northstar 0.5.0

Northstar is an container runtime for Linux targetting embedded systems
northstar-0.5.0 is not a library.

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About

Northstar is an open source embedded container runtime optimized for speed and resource usage. Northstar combines several standard Linux process isolation and sandboxing features to gain a medium level of isolation between containers/processes. The Northstar runtime consists out of two parts: The container handling and process spawning. To build the most efficient and robust solution, Northstar is completely developed in Rust, a language designed to afford the performance of C/C++ without their footguns.

Containers

Northstar containers are called NPK. The NPK format is heavily inspired by the Android APEX technology. A Northstar container contains:

  • Root filesystem in a Squashfs file system image (optionally compressed)
  • Northstar manifest with process configuration and container meta information

Northstar containers can be created with the Northstar utility sextant.

Processes

Started Northstar contains are Linux processes. The attributes and environment for a spawned container is described in a container manifest which is included in a NPK. The container manifest allows to configure the following Linux subsystems and features:

  • Arguments passed to the containers init
  • Environment variables set in the container context
  • User and group id
  • Mount namespace
  • PID namespace
  • Cgroups memory (optional)
  • CGroups CPU (optional)
  • Additional bind mounts (optional)
  • Capabilities (optional)
  • Stdout/stderr handling (optional)
  • Seccomp configuration (optional)

Comparison

  • Northstar containers are not portable and are tailored to a known system (uid/gid/mounts...)
  • TODO

Quickstart

Northstar is written in Rust. The minimum supported Rust version (MSRV) is 1.59. Rust is best installed and managed by the rustup tool. Rust has a 6-week rapid release process and supports a great number of platforms, so there are many builds of Rust available at any time. rustup manages these builds in a consistent way on every platform that Rust supports, enabling installation of Rust from the beta and nightly release channels as well as support for additional cross-compilation targets.

Building Northstar is limited to Linux systems and runs on Linux systems only! The Northstar build generates bindings for various system libraries and uses the mksquashfs command line tool for NPK creation.

Install build dependencies on Debian based distributions by running

sudo apt-get install build-essential libclang1 squashfs-tools

The squashfs-tools are required in version 4.5 or higher.

Northstar comes with a set of examples that demonstrate most of the Northstar features. Building the example binaries and packing its corresponding NPKs is done via:

./examples/build_examples.sh

Building and starting the example runtime main is triggered by a

cargo run --bin northstar

The Northstar workspace configuration configures a cargo runner that invokes the runtimes example main binary with super user rights.

Use the nstar utility to inspect and modify the runtimes state e.g.

cargo build --release --bin northstar-nstar 
...
./target/release/northstar-nstar --help 
...
> ./target/release/northstar-nstar -j start hello-world
{"Response":{"Err":{"StartContainerStarted":{"name":"hello-world","version":"0.0.1"}}}}
> ./target/release/northstar-nstar -j kill hello-world
{"Response":{"Ok":null}}

Configuration

The example executable northstar reads a configuration file that represents northstar_runtime::runtime::config::Config.

# Directory where containers are mounted
run_dir = "target/northstar/run"
# Directory for `persist` mounts of containers
data_dir = "target/northstar/data"
# Log directory for debug logs and traces
log_dir = "target/northstar/logs"
# Top level cgroup name
cgroup = "northstar"
# Event loop buffer size
event_buffer_size = 256
# Notification buffer size
notification_buffer_size = 64
# Device mapper device timeout
device_mapper_device_timeout = "2s"
# Token validity
token_validity = "1m"
# Loop device timeout
loop_device_timeout = "2s"

# Debug TCP console on localhost with full access
[consoles."tcp://localhost:4200"]
permissions = "full"

# Start a `strace -p PID ...` instance after a container is started.
# The execution of the application is deferred until strace is attached.
[debug.strace]
# Configure the output of the strace instance attached to a started
# application. "file" for a file named strace-<PID>-name.log or "log"
# to forward the strace output to the runtimes log.
output = "log"
# Optional additional flags passed to `strace`
flags = "-f -s 256"
# Optional path to the strace binary
path = /bin/strace
# Include the runtime system calls prior to exeve
include_runtime = true

# Start a `perf record -p PID -o LOG_DIR/perf-PID-NAME.perf FLAGS` instance
# after a container is started.
[debug.perf]
# Optional path to the perf binary
path = "/bin/perf"
# Optional additional flags passed to `perf`
flags = ""

# NPK Repository `memory` configuration. This is a not persistent in memory repository
[repositories.memory]
key = "examples/northstar.pub"
type = "mem"

# NPK Repository `default` in `dir`
[repositories.default]
# Mount the containers from this repository on runtime start. Default: false
mount_on_start = true
key = "examples/northstar.pub"
type = { fs = { dir = "target/northstar/repository" }}

Repositories

A repository is an entity that is able to store NPK's at runtime. Repositories are configured at initialization time of the runtime. The repository configuration cannot be changed at runtime. Each configured repository has a unique identifier id. Currently two types of repositories exists: fs and mem.

The fs type repositories are backed by file system storage. The configured directory (dir) is used to store NPK's. If this directory is read only, no additional install requests can be performed at runtime. If a fs repository configuration contains a key field, the repository is treated as "verified". The configured key is used to verify the signature of the containers manifest and it's verity root hash. When the container is mounted, the verity root hash is used to configure a device mapper verity devices that is mounted instead of the contained Squashfs image.

Repositories without a key are treated as trustful sources. No signature checks are performed. The root filesystems are mounted without verity. A possibly present verity root hash with in the NPK is ignored. Trusted repositories are should on verified and read only file systems.

Set the mount_on_start flag of a fs repository to true to make the runtime mount all containers present at startup. The mount operations are done in parallel.

The mem repositories uses memfd for it's storage. No data is persistently stored during an installation of a container. Obviously it's not possible to have NPK's preinstalled in a mem repository at runtime startup. The mem repositories are mainly used for testing.

Console

Northstar uses JSON to encode the messages shared with clients. The messages are newline delimited. This is a common approach that facilitates clients being implemented in any programming language. However, Northstar as a library, provides a convenient Client type that can be used for a simpler client implementation using Rust. Northstar interacts with clients through a TCP socket bound to each address configured in runtime::config::Config::console.

  • TODO: Move client guide part to a README-console.md etc
  • TODO: Update guide/src/client/connect with the connect sequence.
  • TODO: Client API docs

Integration tests

Integration tests start a runtime instance and assert on log output of container of notification sent from the runtime. The testsuite is invoked by the Rust test system:

cargo test -p northstar-tests

and are executed by the project CI.

Portability

Northstar makes extensive use of Linux Kernel features and runs on Linux systems only. Northstar is tested on the architectures

  • aarch64-linux-android
  • aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu
  • aarch64-unknown-linux-musl
  • x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu aka Linux Desktop

Northstar cannot be run on 32 bit systems! In order to verify that all needed Kernel features are available, either run the check_conf script or manually compare the target's kernel configuration with the CONFIG_ entries in the check_conf.sh script.

TODO: List required CONFIG_ items here. The check_config script runs on *Android only

Internals

Container launch sequence

Manifest Format

The manifest format is described here.

Mounts

The options of a mount entry in the manifest are optional. To apply one of the mount options rw, noexec, nosuid, nodev or rec it must be explicitly set.

The default for a bind and tmpfs mount is read only. Mounts that are rw are usually hard to handle from an integration point of view (SELinux and permissions). Nevertheless - here's the example how to mount the host systems /tmp directory to /tmp. The bind mount is not remounted ro. Note that ro bind mounts require two mount operations.

/tmp:
  type: bind
  host: /tmp
  options: rw, nosuid, noexec

Resource containers cannot be mounted rw. The filesystem of resource containers is squashfs which is not writeable. Resource containers can be mounted without the noexec flag in order to provide binaries.

Example resource mount with the executable flag set but nodev and nosuid set (optional):

/bin/java:
  type: resource
  name: java13
  version: 
  dir: /
  options: nodev, nosuid

Example tmpfs mount. tmpfs mounts are never ro ;-):

/tmpfs:
  type: tmpfs
  size: 20M

Mounts of type persist are support from the runtime for containers. The runtime takes care to mount a read and writeable directory into the containers fs. The directory is dedicated to this container. The directory is not shared with other containers.

TODO: When are the directories removed? See #560

/data:
  type: persist

To provide a minimal /dev file system to the container, add a mount entry of type dev.

/dev:
  type: dev

to the manifest. The /dev is populated with only:

  • full
  • null
  • random
  • tty
  • urandom
  • zero

If the container binary needs more devices, bind mount the host systems /dev.

Roadmap

See the open issues for a list of proposed features and known issues).

Questions and Help

Ask us questions about anything related to Northstar! To add your question, create an issue in this repository.

Just a few guidelines to remember before you ask a question:

  • Ensure your question hasn't already been answered. If it has been answered but do es not satisfy you, feel free to comment in the issue and we will re-open it.
  • Use a succinct title and description. Add as much information as possible e.g manifests, npks, applications...
  • If your question has already been asked and answered adequately, please add a thumbs-up (or the emoji of your choice!) to the issue. This helps us in identifying common problems that people usually face.
  • Lastly, be civil, polite and patient. :)

Contributing

Contributions are what make the open source community such an amazing place to learn, inspire, and create. Any contributions you make are greatly appreciated.

  1. Fork the Project
  2. Create your Feature Branch (git checkout -b feature/AmazingFeature)
  3. Commit your Changes (git commit -m 'Add some AmazingFeature')
  4. Push to the Branch (git push origin feature/AmazingFeature)
  5. Open a Pull Request

License

Distributed under the Apache 2.0 License. See LICENSE for more information.

Contact

Project Link: https://github.com/esrlabs/northstar

Acknowledgements