5 ms·

Index Refs Address Size Wired Name (Version) UUID <Linked Against> 109 0 0xffffff7f83eb3000 0x7000 0x7000 net.sf.tuntaposx.

• tinus_hn 7y ago
  Pretty insane for an application like Dropbox to use a kernel extension.
  • tankenmate 7y ago
    not overly, i'm fairly sure it provides a virtual filesystem
    • stephenr 7y ago
      That is pretty insane.
      • aratakareigen 7y ago
        Why? I can't think of an alternative that users wouldn't complain about.
      • bvda 7y ago
        Insanely useful?
  • simonh 7y ago
    They use it in SmartSync, so files that are actually stored in the cloud and not physically on your local machine, are visible and selectable in the Finder and automatically downloaded on demand.
    • bouke 7y ago
      It would be great if there were some user-space support for this in next year's macOS release. I think it would be useful for a lot of cloud storage providers.
      • rgovostes 7y ago
        Apple previously added third-party sync integration points into the Finder to stop Dropbox from injecting into that process (when it was easier and Apple was locking it down). It’s likely they do not want to break Dropbox and will try to support whatever it needs.
        • pmjordan 7y ago
          There is NSFileProviderExtension, but last I heard it was still a very immature API.
      • stephenr 7y ago
        That is literally what the FileProvider Framework (https://developer.apple.com/documentation/fileprovider https://developer.apple.com/documentation/fileprovider) allows.
• zx2c4 7y ago
  What program are you using that relies on net.sf.tuntaposx.tun? macOS has had their own utun driver since a long time.
  • tssva 7y ago
    I would guess a VPN program which provides a layer 2 VPN option. utun only supports layer 3 VPNs.
    • IgorPartola 7y ago
      Just like iOS. Which sucks because being able to be on my home network while not physically at home would have been nice in the past, mostly before Spotify was a thing.
      • pmjordan 7y ago
        DriverKit has support for building ethernet drivers: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/networkingdriverkit/iousernetworkethernet?language=objc https://developer.apple.com/documentation/networkingdriverki... I could imagine this being used for implementing a layer 2 VPN.
        • tssva 7y ago
          ZeroTier has eliminated the use of the tap kernel extension in releases 1.42+ when used on macOS 10.13+. They aren't using DriverKit but a combination of poorly and undocumented features. They expect to eventually have to develop a DriverKit based implementation. Details at https://www.zerotier.com/how-zerotier-eliminated-kernel-extensions-on-macos/ https://www.zerotier.com/how-zerotier-eliminated-kernel-exte...
          • pmjordan 7y ago
            DriverKit has only been around since 10.15 so currently it's not easy to correctly support a range of versions with everything so massively in flux and Apple's aggressive deprecation schedule. Writing and maintaining macOS system level software (including drivers, etc.) has generally become a pretty big headache since around 10.13, stuff is constantly breaking due to OS changes and regressions. This obviously always happened to some extent, but the pace of breaking changes and bugs picked up massively around that time - I think a large part of the problem is that Apple's own developers don't actually need to use any of these features themselves, so they are just dumped onto 3rd party developers in a half-arsed state. I'm thinking of kernel extension authorisation (which was super buggy in earlier 10.13.x releases and still has weird quirks), various user consent additions (there are no APIs for directly checking or prompting for many of the permissions, let alone notifications when the user grants or revokes consent), DriverKit, EndpointSecurity, etc.