From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1759907AbYEANhh (ORCPT ); Thu, 1 May 2008 09:37:37 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1755881AbYEANh1 (ORCPT ); Thu, 1 May 2008 09:37:27 -0400 Received: from brmea-mail-2.Sun.COM ([192.18.98.43]:65333 "EHLO brmea-mail-2.sun.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1755941AbYEANh0 (ORCPT ); Thu, 1 May 2008 09:37:26 -0400 Date: Thu, 01 May 2008 09:35:04 -0400 From: David Collier-Brown Subject: Re: A system for rebootless kernel security updates In-reply-to: <20080501113802.GC28005@nibiru.local> To: weigelt@metux.de Cc: linux kernel list Reply-to: davecb@sun.com Message-id: <4819C708.1000802@sun.com> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset=us-ascii Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT X-Accept-Language: en-us, en References: <87r6cvgyi1.fsf@basil.nowhere.org> <4815A721.1040101@firstfloor.org> <20080501113802.GC28005@nibiru.local> User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; SunOS sun4u; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20041221 Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Enrico Weigelt wrote: > I didn't have the time for an deeper study yet, but as you already > mentioned, there're lots of limitations which can make it harmful: > as soon as interfaces chance, you're in *big* trouble. There should > be a way for finding them (automatically). Maybe extract the > interface signatures (including structs!) so some appropriate place > next to the kernel, so they can be checked before (re)loading the > module. Actually there is a mature discipline around data changes that dates back to before Unix v7, but it's off-topic for this discussion: it would make the changes too big (;-)) If anyone is interested, see http://multicians.org/stachour.html and/or send me mail --dave (reading LKML when he should be working) c-b -- David Collier-Brown | Always do right. This will gratify Sun Microsystems, Toronto | some people and astonish the rest davecb@sun.com | -- Mark Twain (905) 943-1983, cell: (647) 833-9377, (800) 555-9786 x56583 bridge: (877) 385-4099 code: 506 9191#