The Zircon kernel receives a textual commandline from the bootloader, which can be used to alter some behaviours of the system. Kernel commandline parameters are in the form of option or option=value, separated by spaces, and may not contain spaces.
For boolean options, option=0, option=false, or option=off will disable the option. Any other form (option, option=true, option=wheee, etc) will enable it.
The kernel commandline is passed from the kernel to the userboot process and the device manager, so some of the options described below apply to those userspace processes, not the kernel itself.
The devmgr reads the file /boot/config/devmgr (if it exists) at startup and imports name=value lines into its environment, augmenting or overriding the values from the kernel commandline. Leading whitespace is ignored and lines starting with # are ignored. Whitespace is not allowed in names.
If this option is set, the system will not use Address Space Layout Randomization.
If this option is set, the crashlogger is not started. You should leave this option off unless you suspect the crashlogger is causing problems.
If this option is set, the crashlogger will attempt to generate a “processor trace” dump along with the crash report. The dump files are written as /tmp/crash-pt.*. This option requires processor tracing to be enabled in the kernel. This can be done by running “ipt” program after the system has booted. E.g., add this to /system/autorun
ipt --circular --control init start
After the files are written, copy them to the host and print them with the “ipt-dump” program. See its docs for more info.
This option is only supported on Intel x86 platforms.
Disables the driver with the given name. The driver name comes from the zircon_driver_info, and can be found as the second argument to the ZIRCON_DRIVER_BEGIN macro.
Example: driver.usb-audio.disable
Set the log flags for a driver. Flags are one or more comma-separated values which must be preceeded by a “+” (in which case that flag is enabled) or a “-” (in which case that flag is disabled). The textual constants “error”, “info”, “trace”, “spew”, “debug1”, “debug2”, “debug3”, and “debug4” may be used, and they map to the corresponding bits in DDK_LOG_... in ddk/debug.h The default log flags for a driver is “error” and “info”.
Individual drivers may define their own log flags beyond the eight mentioned above.
Example: driver.usb-audio.log=-error,+info,+0x1000
This option (disabled by default) requests that the kernel start a graphics console during early boot (if possible), to display kernel debug print messages while the system is starting. When userspace starts up, a usermode graphics console driver takes over.
The early kernel console can be slow on some platforms, so if it is not needed for debugging it may speed up boot to disable it.
This option asks the graphics console to use a specific font. Currently only “9x16” (the default) and “18x32” (a double-size font) are supported.
Provides entropy to be mixed into the kernel's CPRNG.
When running an entropy collector quality test, collect the provided number of bytes. Defaults to the maximum value ENTROPY_COLLECTOR_TEST_MAXLEN.
The default value for the compile-time constant ENTROPY_COLLECTOR_TEST_MAXLEN is 128 KiB.
When running an entropy collector quality test, use the provided entropy source. Currently recognized sources: hw_rng, jitterentropy.
If this option is set (disabled by default), the system will halt on a kernel panic instead of rebooting.
Sets the “memory block size” parameter for jitterentropy (the default is 64). When jitterentropy is performing memory operations (to increase variation in CPU timing), the memory will be accessed in blocks of this size.
Sets the “memory block count” parameter for jitterentropy (the default is 512). When jitterentropy is performing memory operations (to increase variation in CPU timing), this controls how many blocks (of size kernel.jitterentropy.bs) are accessed.
Sets the “memory loops” parameter for jitterentropy (the default is 32). When jitterentropy is performing memory operations (to increase variation in CPU timing), this controls how many times the memory access routine is repeated. This parameter is only used when kernel.jitterentropy.raw is true (otherwise, jitterentropy chooses the number of loops is a random-ish way).
Sets the “LFSR loops” parameter for jitterentropy (the default is 1). When jitterentropy is performing CPU-intensive LFSR operations (to increase variation in CPU timing), this controls how many times the LFSR routine is repeated. This parameter is only used when kernel.jitterentropy.raw is true (otherwise, jitterentropy chooses the number of loops is a random-ish way).
When true (the default), the jitterentropy entropy collector will return raw, unprocessed samples. When false, the raw samples will be processed by jitterentropy, producing output data that looks closer to uniformly random. Note that even when set to false, the CPRNG will re-process the samples, so the processing inside of jitterentropy is somewhat redundant.
This option tells the kernel to limit system memory to the MB value specified by ‘num’. Using this effectively allows a user to simulate the system having less physical memory than physically present.
This option (true by default) turns on the out-of-memory (OOM) kernel thread, which kills processes when the PMM has less than kernel.oom.redline_mb free memory, sleeping for kernel.oom.sleep_sec between checks.
The OOM thread can be manually started/stopped at runtime with the k oom start and k oom stop commands, and k oom info will show the current state.
See k oom for a list of all OOM kernel commands.
This option (50 MB by default) specifies the free-memory threshold at which the out-of-memory (OOM) thread will trigger a low-memory event and begin killing processes.
The k oom info command will show the current value of this and other parameters.
This option (1 second by default) specifies how long the out-of-memory (OOM) kernel thread should sleep between checks.
The k oom info command will show the current value of this and other parameters.
This option caps the number of CPUs to initialize. It cannot be greater than SMP_MAX_CPUS for a specific architecture.
This option can be used to disable the initialization of hyperthread logical CPUs. Defaults to true.
This option can be used to force the selection of a particular wall clock. It only is used on pc builds. Options are “tsc”, “hpet”, and “pit”.
This option specifies the size of the buffer for ktrace records, in megabytes. The default is 32MB.
This option specifies what ktrace records are emitted. The value is a bitmask of KTRACE_GRP_* values from zircon/ktrace.h. Hex values may be specified as 0xNNN.
This option (disabled by default) turns on dynamic linker trace output. The output is in a form that is consumable by clients like Intel Processor Trace support.
This option requests that the executable at path be launched at boot, after devmgr starts up.
This option requests that the executable at path be launched once the system partition is mounted and init is launched. If there is no system bootfs or system partition, it will never be launched.
This option requests that if a minfs partition with the system type GUID is found, it is to be mounted read-write rather than read-only.
If true, zircon will attempt to netboot into another instance of zircon upon booting.
More specifically, zircon will fetch a new zircon system from a bootserver on the local link and attempt to kexec into the new image, thereby replacing the currently running instance of zircon.
This option instructs the userboot process (the first userspace process) to execute the specified binary within the bootfs, instead of following the normal userspace startup process (launching the device manager, etc).
It is useful for alternate boot modes (like a factory test or system unit tests).
The pathname used here is relative to /boot, so it should not start with a / prefix.
Note that this option does not work for executables that are linked with libraries other than libc and the dynamic linker.
Example: userboot=bin/core-tests
If this option is set, userboot will attempt to power off the machine when the process it launches exits.
If this option is set, the zx_ticks_get and zx_ticks_per_second system calls will use zx_time_get(ZX_CLOCK_MONOTONIC) in nanoseconds rather than hardware cycle counters in a hardware-based time unit. Defaults to false.
Do not launch the virtual console service if this option is present.
If this option is present, the virtual console service will keep the debug log (vc0) visible instead of switching to the first shell (vc1) at startup.
Specify the keymap for the virtual console. “qwerty” and “dvorak” are supported.
Specify the font for the virtual console. “9x16” and “18x32” are supported.
This option sets the boot timeout in the bootloader, with a default of 3 seconds. Set to zero to skip the boot menu.
This option sets the framebuffer resolution. Use the bootloader menu to display available resolutions for the device.
Example: bootloader.fbres=640x480
This option sets the default boot device to netboot or local zircon.bin.
Pass each option using -c, for example:
./scripts/run-zircon-x86-64 -c gfxconsole.font=18x32 -c gfxconsole.early=false
Pass the kernel commandline at the end, after a -- separator, for example:
bootserver zircon.bin bootfs.bin -- gfxconsole.font=18x32 gfxconsole.early=false
Create a text file named “cmdline” in the root of the USB flash drive's filesystem containing the command line.