470. The guest signals itself

2026-09-09 - directed, continuing 469

469 unblocked PPSA25872: 310,987 calls at 100% standing, every import implemented. It still does not finish, and the run report says "ran to the time limit". This pass asked what it was waiting for.

Blocked, not busy

ORBISTOUN_LIMIT=20   310987 calls
ORBISTOUN_LIMIT=90   310987 calls

Four and a half times the wall clock, not one extra call. The work it does do is real - 168,970 memcmp and 59,207 memcpy - and then it stops dead.

The persisted trace ends on libkernel_unity::sceKernelRaiseException. Forced dumps on it and on the call before give the pair:

sceKernelInstallExceptionHandler(0x1e, 0x480001700210)
    -> +0x1700210 = ff 05 02 be 00 00   83 ff 1e   75 16 …
sceKernelRaiseException(0x5e2d00000000, 0x1e)
    -> arg0 is orbistoun's own main pthread handle

0x1e is 30 and SIGUSR1 = 30 was already in abi-constants.toml. The handler's own second instruction is cmp edi, 0x1e - the guest's code compares its first argument against 30 - so the argument order is read off the title's own bytes rather than assumed. It installs a handler for signal 30, raises signal 30 on its own main thread, and never calls anything again.

Recorded, deliberately not implemented

Neither function existed in any knowledge file (grep -c answered 0 across all of crates/orbistoun-hle/data/knowledge/). Both are now guest-observed entries in libkernel_unity.toml carrying the arity, the argument order, the signal number and the handler prologue.

Implementing them is not a stub return: sceKernelRaiseException has to run guest code on a thread this project does not own, with the signal number in edi, and return once the handler has. Nothing measured says what either call returns. Answering Ok would move the wall without anything having been determined - the failure principle 3 names, and the one an unattended run drifts toward because the wall moving feels like progress (D645).

Surprises

• 100% standing is not a finish line. Every previous wall was a missing implementation, so "everything it calls is implemented" read like success. Here it means the opposite: the guest is satisfied with every answer it got and is waiting on something it was never given.
• The report cannot tell blocked from slow. "Ran to the time limit" is true and useless; the two-limit comparison is what separated them, and it is a manual step nothing prompts for.

Next

• The bus request for the pair's return values and delivery order.
• The AGC contract - still three titles' wall (D641).
• The libc data-object request, still open, still PPSA21564's wall.