mescc-tools-seed
bootstrap-seeds
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mescc-tools-seed | bootstrap-seeds | |
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8 | 6 | |
85 | 72 | |
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6.6 | 5.2 | |
2 months ago | 4 months ago | |
C | Assembly | |
GNU General Public License v3.0 only | GNU General Public License v3.0 only |
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mescc-tools-seed
- Running the "Reflections on Trusting Trust" Compiler
- stage0 x86 seed reduced from 357 Bytes to 256 Bytes
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test
From here I found a reference to the Gash, Mes-M2 and stage0 projects, who's README.org references a nice wiki for stage0. The Wiki references a more expansive stage0-posix repo. From here, I finally got all the pieces to fit togeather.
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How reproducible are Guix packages?
Of course, reproducible builds will only give you security if you trust the compiler you're using to verify. Unlike traditional distributions, Guix packages are rigorously defined in terms of their dependencies all the way down to ~60 MB of bootstrap binaries. There has been a lot of cool work to reduce the initial binary seed size, and they are working to reduce this even further to a "full source" bootstrap which will make use of the stage0 project to bootstrap the entire OS from a small, auditable ASCII Hex -> binary program.
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stage0-posix was ported to RISC-V
stage0-posix just gained initial support for RISC-V (64-bit). It starts with 392 byte hex assembler, 361 byte "shell" and bootstraps simple linker (hex2), macro assembler (M0). Then it builds cc_riscv64 RISC-V compiler written in RISC-V assembly and uses it to build simple C compiler written in C (M2-Planet). Then it builds a few extra utilities (cp, mkdir, untar, ungz, sha256sum, chmod)
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Bootstrapping from Hex to Bison to GCC
I wonder if Brainfuck could be used for https://github.com/oriansj/stage0-posix ? It would not surprise me if there is no other language for which there are so many interpreters written in so many different programming languages. It is even possible to write a Brainfuck interpreter in Brainfuck, which can be verified. And there is also a Brainfuck interpreter written in x86-64: https://github.com/316k/brainfuck-x86-64 . It is a little larger than hex0_x86.hex0 , but not too much to make it hard to verify.
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A Brief Introduction to Forth (1993)
I'd argue the easiest to implement language is macro-assembly then the C subset known as cc_x86
https://github.com/oriansj/mescc-tools-seed
bootstrap-seeds
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NixOS Reproducible Builds: minimal ISO successfully independently rebuilt
This[0] is basically the hand-documentation of those bytes then. Handwritten ELF header and assembly code.
[0] https://github.com/oriansj/bootstrap-seeds/blob/master/POSIX...
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SectorC: A C Compiler in 512 bytes
The bootstrap seed, https://github.com/oriansj/bootstrap-seeds/blob/master/POSIX..., is a tiny interpreter that takes a much larger program written in a special-purpose, bytecode-based language. This proceeds in turn once or twice more--special purpose program generating another interpreter for another special-purpose language--until you end up with a minimal Scheme interpreter, which then can be used to execute a C compiler program.
All of this is incredible work, but a minimal C-subset compiler in under 512 bytes seems like a unique achievement.
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Ken Thompson: Reflections on Trusting Trust (Turing Award Lecture)
There is also live-bootstrap which uses a similar bootstrap chain to Guix (stage0 -> Mes -> tcc -> gcc), but without needing Guile/guix-daemon binaries etc. The whole thing starts with just a 357-byte binary seed (source)!
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Zig is now self–hosted by default
Yeah, it's a binary blob, but it's small enough to be easily auditable. Anyone with some knowledge of x86 assembly can read the annotated version [1] and verify that it does what it claims (which is to convert ASCII hex with comments into binary).
You're right, it also requires a Linux kernel, and of course, you also have to trust the hardware you're running it on. Still, it reduces the amount of stuff we have to take for granted as trusted, which I think is a good thing. (I'm not involved in the project, just an admirer).
[1]: https://github.com/oriansj/bootstrap-seeds/blob/b09a8b8cbcb6...
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stage0-posix was ported to RISC-V
stage0-posix just gained initial support for RISC-V (64-bit). It starts with 392 byte hex assembler, 361 byte "shell" and bootstraps simple linker (hex2), macro assembler (M0). Then it builds cc_riscv64 RISC-V compiler written in RISC-V assembly and uses it to build simple C compiler written in C (M2-Planet). Then it builds a few extra utilities (cp, mkdir, untar, ungz, sha256sum, chmod)
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Reproducibility
From a security point of view the only thing that gentoo users need to achieve similar levels of security is a bootstrapped compiler from a known good seed. The source code is already deterministic by definition. After that all you need is a compiler bootstrapped via something like https://github.com/oriansj/bootstrap-seeds which can be independently verified. It would probably be useful to be able to have independent bootstraps arrive at the same binary output for a compiler, but probably only as an option. Ultimately way less work for the same level of security.
What are some alternatives?
live-bootstrap - Use of a Linux initramfs to fully automate the bootstrapping process
mes-m2 - Making Mes.c M2-Planet friendly
zig-bootstrap - take off every zig
archlinux-installer-script - Arch Linux install script. Only performs the minimal steps for booting into arch. 75 lines of script with full progress messages and tutorial.
bcc - bcc is a b compiler
neat - The Neat Language compiler. Early beta?
stage0-posix-x86
c4 - C in four functions
turning-polyglot-solutions-into-t
stage0 - A set of minimal dependency bootstrap binaries
bootOS - bootOS is a monolithic operating system in 512 bytes of x86 machine code.