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# Investigation: idle link-socket drops in the multi–Game Boy setup
Status: **open / not root-caused.** This document records what the bug is, what
has been ruled out, the exact conditions under which it reproduces, and the most
promising next steps, so the next debugging session can start cold.
## TL;DR
When a Game Boy's link port is bridged over a unix socket (`sl0pboy
--serial-sock`), the **link connection gets dropped while the Game Boy is idle**
(sitting at the shell prompt after it has a DHCP lease). The emulator *process
stays alive* — it is the socket that dies, and nothing reconnects, so that GB
goes permanently offline until the emulator is relaunched.
It is **not** a gbos crash, **not** a gbos poweroff, and **not** caused by the
recent KGetc/net_pump change (the pre-change ROM drops too). It only happens
when the link is **idle** (no packets flowing); a busy link stays up.
## Symptom
- Hub (`tools/gbhub`) logs `[gbhub] GB0 (10.0.0.2) left`, i.e. its per-GB reader
thread's `conn.recv()` returned empty (or raised and was caught).
- In the user's interactive session the GB then appeared to "rejoin" repeatedly —
that was the user relaunching `gbjoin` after each drop (see "No recovery").
- `ping <that GB>` from another GB fails because the target is offline.
## Architecture recap (so the pieces are named)
- Each Game Boy = one `sl0pboy` emulator. Its **link/serial port** is wired to a
**unix stream socket** via `--serial-sock PATH` (emulator connects as client;
`serial_connect()` in `src/main.c`, retried ~1s at startup **only**).
- `tools/gbhub` is a virtual switch/router/DHCP. It `accept()`s each GB's socket,
runs a per-GB reader thread (`gb_reader`) that SLIP-decodes frames and routes
them, answers DHCP, and NATs external traffic out a TUN.
- **daemon mode** (`gbhub --daemon`): hub is its own process; emulators are
launched separately (`tools/gbjoin`).
- **spawn mode** (`gbhub N`): hub *and* the emulator child processes live in
one process.
- The GB's kernel serial RX (`net_getbyte_nb`, `gb.c` rSC=0x80 path) does a
non-blocking `read()` of 1 byte per poll; TX (`rSC=0x81`) does a non-blocking
`write()` of 1 byte and ignores errors.
## What it is NOT (ruled out this session)
- **Not a gbos crash.** Emulator stderr is clean (`Loaded 'GBOS' ... / link port
<-> ...` and nothing else). No fault/opcode message.
- **Not a gbos poweroff via readc EOF.** Instrumented the shell's read loop to
print every byte and to not `poweroff()` on EOF — no `EOF` byte was ever read,
and the GB still left. So the shell is not powering off.
- **Not the emulator process exiting.** Logged `Popen.poll()` — it stays `None`
(process alive) after "left". The *socket* died, not the process.
- **Not the recent KGetc/net_pump change.** Stashing that change and rebuilding
the previous gbos still drops in spawn mode. Pre-existing.
- **Not the TUN, NAT, `--uncapped`, the per-GB ROM copy, or a stale battery
`.sav`.** A standalone harness that adds each of these one at a time keeps the
GB up (see matrix).
- **Not gbhub's `while all(e.poll())` main loop.** Replacing it with a plain
sleep did not stop the drop.
- **Not gbhub's per-line `stderr.flush()` console logging.** Disabling it did not
stop the drop.
## Where it reproduces (bisection matrix)
| Setup | Idle GB result |
|---|---|
| Minimal harness: one Python proc spawns the emulator **and** reads its socket; no TUN; capped | **survives** |
| Harness + TUN + a `tun_reader` (nothing gets forwarded to the GB at idle) | **survives** |
| Harness + TUN + NAT (`ip_forward` + masquerade) + `--uncapped` | **survives** |
| Harness + fresh ROM copy (no `.sav`) | **survives** |
| `gbhub --daemon` + **headless** emulators as separate processes (`hubtest.py`) | **survives** ✅ |
| `gbhub N` **spawn mode** (emulators are children of the hub, one process) | **drops when idle** ❌ |
| `gbhub --daemon` + **windowed** `gbjoin` (the user's real setup) | **drops when idle** ❌ |
Two important facts fall out of this:
1. **`daemon + headless` is the only combination that is reliably stable.**
2. There appear to be **two independent triggers**, because:
- spawn mode drops with **headless** emulators, and
- daemon mode drops with **windowed** emulators,
but `daemon + headless` does not.
## The frustrating part
The standalone harness `edbg2.py` — which, like spawn-mode gbhub, spawns the
emulator **and** reads its socket in the **same process**, with TUN+NAT+uncapped —
**survives**. So the drop is *not* simply "the process that reads the socket is
also the emulator's parent." Yet gbhub spawn mode, which is functionally the
same, **drops**. Every difference I could find between them was eliminated
without changing the outcome:
- Same emulator argv.
- Same DHCP reply bytes (gbhub `_dreply` == harness `dreply`, byte-for-byte).
- Same TUN/NAT.
- Console-logging removed, poll-loop removed — still drops.
So the specific difference that flips gbhub-spawn from "survives" to "drops" was
**not isolated**. Likewise the windowed-vs-headless difference in daemon mode was
not isolated (couldn't be driven in the sandbox — no interactive TTY).
## Key behavioral clue
Drops happen **only when the link is idle**. When the GB is doing something over
the network (answering pings via `netd` or the prompt-pump, running `ping`/
`wget`), the link stays up. This strongly implicates the **quiet-socket** path:
the GB spinning `net_getbyte_nb` (many 1-byte non-blocking `read()`s/sec on a
socket with no data) and/or the hub's reader thread blocked in `recv()` with
nothing arriving.
## No recovery (makes every drop fatal)
Independent of the cause, there is currently **no self-healing**:
- The emulator's `serial_connect()` runs **once** at startup; a dead socket is
never reconnected (reads/writes just fail silently; `serial_no_eof` keeps RX
"pending" forever).
- gbos runs `dhcp` **once** at boot; no lease renewal, no "link back" detection.
- So a drop = offline until manual relaunch. This is why the user saw constant
"churn."
(Adding auto-reconnect in the emulator + a periodic lease renewer in gbos would
make drops a ~1s blip and is worth doing regardless — but it is a *mitigation*,
not the fix.)
## The hard constraint any theory must satisfy
**Both processes stay alive, but the socket dies.** The emulator's `poll()` stays
`None` (process alive) and the hub is alive (it logs "left"), yet the hub's
`recv()` returns empty - meaning the emulator's *write half* of the link socket
was closed. Nothing in `gb.c`/`main.c` closes that fd, and the emulator never
exits. So the precise question is: **what closes/resets the emulator-side link fd
without the emulator process exiting?**
Note this *weakens* a naive `SIGPIPE` theory: an unignored `SIGPIPE` would
*terminate* the emulator, which contradicts "process alive" (unless that
observation is racy). Worth confirming, but not a clean fit.
## Hypotheses still on the table
1. **A socket syscall/errno we simply haven't observed.** Given the constraint
above, stop guessing and `strace` it (see next steps). Look for an unexpected
`close(fd)`, an `ECONNRESET`/`EPIPE` on `read`/`write`, or a faulting `write`.
Also check whether the emulator installs `SIG_IGN` for `SIGPIPE` and whether a
signal is actually delivered.
2. **Hub `recv()` raising, not a clean peer-close.** `gb_reader` does
`except Exception: chunk = None`, so an exception (e.g. `ConnectionResetError`)
is reported identically to a clean EOF. The two need to be distinguished.
3. **High-frequency 1-byte reads** on the unix socket interacting badly with the
emulator's serial state machine or the socket under specific scheduling.
4. **Windowed path** (`daemon + gbjoin`): the non-headless main loop
(`render_frame` sixel to stdout + `input_poll` on stdin + paced 59.73fps) may
starve serial servicing or interact with a slow terminal; needs a real TTY to
reproduce.
## Next diagnostic steps (in priority order)
1. **Check/ignore SIGPIPE in the emulator.** Add `signal(SIGPIPE, SIG_IGN)` at
startup and re-test spawn mode. If the drop stops, hypothesis (1) is confirmed.
(Cheap, high-value.)
2. **`strace -f -e trace=network,read,write,close` the emulator** during a spawn-
mode idle drop; find the exact syscall + errno at the moment the socket dies
(EPIPE/ECONNRESET/close). This should end the guessing.
3. **Distinguish EOF vs reset in the hub.** In `gb_reader`, log the exception type
separately from a clean empty `recv()`. Tells us who closed and why.
4. **Reproduce the windowed case on a real terminal** (outside the sandbox):
`sudo tools/gbhub --daemon` + `tools/gbjoin` in another terminal; watch
whether the emulator window closes (process exits) or the link goes quiet
(socket drop). Note anything on stderr.
5. If (1)/(2) implicate the write path, consider making the emulator's serial
socket writes tolerate back-pressure explicitly (drop-on-EAGAIN is already the
intent, but make sure a full buffer / peer-gone can't escalate).
## Repro / harness pointers
- Fails: `sudo tools/gbhub 1 ""` (single idle GB, spawn mode) — `GB0 ... left`.
- Fails: `sudo tools/gbhub 2 "" "ping 10.0.0.2"` is *racy* now — GB0 sometimes
drops before GB1's ping lands.
- Survives: daemon mode with headless emulators launched separately (the shape of
the throwaway `hubtest.py` used this session: spawn `gbhub --daemon` as one
process, then two `sl0pboy --headless --uncapped --serial-sock /tmp/gbhub.sock`
as separate children; both idle GBs keep their leases).
## Relevant code
- Emulator link socket: `~/dev/gbc/src/main.c` (`serial_connect`, `--serial-sock`
wiring) and `~/dev/gbc/src/gb.c` (rSC=0x80 RX / rSC=0x81 TX, `serial_no_eof`).
- Hub reader/router/DHCP: `~/dev/gbos/tools/gbhub` (`gb_reader`, `route`,
`_dreply`, `tun_reader`).
- GB kernel serial/net pump: `~/dev/gbos/src/socket.asm` (`net_getbyte_nb`,
`net_putbyte`, `net_pump`) and console pump in `~/dev/gbos/src/syscall.asm`
(`KGetc`).
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