From: jbranso@dismail.de
To: "Akib Azmain Turja" <akib@disroot.org>,
guix-devel@gnu.org, "Ludovic Courtès" <ludo@gnu.org>
Subject: Re: Rust in the kernel
Date: Tue, 05 Jul 2022 18:54:57 +0000 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <623d3294d68d7742031cd2c25af1c4b3@dismail.de> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <87tu7va7xc.fsf@disroot.org>
July 5, 2022 11:36 AM, "Akib Azmain Turja" <akib@disroot.org> wrote:
> jbranso@dismail.de writes:
>
>> July 5, 2022 12:48 AM, "Akib Azmain Turja" <akib@disroot.org> wrote:
>>
>>> jbranso@dismail.de writes:
>>
>> July 4, 2022 1:36 PM, "Akib Azmain Turja" <akib@disroot.org> wrote:
>>
>> Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org> writes:
>>
>> Hi!
>>
>> Leo Famulari <leo@famulari.name> skribis:
>> The effort to use the Rust programming language within the Linux kernel
>> is progressing and may be realized in the next few months:
>>
>> https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/899182/6c831b90eaee015e
>> https://www.memorysafety.org/blog/memory-safety-in-linux-kernel
>>
>> Within Guix, we'll need to adapt our kernel build processes in order to
>> support this.
>>
>> Although I help with updating and configuring the kernel builds, I won't
>> be able to participate in the "Rust in the kernel" effort for Guix.
>>
>> Understood…
>> So, interested volunteers should begin organizing :)
>>
>> Yup!
>>
>> Now, concretely, how long will it take before key parts of the kernel
>> are written in Rust? Hopefully a long time, no? Per the article above,
>> it’s starting small, with Rust usage in well-defined locations.
>>
>> This is not to say that we shouldn’t start organizing, but rather that
>> we still have a bit of time ahead.
>>
>> (During that time, interested readers can also take a stab at improving
>> support for the Hurd, which relies on that revolutionary technology
>> called “address spaces” to ensure Memory Safety™ among other things!)
>>
>> Ludo’.
>> "Address spaces"! What's that? Sorry for asking without searching the
>> internet first, but the Hurd designers are so creative that a few
>> understand the concepts and join the community, so there is a little
>> chance (if any) that I'll find any useful information on that.
>>
>> From the Hurd wiki: https://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/advantages.html
>>
>> The Hurd is built in a very modular fashion. Other Unix-like kernels
>> (Linux, for example) are also modular in that they allow loading
>> (and unloading) some components as kernel modules, but the Hurd goes
>> one step further in that most of the components that constitute the
>> whole kernel are running as separate user-space processes and are thus
>> using different address spaces that are isolated from each other.
>> This is a multi-server design based on a microkernel. It is not
>> possible that a faulty memory dereference inside the TCP/IP stack
>> can bring down the whole kernel, and thus the whole system, which
>> is a real problem in a monolithic Unix kernel architecture.
>>
>> Some visual explantions:
>>
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microkernel#/media/File:OS-structure.svg
>>
>> The Hurd is on the right in this image.
>>> Thanks, now I understand Ludo' was saying about virtual address space,
>>> achieved using paging.
>>
>> Essentially, if your fileserver somehow gets hacked, the attacker
>> cannot magically access your TCP/IP stack, because your TCP/IP is not
>> in the some "software zone" as your fileserver. So microkernels like
>> the Hurd are usually considered more secure and better designed
>> than monolithic kernels like Linux. However, monolithic kernels
>> will usually be faster than microkernels.
>>> I know microkernels are theorically slow due to the heavy use IPC. But
>>> is it really impossible for well written microkernel to beat a well
>>> written monolithic kernel? L4 is super-fast, is it still slower than
>>> Linux?
>>
>> Probably a little, but I am not an expert in that area.
>>
>> GNU Mach, which is what the Hurd runs on. Is slower that Linux.
>> There was an attempt to port the Hurd to L4 before. It is
>> deemed not possible by the current hurd developers.
>
> Yes, I know that Mach is one of the slowest kernels. BTW, what's the
> status of Viengoos?
I believe that Viengoos is essentially dead. I do not believe
that anyone is actively working on it.
More info is available here:
http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/history/port_to_another_microkernel.html
>
>>>
>>
>> --
>> Akib Azmain Turja
>>
>> This message is signed by me with my GnuPG key. It's fingerprint is:
>>
>> 7001 8CE5 819F 17A3 BBA6 66AF E74F 0EFA 922A E7F5
>>> --
>>> Akib Azmain Turja
>>>
>>> This message is signed by me with my GnuPG key. It's fingerprint is:
>>>
>>> 7001 8CE5 819F 17A3 BBA6 66AF E74F 0EFA 922A E7F5
>
> --
> Akib Azmain Turja
>
> This message is signed by me with my GnuPG key. It's fingerprint is:
>
> 7001 8CE5 819F 17A3 BBA6 66AF E74F 0EFA 922A E7F5
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2022-07-05 19:12 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 14+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2022-06-30 16:37 Rust in the kernel Leo Famulari
2022-06-30 16:48 ` Leo Famulari
2022-07-04 12:57 ` Ludovic Courtès
2022-07-04 17:35 ` Akib Azmain Turja
2022-07-04 21:34 ` jbranso
2022-07-05 4:47 ` Akib Azmain Turja
2022-07-05 14:00 ` jbranso
2022-07-05 15:35 ` Akib Azmain Turja
2022-07-05 18:54 ` jbranso [this message]
2022-07-05 8:47 ` Akib Azmain Turja
2022-07-06 15:31 ` Ludovic Courtès
2022-07-06 16:25 ` Akib Azmain Turja
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2022-07-05 18:29 Nathan Dehnel
2022-07-05 18:32 Nathan Dehnel
Reply instructions:
You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:
* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
and reply-to-all from there: mbox
Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style
List information: https://guix.gnu.org/
* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
switches of git-send-email(1):
git send-email \
--in-reply-to=623d3294d68d7742031cd2c25af1c4b3@dismail.de \
--to=jbranso@dismail.de \
--cc=akib@disroot.org \
--cc=guix-devel@gnu.org \
--cc=ludo@gnu.org \
/path/to/YOUR_REPLY
https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line
before the message body.
Code repositories for project(s) associated with this public inbox
https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for read-only IMAP folder(s) and NNTP newsgroup(s).