Re: writing programs for ELKS

[Dan Olson <dano@agora.rdrop.com>]

> ELKS cannot guarantee it, at least in the 8088/8086/80186 processors,
> because they do not have any memory protection instruction. An ELKS
> system has no true protection scheme (that is: it could be attacked by
> a decently written virus, even from a process without full root
> permissions), but remember that the "E" (embeddable) of "ELKS" means
> that you won't use it as a "let's try some dozens of new programs"...!
> Surely you will (re)build the entire system when you will add new
> changes...!
> And - also - if you get a source program, you can check yourself if it
> does contain worms or viruses. This is the main reason why the viruses
> are an almost unknown phenomenon in the GNU-based world.

There are two different problems that I see as a result of no memory
protection.  The first you mentioned, viruses and hackers trying to access
areas that they shouldn't have access to.  The other are poorly written
programs that accidently get into memory that's not theirs, and mess up
other processes/data.  Viruses "infect" executables and aren't part of the
source code, you might spot them by noting the files size of an executable
and seeing if it grows.  I think such things are really of little concern
to ELKS, as it's a) a very small percentage of the systems out there, and
b) not something we can fix.  If this is an issue, then using a CPU like
the 386 with Linux is probably more reasonable.  If do a good job keeping
bugs out of our code, we should be okay.  Just my 2 cents.

	Dan