Release 3.1 included support for Emacsclient, but I think introduced a bug– the new configuration settings weren’t being saved correctly (or maybe they never were– I’m too tired to check). Many thankgs to Andrew Ng for first, catching it, and second fixing it.

Also, Christoph Conrad tells me that the DotEnvCommand tool makes a really handy companion to VisEmacs. I haven’t tried it yet, but it looks pretty cool. If anyone’s using it, do let me know.

Yes, news reports to the contrary, the housing market hasn’t
collapsed completely. In fact, those of us who’ve been sitting
on the sidelines during the bubble are now jumping in

Anyway, between hanging sheetrock, clearing brush, & painting, I
just haven’t had time to post as much as I’d like.

This is a Redwood grove on the property:

I’d hosted the article, along with source code, on the old site. Over the past week or so, I updated it for Visual Studio 2008 & re-posted it here. To the half-dozen or so people who might interested in such a thing, enjoy

This came up for me recently at work: I’ve been asked to port a static library which I wrote some time ago to another platform. To get a sense of what kind of dependencies this library will want to drag along, I wanted to get a list of all it’s unresolved externals.

This has turned out to be harder than you might think. A few minutes with Google didn’t really turn up anything, so I took a look at dumpbin. dumpbin /symbols prints out a nice report of the library’s symbol table, complete with unresolved symbols clearly marked as UNDEF. Great, I thought: I’ll just type:

dumpbin /symbols foo.lib | grep -e '^[0-9a-fA-F]\+ [0-9a-fA-F]\{8\} UNDEF'

(this would be in a Cygwin shell, obviously) and have my list (which I’d pretty up later).

Not so fast. Persusing the list, I started seeing symbols listed as undefined which I knew to be defined in this library… hmmmm. A few more minutes spent persuing the original dumpbin output showed that they were, in fact, defined in this library! The symbols would show up once as undefined, and a second time as defined.

I can only guess that dumpbin is just concatenating the output I would get if I ran it against each .obj separately. That is, if symbol _XYZ is defined in module a.obj, and referenced in mobule
b.obj, we get two records (one for each module):

67F 00000000 SECT183 notype ()    External    | _XYX
....
107 00000000 UNDEF  notype ()    External     | _XYZ

Damnit. Ok, so I’m going to have to write a little code, here. What I want to do is walk dumpbin’s output, parsing each record containing a symbol definition, that symbol’s undecorated name (if present), and whether or not it’s defined. The trick is that it may show up more than once.

IOW, a “mark & sweep” approach: as I parse each record, I need to check to see if it’s already been recorded and only mark it as undefined if the current record says it is and if it hasn’t already been marked down as present. Else, I want to mark it as defined. Once I’m done, I’ll sweep the datastructure of any records corresponding to symbols defined inside
my library.

I fired up a Python shell, even tho this kind of little reporting problem “feels” like Perl to me, so that I could horse around with these ideas interactively:

>>> import os, re
>>> f = os.popen("dumpbin /symbols foo.lib", "r")
>>> x = f.readline()
>>> print x

Now, the records we want generally look like this:

023 00000000 SECT9  notype       External     | ?FRAG_ACK@WscMsg@ani8021x@@2EB (public: static unsigned char const ani8021x::WscMsg::FRAG_ACK)

but we get lots of stuff we dont’ care about like:

Section length    1, #relocs    0, #linenums    0, checksum E963A535, selection    2 (pick any)

and some stuff that’s not un-decorated:

357 00000000 UNDEF  notype ()    External     | _memset

I guessed at a regexp,

^[0-9a-f]{3} [0-9a-f]{8} (SECT[0-9a-f]+|UNDEF) [^|]+\| ([^(]+) ?(?:\((.*)\))?

but how to tell? I tried it a few times in the interpreter:

>>> for i in range(1, 25):
...     x = f.readline()
...     m = re.search("^[0-9a-f]{3} [0-9a-f]{8} (SECT[0-9a-f]+|UNDEF) [^|]+\| ([^(]+) ?(?:\((.*)\))?", x, re.I)
...     print x
...     if m: print m.groups()
...     else: print None
...

Cool. This let me watch my regex in action over enough lines to get some confidence in my approach: it was discarding the stuff about which I didn’t care, and parsing what I wanted.

So, let’s do this:

>>> program = re.compile("^[0-9a-f]{3} [0-9a-f]{8} (SECT[0-9a-f]+|UNDEF) [^|]+\| ([^(]+) ?(?:\((.*)\))?", re.I)
>>> print program
<_sre.SRE_Pattern object at 0x00A507B8>

With the regex now compiled, we’re ready to rock:

>>> f.close()
>>> data={}
>>> f = os.popen("dumpbin /symbols foo.lib", "r")
>>> x = f.readline()
>>> while x:
...     m = program.search(x)
...     if m:
...         sym = m.group(2).strip()
...         if sym[0] != '.' and sym[0] != '$':
...             undefd = m.group(1) == "UNDEF"
...             und = m.group(3)
...             if not data.has_key(sym):
...                 data[sym] = [ undefd, und ]
...             elif not undefd:
...                 data[sym][0] = False
...     x = f.readline()
...

So at this point, we’ve traversed all the symbols in our library, and marked those that are undefined. Cleanup,

>>> f.close()

& sweep:

>>> for k in data.keys():
...     if data[k][0]:
...         undefined_symbols.append([k, data[k][1]])
...

That’s it– undefined_symbols is now a list of lists, each sub-list containing two elements: the symbol name and the undecorated version (which may be None).

We can just as quickly pretty-print our results to file:

>>> f = file("C:\\tmp\\report.txt", "w")
>>> for x in undefined_symbols:
...     und = ""
...     if x[1]: und = x[1]
...     f.write("%s | %s\n" % (x[0], und))
...
>>> f.close()

Of course, I still have to figure out how to enumerate template instantiations made in my library, but whose definitions were pulled in from external code…

In any windowing library, the question is always how to connect instances of whatever C++ class is representing a Window, and the HWNDs that the OS actually uses. I was curious as to how ATL & WTL do that, so I did a little digging.

I started with ATL’s support for Property Sheets. Looking at the implementation of CPropertySheetImpl, we see:

ATL::_AtlWinModule.AddCreateWndData(&pT->m_thunk.cd, pT); // 1
INT_PTR nRet = ::PropertySheet(&m_psh);                   // 2

Line number 1 obviously looks interesting. So, what the heck is AddCreateWndData? Like so many ATL methods, it ends up in a global:

AtlWinModuleAddCreateWndData(_ATL_WIN_MODULE* pWinModule,
                             _AtlCreateWndData* pData,
                             void* pObject)
{
    pData->m_pThis = pObject;
    pData->m_dwThreadID = ::GetCurrentThreadId();
    pData->m_pNext = pWinModule->m_pCreateWndList;
    pWinModule->m_pCreateWndList = pData;
...

Here’s what’s happening; ATL maintains a per-thread, singly linked list of AtlCreateWndData structures. These structures record the current thread and the current class instance. Here’s the structure definition:


struct _AtlCreateWndData
{
void* m_pThis;
DWORD m_dwThreadID;
_AtlCreateWndData* m_pNext;
};


for every kind of window (plain-jane Windows, Dialogs, Property Pages, &c), ATL finds some kind of “hook” that will be called after the window is actually created, but before it begins receiveing messages. There, (when it has an HWND laying around) it pops the head of the current list to find the C++ object corresponding to the window being created.

The current head of the list (for the current thread) is retrieved by calling AtlWinModuleExtractCreateWndData. This functon is called by CAtlWinModule::ExtractCreateWndData, which is in turn called by:

• CWindowImplBaseT< TBase, TWinTraits >::StartWindowProc
• CDialogImplBaseT< TBase >::StartDialogProc
• CCommonDialogImplBase::HookProc
• CColorDialogImpl::HookProc
• CPropertySheetImpl::PropSheetCallback

Let’s dig into StartWindowProc. This is the WNDPROC that gets registered with the Window class WNDCLASS. What does it do?

It pops the head off the current thread’s list of AtlCreateWndData, sets pThis to the corresponding member, and then:


pThis->m_thunk.Init(pThis->GetWindowProc(), pThis);


Alright, so what’s m_thunk? This is a member variable of type CWndProcThunk. The actual implementation is hidden behind a typedef or two, but the upshot is this: it’s a little structure whose member variables actually make up executable code! Specifically:


mov dword ptr [esp+0x4], pThis
jmp relwndproc


The Init member sets up the pThis & the address of the actual WNDPROC we’re going to call. Here’s the trick: if this code is executed at the beginning of a function in which the first parameter on the stack is an HWND (like, say, a window procedure), this code will write the address of the C++ class instance representing the window that’s just been created over top of the HWND and then jump to the beginning of the window procedure returned from the GetWindowProc function.

Remember that while we get back to StartWindowProc. StartWindowProc next gets the address at which this new code resides by calling:

WNDPROC pProc = pThis->m_thunk.GetWNDPROC();
WNDPROC pOldProc = (WNDPROC)::SetWindowLongPtr(hWnd, GWLP_WNDPROC,
                                               (LONG_PTR)pProc);

What we’ve just done is substituted our little thunk for the new window’s window procedure. With the thunk in place, we can now do this first off in the real WNDPROC:

CWindowImplBaseT< TBase, TWinTraits >* pThis = (CWindowImplBaseT< TBase, TWinTraits >*)hWnd;

which is actually kind of slick (although a maintenance headache, I’d guess…).

I run Cygwin on my Windows boxes. I use OpenSSH a lot. I’d wanted to run OpenSSH daemons on my Windows boxes for a long time, but I’ve found it, ahem, challenging. One weekend, I finally decided to dig into the problem & get get to the bottom of the matter. Since others have had problems (for instance, see here, here, & here), I thought I’d post what I learned & what I did.

Initially, I installed according to the stock instructions. That is, I installed Cygwin as usual, then ran ssh-host-config. However, I could never log in and have access to my home directory. I poked at the problem a bit with FileMon, and saw that the sshd process, running as SYSTEM, was trying to access my home directory, which is mounted via Samba from a Linux box — no go.

So, I dug in & did a little reading. The first thing I came across was the notion of
Privilege Separation:

Privilege separation, or privsep, is method in OpenSSH by which operations that require root privilege are performed by a separate privileged monitor process. Its purpose is to prevent privilege escalation by containing corruption to an unprivileged process…When privsep is enabled, during the pre-authentication phase sshd will chroot(2) to “/var/empty” and change its privileges to the “sshd” user and its primary group. sshd is a pseudo-account that should not be used by other daemons, and must be locked and should contain a “nologin” or invalid shell.

(diagram courtesy of Niels Provos).

Now, I noticed that on Windows Server 2003, due to some privilege issues with the SYSTEM account, the install script would create a separate user under which the service would be run:

“Since Cygwin release 1.3.3, applications that are members of the Administrators group and have the Create a token object, Replace a process level token and Increase Quota user rights can
switch user context without giving a password by just calling the usual setuid, seteuid, setgid and setegid functions.

On NT and Windows 2000 the SYSTEM user has these privileges and can run services such as sshd. However, on Windows 2003 SYSTEM lacks the Create a token object right, so it is necessary to create a special user with all the necessary rights, as well as Logon as a service, to run such services. For security reasons this user should be denied the rights to logon interactively or over the
network. All this is done by configuration scripts such as ssh-host-config.”

If you look at ssh-host-config, you can see the logic for setting this up.

That was the trick– I just needed to run the service under an account that had sufficient privileges to access the Samba-mounted drives. I went to my Linux box & added a new user, nw (for network). I didn’t give him a login shell, but I did make him part of my users group. I added him to my Samba database via:

/usr/local/samba/bin/smbpasswd -a nw

Then, I went to each Cygwin machine & ran mkgroup -d to get the relevant passwd entry for the new user. Once that was done, I added the new user to the local administrators group on each machine, & granted it the required privileges:

editrights -a SeAssignPrimaryTokenPrivilege -u BYWATER\nw
editrights -a SeCreateTokenPrivilege -u BYWATER\nw
editrights -a SeTcbPrivilege -u BYWATER\nw
editrights -a SeDenyInteractiveLogonRight -u BYWATER\nw
editrights -a SeDenyNetworkLogonRight -u BYWATER\nw
editrights -a SeDenyRemoteInteractiveLogonRight -u BYWATER\nw
editrights -a SeIncreaseQuotaPrivilege -u BYWATER\nw
editrights -a SeServiceLogonRight -u BYWATER\nw

Note that Bywater is my Windows domain name.

Ok– then, I ran ssh-host-config as usual, but declined to install as a Service. I did that myself like so:

cygrunsrv -I sshd -d "Cygwin sshd" -p /usr/sbin/sshd -a -D -u BYWATER\nw -w "xxx" -e "CYGWIN=binmode winsymlinks ntsec" -y tcpip

I started the service, and, naturally, it died. As a means of debugging it, I granted Bywater\nw logon privileges, and did the following:

runas /user:BYWATER\nw cmd bash -i /usr/sbin/sshd -D

Running in the foreground, the thing happily told me that it was having permissions problems with /var/empty, /var/log/sshd.log, and /etc/ssh_host*. Easily remedied:

chown nw.Administrators /var/empty /var/log/sshd.log /etc/ssh_host*

Presto! All was well. I could even forward X11 over an ssh session from my Linux box!

It was originally authored by Jeff Paquette, targeting DevStudio 6.0, and it saw a lot of use. Time went on, and Visual Studio 2002, 2003, & 2005 came along (and changed the Add-In model completely, meaning the Add-In was no longer compatible). There would periodically be requests for ports on the VisEmacs mailing list, but since Jeff was still using DevStudio 6, he demurred.

Instead, he would invite us, the users, to do so, and in 2006, I finally did. Here’s the original announcement:

Hi all,

Over the past few years folks on the list have asked about
getting VisEmacs ported to Visual Studio 2002, 2003, and so
forth. Jeff invited us to dig in to the source code & go for
it. Well, I finally did.

At first, I was just trying to get something up & running for
my own use. Later on, I thought it might be useful to other
folks, as well.

So, here goes:

1. This is a complete re-write. The code needed to be
heavily re-structured anyway, and I’m not a big MFC fan. I
developed it using Visual Studio 2005 & it uses STLport 5,
ATL 8, and WTL 7.5.

2. One DLL (’visemacs.dll’) will load in DevStudio 6, Visual
Studio 2003, & Visual Studio 2005. These are the three IDEs
I use & have access to. If someone wants to support another
environment, let me know & maybe we can collaborate on something.

3. I only implemented the functionality present in VisEmacs
2.1. I wasn’t even aware of the 2.9 release before I
started! Again, if folks find this useful, and want the new
functionality, I could add it to the re-write.

Afterwards, Jeff got in touch, and we agreed to host the new code on it’s project page at SourceForge (you can download it there, too).

All that said, I saw while perusing Jeff’s blog the other day that he’s working on a VisEmacs re-write which is compatible with the new Add-In model (i.e. not DevStudio 6), and has even made a preliminary version available here. So, if you’re not interested in backward compatibility with DevStudio 6, you might want to try that one, too.

Finally, I’m working on adding Visual Studio 2008 compatibilty to VisEmacs 3 and hope to have a new build ready in the next week or two. In the meantime, you can grab the most recent version (3.0.2) here (debug build here).