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Interesting project. Just wondering is there any ongoing effort to somehow allow users to build a minimum linux kernel that is just enough to support a specifie
by dis-sys 6y ago
Interesting project. Just wondering is there any ongoing effort to somehow allow users to build a minimum linux kernel that is just enough to support a specified application?
- orumin 6y agoThere is project what you say, that's name "Lupine". paper: https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3342195.3387526 https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3342195.3387526 code: https://github.com/hckuo/Lupine-Linux https://github.com/hckuo/Lupine-Linux
- dis-sys 6y agovery cool stuff, thanks for sharing
- rwmj 6y agohttps://github.com/unikernelLinux https://github.com/unikernelLinux
- dis-sys 6y agovery interesting stuff, thanks for sharing
- IfOnlyYouKnew 6y agoI did once spend a few boring hours on a plane on a genetic-algorithm-based optimiser that (tried to) minimise a Linux image (I believe I used Gentoo), eliminating packages first, followed by files, segments, and individual lines of code. From what I remember, (a) you can probably get to an extremely low size, (b) it won't be worth it compared to similar efforts taking a different route and getting 90 % there, because (c) your test will never be sufficient for any real-world usage: I remember going through some of the codepaths that had been disabled, and it included handling of specific dates, any unicode character I had not used, handling of networking and disk access failures that I did not even know of, etc.
- carapace 6y agoThat's pretty awesome! Did you write it up anywhere?
- ttul 6y agoI suppose you could profile your app, watching the syscalls it makes over a full cycle, and then build a stripped kernel with nothing but those calls implemented. Any drivers not touched would also be removed. That would not eliminate the syscall overhead, but it would certainly minimize boot time and improve security somewhat by reducing the attack surface.