.init();

    // From now on, the manager is ready to use
}

The init function will:

Detect total physical memory and compute the number of page frames.
Find a suitable region of physical memory for the metadata array.
Map that region into the kernel’s virtual address space.
Initialise each metadata entry with default values.
Mark all frames as RESERVED, then clear that flag for every usable memory region reported by Limine.
Finally, mark the frames occupied by the metadata array itself as RESERVED.

Managing page frames

Once initialised, you can use the PFM singleton to perform operations on page frames by their physical frame number (PFN):

use faces_pfm::{PageFlags, PFM};
use faces::to;

fn example() {
    let pfn = to(42);   // PFN 42 – a 4 KiB page at physical address 0x2a000

    // Set some flags
    PFM.set_flags(pfn, PageFlags::LOCKED);
    PFM.set_flags(pfn, PageFlags::DIRTY);

    // Check if a flag is set
    if PFM.check_flags(pfn, PageFlags::LOCKED) {
        // ...
    }

    // Clear a flag
    PFM.clear_flags(pfn, PageFlags::DIRTY);

    // Obtain a mutable guard to the page frame metadata
    {
        let mut guard = PFM.get(pfn);
        guard.order = 2;          // allocate a 16 KiB block (2^2 pages)
        guard.rc = 1;
    }
}

Test suite

faces-pfm includes a unit test suite that runs without hardware dependencies. The tests set up a mock frame array and verify the flag and guard operations. To run the tests:

cargo test

Dependencies

faces – provides the abstract trait interfaces.
limine – used to obtain the memory map from the bootloader.
spin – provides the Mutex type for synchronised access to each PageFrame.
log – used for debug output during initialisation.
bitflags – supports the definition of PageFlags.

License

This crate is licensed under either the MIT License or the Apache License, Version 2.0, at your option.

faces-pfm 0.1.2