TODO: This document is outdated and needs a proper review.
PAL Host ABI is the interface used by Gramine to interact with its host. It is translated into the host's native ABI (e.g. system calls for UNIX) by a layer called the Platform Adaptation Layer (PAL). A PAL not only exports a set of APIs (PAL APIs) that can be called by the library OS, but also acts as the loader that bootstraps the library OS. The design of PAL Host ABI strictly follows three primary principles, to guarantee functionality, security, and portability:
- The host ABI must be stateless.
- The host ABI must be a narrowed interface to reduce the attack surface.
- The host ABI must be generic and independent from the native ABI of any of the supported hosts.
Most of the PAL Host ABI is adapted from the Drawbridge library OS.
Regardless of the actual implementation, we require PAL to be able to load ELF-format binaries as executables or dynamic libraries and perform the necessary dynamic relocation. PAL needs to look up all unresolved symbols in loaded binaries and resolve the ones matching the names of PAL APIs. PAL does not and will not resolve other unresolved symbols, so the loaded libraries and executables must resolve them afterwards.
After loading the binaries, PAL needs to load and interpret the manifest files. The manifest syntax is described in :doc:`../manifest-syntax`.
To run a program in Gramine the PAL loader needs a manifest, which will
describe the whole environment inside Gramine namespace. It also describes
which executable to start first (via libos.entrypoint).
PAL_HANDLE is the type of identifiers that are returned by PAL when opening
or creating resources. It is an opaque type, that should not be accessed outside
of PAL and its details depend on the actual PAL version (host).
There is a common header (present on all PAL hosts) accessible from PAL code,
which allows for checking the handle type:
typedef struct {
struct {
PAL_IDX type;
} hdr;
/* other host-specific definitions */
}* PAL_HANDLE;
Rest of the fields are private to specific PAL hosts, but they usually define different handle subtypes that represent different resources such as files, directories, pipes or sockets. The actual memory allocated for the PAL handles may be variable-sized.
.. doxygentypedef:: PAL_IDX :project: pal
All PALs in Gramine expose a structure that provides static immutable information about the current process and its host. The address of the structure can be retrieved via :func:`PalGetPalPublicState()` and can be memorized in a global variable for ease of use.
.. doxygenstruct:: pal_public_state :project: pal :members:
.. doxygenstruct:: pal_cpu_info :project: pal :members:
.. doxygenstruct:: pal_topo_info :project: pal :members:
The PAL APIs contain a |~| number of functions that can be called from the library OS.
The ABI includes three calls to allocate, free, and modify the permission bits on page-base virtual memory. Permissions include read, write, execute, and guard. Memory regions can be unallocated, reserved, or backed by committed memory.
.. doxygenfunction:: PalVirtualMemoryAlloc :project: pal
.. doxygenfunction:: PalVirtualMemoryFree :project: pal
.. doxygentypedef:: pal_prot_flags_t :project: pal .. doxygenstruct:: pal_initial_mem_range :project: pal :members:
.. doxygenfunction:: PalVirtualMemoryProtect :project: pal
The ABI includes one call to create a child process and one call to terminate the running process. A child process does not inherit any objects or memory from its parent process and the parent process may not modify the execution of its children. A parent can wait for a child to exit using its handle. Parent and child may communicate through I/O streams provided by the parent to the child at creation.
.. doxygenfunction:: PalProcessCreate :project: pal
.. doxygenfunction:: PalProcessExit :project: pal
The stream ABI includes nine calls to open, read, write, map, unmap,
truncate, flush, delete and wait for I/O streams and three calls to
access metadata about an I/O stream. The ABI purposefully does not
provide an ioctl call. Supported URI schemes include:
file:,
pipe:,
http:,
https:,
tcp:,
udp:,
pipe.srv:,
http.srv,
tcp.srv: and
udp.srv:.
The latter four schemes are used to open inbound I/O streams for server
applications.
.. doxygenfunction:: PalStreamOpen :project: pal
.. doxygenfunction:: PalStreamWaitForClient :project: pal
.. doxygenfunction:: PalStreamRead :project: pal
.. doxygenfunction:: PalStreamWrite :project: pal
.. doxygenfunction:: PalStreamDelete :project: pal
.. doxygenfunction:: PalStreamMap :project: pal
.. doxygenfunction:: PalStreamUnmap :project: pal
.. doxygenfunction:: PalStreamSetLength :project: pal
.. doxygenfunction:: PalStreamFlush :project: pal
.. doxygenfunction:: PalSendHandle :project: pal
.. doxygenfunction:: PalReceiveHandle :project: pal
.. doxygenfunction:: PalStreamAttributesQuery :project: pal
.. doxygentypedef:: PAL_STREAM_ATTR :project: pal
.. doxygenstruct:: _PAL_STREAM_ATTR :project: pal
.. doxygenfunction:: PalStreamAttributesQueryByHandle :project: pal
.. doxygenfunction:: PalStreamAttributesSetByHandle :project: pal
.. doxygenfunction:: PalStreamChangeName :project: pal
.. doxygenenum:: pal_access :project: pal
.. doxygentypedef:: pal_share_flags_t :project: pal
.. doxygenenum:: pal_create_mode :project: pal
.. doxygentypedef:: pal_stream_options_t :project: pal
.. doxygenenum:: pal_delete_mode :project: pal
.. doxygentypedef:: pal_wait_flags_t :project: pal
.. doxygenenum:: pal_socket_domain :project: pal
.. doxygenenum:: pal_socket_type :project: pal
.. doxygenstruct:: pal_socket_addr :project: pal
.. doxygenstruct:: iovec :project: pal
.. doxygenfunction:: PalSocketCreate :project: pal
.. doxygenfunction:: PalSocketBind :project: pal
.. doxygenfunction:: PalSocketListen :project: pal
.. doxygenfunction:: PalSocketAccept :project: pal
.. doxygenfunction:: PalSocketConnect :project: pal
.. doxygenfunction:: PalSocketSend :project: pal
.. doxygenfunction:: PalSocketRecv :project: pal
The ABI supports multithreading through five calls to create, sleep, yield the scheduler quantum for, resume execution of, and terminate threads, as well as seven calls to create, signal, and block on synchronization objects.
.. doxygenfunction:: PalThreadCreate :project: pal
.. doxygenfunction:: PalThreadYieldExecution :project: pal
.. doxygenfunction:: PalThreadExit :project: pal
.. doxygenfunction:: PalThreadResume :project: pal
.. doxygenenum:: pal_event :project: pal
.. doxygentypedef:: PAL_CONTEXT :project: pal
.. doxygenstruct:: PAL_CONTEXT :project: pal :members:
.. doxygentypedef:: pal_event_handler_t :project: pal
.. doxygenfunction:: PalSetExceptionHandler :project: pal
.. doxygenfunction:: PalEventCreate :project: pal
.. doxygenfunction:: PalEventSet :project: pal
.. doxygenfunction:: PalEventClear :project: pal
.. doxygenfunction:: PalEventWait :project: pal
.. doxygenfunction:: PalStreamsWaitEvents :project: pal
.. doxygenfunction:: PalObjectClose :project: pal
The ABI includes seven assorted calls to get wall clock time, generate cryptographically-strong random bits, flush portions of instruction caches, increment and decrement the reference counts on objects shared between threads, and to obtain an attestation report and quote.
.. doxygenfunction:: PalDebugLog :project: pal
.. doxygenfunction:: PalGetPalPublicState :project: pal
.. doxygenfunction:: PalSystemTimeQuery :project: pal
.. doxygenfunction:: PalRandomBitsRead :project: pal
.. doxygenfunction:: PalSegmentBaseGet :project: pal
.. doxygenfunction:: PalSegmentBaseSet :project: pal
.. doxygenenum:: pal_segment_reg :project: pal
.. doxygenfunction:: PalCpuIdRetrieve :project: pal
.. doxygenfunction:: PalAttestationReport :project: pal
.. doxygenfunction:: PalAttestationQuote :project: pal
.. doxygenfunction:: PalGetSpecialKey :project: pal