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feat: add PS/2 keyboard interrupt driver - #2532

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GloriousAlpaca wants to merge 8 commits into
hermit-os:mainfrom
GloriousAlpaca:pr-keyboard-clean
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feat: add PS/2 keyboard interrupt driver#2532
GloriousAlpaca wants to merge 8 commits into
hermit-os:mainfrom
GloriousAlpaca:pr-keyboard-clean

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@GloriousAlpaca

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This feature adds support for the PS2 legacy keyboard in Qemu x86_64.
Currently it does:

  1. A minimized hardware initialization (e.g. flush the output buffer) to use the keyboard, according to the standards for the Intel 8042 chip: Link to OSDev
  2. Install an interrupt handler, which is done in the install_handlers function in interrupt.rs, as it is a hardware interrupt but does not belong in the pci interrupt handlers list (legacy device).
  3. Add a systemcall to pop the last scancode out of the keyboard input ringbuffer (which currently has a length of 256). The Ringbuffer also uses Atomics, to prevent races and deadlocks.
    The systemcall returns 0 if the keyboard feature is disabled.

I have only tested this feature with C programs on a Mac using Qemu.

@mkroening mkroening self-assigned this Jul 6, 2026

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Benchmark Results

Details
Benchmark Current: 3c3302d Previous: 2e23902 Performance Ratio
startup_benchmark Build Time 95.52 s 80.34 s 1.19
startup_benchmark File Size 0.78 MB 0.80 MB 0.98
Startup Time - 1 core 0.76 s (±0.01 s) 0.75 s (±0.02 s) 1.02
Startup Time - 2 cores 0.78 s (±0.02 s) 0.74 s (±0.02 s) 1.05
Startup Time - 4 cores 0.78 s (±0.01 s) 0.74 s (±0.02 s) 1.04
multithreaded_benchmark Build Time 96.18 s 82.11 s 1.17
multithreaded_benchmark File Size 0.88 MB 0.86 MB 1.03
Multithreaded Pi Efficiency - 2 Threads 66.65 % (±6.54 %) 85.89 % (±6.61 %) 0.78
Multithreaded Pi Efficiency - 4 Threads 40.84 % (±3.51 %) 43.43 % (±2.56 %) 0.94
Multithreaded Pi Efficiency - 8 Threads 19.85 % (±1.41 %) 25.76 % (±1.53 %) 0.77
micro_benchmarks Build Time 215.41 s 80.40 s 2.68
micro_benchmarks File Size 0.89 MB 0.86 MB 1.03
Scheduling time - 1 thread 183.48 ticks (±38.74 ticks) 62.65 ticks (±4.06 ticks) 2.93
Scheduling time - 2 threads 110.41 ticks (±19.77 ticks) 34.08 ticks (±4.10 ticks) 3.24
Micro - Time for syscall (getpid) 10.64 ticks (±5.18 ticks) 3.45 ticks (±0.58 ticks) 3.08
Memcpy speed - (built_in) block size 4096 56760.35 MByte/s (±40204.06 MByte/s) 82448.38 MByte/s (±56997.13 MByte/s) 0.69
Memcpy speed - (built_in) block size 1048576 13760.19 MByte/s (±11354.66 MByte/s) 30585.98 MByte/s (±24707.84 MByte/s) 0.45
Memcpy speed - (built_in) block size 16777216 12352.98 MByte/s (±10294.10 MByte/s) 26340.06 MByte/s (±21720.96 MByte/s) 0.47
Memset speed - (built_in) block size 4096 57211.43 MByte/s (±40574.61 MByte/s) 82292.76 MByte/s (±56891.50 MByte/s) 0.70
Memset speed - (built_in) block size 1048576 14179.65 MByte/s (±11628.45 MByte/s) 31323.85 MByte/s (±25145.86 MByte/s) 0.45
Memset speed - (built_in) block size 16777216 12653.61 MByte/s (±10463.63 MByte/s) 27104.68 MByte/s (±22209.94 MByte/s) 0.47
Memcpy speed - (rust) block size 4096 51355.08 MByte/s (±37562.89 MByte/s) 74097.96 MByte/s (±51811.44 MByte/s) 0.69
Memcpy speed - (rust) block size 1048576 13883.52 MByte/s (±11237.16 MByte/s) 30361.60 MByte/s (±24602.37 MByte/s) 0.46
Memcpy speed - (rust) block size 16777216 11857.50 MByte/s (±9808.02 MByte/s) 27625.34 MByte/s (±22806.88 MByte/s) 0.43
Memset speed - (rust) block size 4096 51818.85 MByte/s (±37876.08 MByte/s) 74373.47 MByte/s (±51976.48 MByte/s) 0.70
Memset speed - (rust) block size 1048576 14269.45 MByte/s (±11492.19 MByte/s) 31110.89 MByte/s (±25033.24 MByte/s) 0.46
Memset speed - (rust) block size 16777216 12188.15 MByte/s (±10007.82 MByte/s) 28386.93 MByte/s (±23265.03 MByte/s) 0.43
alloc_benchmarks Build Time 208.48 s 74.76 s 2.79
alloc_benchmarks File Size 0.86 MB 0.87 MB 0.98
Allocations - Allocation success 91.38 % 91.31 % 1.00
Allocations - Deallocation success 100.00 % 100.00 % 1
Allocations - Pre-fail Allocations 61.60 % 61.44 % 1.00
Allocations - Average Allocation time 27331.77 Ticks (±1668.24 Ticks) 5860.58 Ticks (±98.43 Ticks) 4.66
Allocations - Average Allocation time (no fail) 27930.74 Ticks (±2128.87 Ticks) 6554.81 Ticks (±92.86 Ticks) 4.26
Allocations - Average Deallocation time 5895.06 Ticks (±1872.42 Ticks) 1805.01 Ticks (±250.35 Ticks) 3.27
mutex_benchmark Build Time 213.90 s 79.82 s 2.68
mutex_benchmark File Size 0.89 MB 0.86 MB 1.03
Mutex Stress Test Average Time per Iteration - 1 Threads 36.10 ns (±7.61 ns) 12.10 ns (±0.41 ns) 2.98
Mutex Stress Test Average Time per Iteration - 2 Threads 32.38 ns (±8.90 ns) 40.26 ns (±1.68 ns) 0.80

This comment was automatically generated by workflow using github-action-benchmark.

@GloriousAlpaca
GloriousAlpaca force-pushed the pr-keyboard-clean branch 2 times, most recently from 2c424d5 to f6c859b Compare July 6, 2026 16:30

@mkroening mkroening left a comment

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Thanks for the PR! :)

I was wondering why implement drivers for legacy devices instead of USB keyboards (xhci, usb-oxide, embassy-usb). I guess it is because of simplicity.

It would be great to discuss the high-level application-facing API, since that is the hardest to change once merged.

Comment thread Cargo.toml Outdated
Comment thread Cargo.toml Outdated
Comment thread src/syscalls/system.rs Outdated
Comment thread src/arch/x86_64/kernel/interrupts.rs Outdated
Comment thread src/arch/x86_64/kernel/interrupts.rs Outdated
Comment thread src/arch/x86_64/kernel/pc_keyboard.rs Outdated
Comment thread src/arch/x86_64/kernel/pc_keyboard.rs Outdated
Comment thread src/arch/x86_64/kernel/pc_keyboard.rs Outdated
Comment thread src/arch/x86_64/kernel/pc_keyboard.rs Outdated
Comment on lines +63 to +64
/// Pops a scancode from the keyboard buffer, returning None if the buffer is empty.
pub fn pop_scancode() -> Option<u8> {

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A scancode can never be zero, right? Returning Option<NonZero<u8>> would be preferable in that case.

Comment thread src/syscalls/system.rs Outdated
Comment on lines +10 to +15
#[cfg(all(target_arch = "x86_64", feature = "keyboard"))]
#[hermit_macro::system]
#[unsafe(no_mangle)]
pub extern "C" fn sys_read_keyboard() -> u8 {
crate::kernel::keyboard::pop_scancode().unwrap_or(0)
}

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I am not too sure about this API. Is the application supposed to busy loop on this and retrieve one event at a time?

What about doing something similar to Linux's event device (evdev) interface (Linux docs)? Reading from /dev/input/event0 would then fill a user buffer with input events and blocks if no events are there unless opened with O_NONBLOCK.

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Since we don't use a filesystem like Linux I would propose something like this:
pub extern "C" fn sys_read_keyboard(buffer: *mut u8 ,size: usize, nonblock: bool) -> isize
(Should I also rename the systemcall to sys_read_pc_keyboard?)
This would be pretty flexible, we can throw standard errorcodes or return the buffersize in bytes like this.
We can then use a semaphore to block the thread until there are scancodes in the vecdeque.

@GloriousAlpaca
GloriousAlpaca force-pushed the pr-keyboard-clean branch 3 times, most recently from a7180a7 to 153302f Compare July 17, 2026 14:24
Comment thread src/arch/x86_64/kernel/pc_keyboard.rs Outdated
Comment thread src/arch/x86_64/kernel/pc_keyboard.rs Outdated
Comment thread src/arch/x86_64/kernel/pc_keyboard.rs Outdated
Comment thread src/arch/x86_64/kernel/pc_keyboard.rs Outdated
Comment on lines +47 to +53
let scancode = Ps2::read_data();
let mut buffer = KEYBOARD_BUFFER.lock();

if buffer.len() >= BUFFER_SIZE {
buffer.pop_front();
}
buffer.push_back(scancode);

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I wonder if retaining the keys in the queue is how this is handled best. I'm thinking that maybe adding a timestamp to each key event and discarding it after x seconds is a correct approach. But maybe I'm prematurely optimizing this. It would be interesting to know how other systems are handling this.

Comment thread Cargo.toml Outdated
##
## This feature initializes the PS/2 keyboard controller and installs a keyboard interrupt handler.
## It also provides a system call to receive the last scancode from the internal keyboard buffer.
## Note that this is not a complete keyboard driver and not needed for general keyboard support.

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Suggested change
## Note that this is not a complete keyboard driver and not needed for general keyboard support.
## Note that this is not a complete keyboard driver and not needed for serial input/output.

@GloriousAlpaca
GloriousAlpaca force-pushed the pr-keyboard-clean branch 3 times, most recently from 2167837 to 452458e Compare August 11, 2026 13:46
Comment thread src/arch/x86_64/kernel/pc_keyboard.rs
Comment thread src/syscalls/system.rs
Comment thread src/syscalls/system.rs
Comment thread src/syscalls/system.rs
Comment thread src/arch/x86_64/kernel/pc_keyboard.rs Outdated
Comment thread src/arch/x86_64/kernel/pc_keyboard.rs Outdated
Comment thread src/syscalls/system.rs
#[cfg(all(target_arch = "x86_64", feature = "pc-keyboard"))]
#[hermit_macro::system]
#[unsafe(no_mangle)]
pub unsafe extern "C" fn sys_read_keyboard(buffer: *mut u8, size: usize, nonblock: bool) -> isize {

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Please add a doc comment

Comment thread src/syscalls/system.rs
Comment thread src/arch/x86_64/kernel/pc_keyboard.rs Outdated
@mkroening
mkroening requested review from mkroening and removed request for mkroening August 22, 2026 13:57
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4 participants