The generic block subsystem (blk_format_or_load_disk) auto-reformatted
any disk lacking its own low-level 'STFR' header at attach time, before
Artemis's Forth-level BLANK/LithosAnanke/Unrecognized classification
ever ran -- so ART-HALT-UNRECOG's "Disk preserved" message was false.
Split detection from commit: an unrecognized/blank disk is now left
PROVISIONAL (geometry computed in memory only, all writes refused)
until explicitly confirmed via the new blk_subsys_confirm_format() /
BLK-CONFIRM-FORMAT primitive. Artemis calls it from ART-FORMAT and
ART-RESUME, never from ART-HALT-UNRECOG.
Verified on amd64/aarch64/riscv64: parity intact (identical dict_hash),
normal recognized-disk resume + persist-read unaffected, and a
regenerated disk/artemis-unrecognized-test.img (the old copy had itself
been silently corrupted by this exact bug) now stays byte-for-byte
identical across a halted boot on amd64 and riscv64.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
ABORT is documented and tested in this codebase as standard FORTH-79
behavior -- system_words_test.c:63: "Should clear stacks and return to
QUIT" -- meaning it should unwind all the way back to the outermost
interpreter loop, abandoning whatever's left of the current line/block.
The implementation only unwound one level: every place that checked
vm->abort_requested cleared it the instant it saw it, so it never
survived to propagate past the first nested frame.
This surfaced via Artemis's ART-HALT-UNRECOG (capsules/artemis/init.4th):
on an unrecognized disk it correctly printed "ARTEMIS HALT: unrecognized
disk content" and called ABORT, but WELCOME (the next line in the same
block) ran anyway, and Artemis announced ready to Hermes and joined the
fleet normally -- contradicting .claude/ARTEMIS.md's "Refuse to mount...
do not overwrite it" requirement. Root cause is general, not
Artemis-specific, and present identically in both the hosted and kernel
VM cores.
Fixed at every level execution can nest through, verified by exhaustively
grepping every !vm->error-gated continuation loop and adding the parallel
!vm->abort_requested check:
- execute_colon_word (src/vm.c, src/starkernel/vm/vm_core.c): stop
clearing the flag on return -- every colon-word call is a recursive
call to this same function, so leaving it set lets every enclosing
frame's own check also unwind.
- vm_interpret (src/vm.c, src/starkernel/vm/vm_core.c): stop parsing
further words in the current input string once the flag is set.
- exec_block_with_retry (src/starkernel/capsule/capsule_loader.c):
capsule birth's line-by-line block executor -- stop processing further
lines in the current block, but return 0 (not -1), so
capsule_exec_payload still loads later blocks in the same capsule
payload. Returning -1 here would have silently broken word definitions
in blocks that come after the aborting one for reasons unrelated to
why it aborted (concretely, Artemis's ART-PING/LOAD-DOE in blocks
4851/4852, which follow the entry block 4133).
- THRU and --> (src/word_source/block_words.c): stop processing further
blocks/lines in their own loops.
- DODOES (src/word_source/defining_words.c): the CREATE...DOES> runtime
has its own hand-rolled execution loop, separate from
execute_colon_word -- same bug class, same fix. Also guarded the
post-loop "if (vm->rsp < base_rsp) vm->rsp = base_rsp" clamp so it
doesn't fire on an abort exit -- ABORT's own reset_vm_state() already
set rsp; restoring it to base_rsp would have partially undone that.
- Both REPL loops (src/repl.c, src/starkernel/repl.c x2 call sites):
clear the flag after each line, mirroring the existing vm->error
pattern, so a mid-line abort doesn't silently freeze subsequent
interactive input.
Verified directly: ": AB-TEST 1 2 3 ABORT 999 . ; AB-TEST 42 . CR
777 . CR" -- 999 never prints (stops mid-colon-word), 42 never prints
(stops the rest of the same line), 777 prints fine (next line
unaffected). Artemis: WELCOME/"Artemis ready" no longer fires after the
halt message. No regression: all three architectures still show PASS:
persist-read, PASS: E2E msg flow, and matching dict_hash on the normal
(non-aborted) boot path; hosted test suite 965 passed / 0 failed.
Known follow-up, not fixed here (see memory for details): Artemis still
announces ready to Hermes via a separate call path (CD-INIT, block 4141)
that never went through capsule_exec_payload's block chain in the first
place, and the disk file still picks up incidental writes even on a
correctly-halted boot -- likely generic block-subsystem housekeeping,
not traced yet.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Chases down the amd64/aarch64/riscv64 "FAIL: persist-read" that
capsules/artemis/init.4th's ART-READ-TEST self-test has been reporting
in every boot log in this repo's history.
Root cause: not a code bug. disk/artemis.img had been stuck in a
corrupted state (valid LithosAnanke magic header, but data not matching
what ART-READ-TEST expects) since before this repo's own git history
begins -- already broken at the initial commit, carried over from the
pre-split monorepo. The FAIL was accurate: it correctly reported bad
data, not bad code.
Verified via a fresh disk/artemis-debug-roundtrip.img: format ->
self-test PASS -> write-test PASS -> reboot -> resume -> PASS:
persist-read, confirmed 3 times in a row. The write/read/persist code,
free map, block allocator, and C-level block subsystem cache/writeback
logic are all correct.
Fix: blanked disk/artemis.img and let a normal boot format + write-test
it fresh, then verified PASS: persist-read on amd64, aarch64, AND
riscv64 against the same reformatted image -- confirming the arch-neutral
on-disk format works cross-arch too (a boot on one architecture writes
data the other two can correctly read back).
disk/artemis-debug-roundtrip.img is kept as a regression fixture, already
in a known-good passing state -- a future break here is a real
regression, not fixture rot like artemis.img turned out to be.
disk/README.md: documented both images' state, and corrected a stale
claim that these images are managed via scripts/rundisk.sh -- that
script actually targets a separate, currently-unused disks/ (plural)
directory for the hosted VM's --disk-img= flag, not this kernel-QEMU
disk/ (singular) one.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Ran the amd64 kernel acceptance leg 5 times back to back as the punch
list's action item asked. dict_hash was byte-identical across every run
for every VM (Artemis, both Hermes instances, Hera/MAMA_INIT), and
matched aarch64/riscv64 exactly each time. Not jitter, and not
stable-but-different either.
The underlying mechanism the hypothesis pointed at is still real and
unchanged (capsule_dict_hash_hook() still folds execution_heat into the
hash; amd64 still runs its timer in RELATIVE mode under this
hypervisor) — but PARITY:MAMA_INIT and the child-VM PARITY:BIRTH lines
all print before the heartbeat starts, and heat only decays on
heartbeat ticks, so there's no window for the timer's non-determinism to
reach execution_heat before any of these hashes get computed. Most
likely the original 2026-07-24 observation was a one-off (loaded host
machine, coincidental timing), not a real gap.
No code change. No amendment to CLAUDE.md's acceptance criteria needed —
"identical dict_hash across all three architectures" holds up under
repeated testing. Closure note added to the punch list; the 5 verification
runs' logs and DoE CSVs are kept as the supporting evidence.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
kernel_main on riscv64 ran directly on EDK2's UEFI boot-time stack, with
no dedicated stack switch — amd64 has always had a kernel_entry.S
trampoline for exactly this reason (its own comment: "the FORTH
interpreter + DOE experiment loop can easily exceed that depth").
aarch64 happens to get away without one because its firmware's default
stack is apparently larger, but that was never a guarantee.
On riscv64 the VM bootstrap's call depth (27 word-registration modules
-> physics/SSM init -> Tripod capsule birth) overflowed that small
stack, corrupting a return address and producing a wild jump / page
fault right after vm_init_with_host() returned — reproduced consistently
across the 2026-08-01 DoE campaign logs.
- src/starkernel/arch/riscv64/kernel_entry.S (new): RISC-V stack-switch
trampoline mirroring amd64's, giving the kernel a dedicated 2 MiB BSS
stack before anything deep runs.
- kernel_main.c: riscv64 now builds kernel_main_impl (invoked via the
trampoline) instead of kernel_main directly, same pattern as amd64.
- Makefile.starkernel: wires the new file into the riscv64 build.
- uefi_loader.c: RAW_LOG() was silently a no-op on every non-amd64 arch;
added a real raw-UART writer for riscv64 (QEMU virt's uart8250 at MMIO
0x10000000) so existing loader diagnostics actually produce output.
Verified: all three architectures boot clean to [Hera] ok> in the
required order (amd64, aarch64, riscv64); logs and DoE CSVs from these
runs included.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Robert Allan James