What kinds of things would you want in the GNU OS?

[Peter da Silva]

In article <106326 at sun.Eng.Sun.COM>, news at sun.Eng.Sun.COM (news) writes:
> What kinds of things should be in the GNU Kernel?

1) Start with Mach.
2) Start with Mach...

> What kinds of features or design rationale should it use?

Start with Mach...

> For instance:
> 
> File system:	SysV vs Berkeley? Something better?

The Berkeley directory structure is, ahem, baroque. 14 character file
names are too short. 255 is ridiculous. Just increase the size of
struct dir to 32 bytes and use 30 characters. Working with AmigaDOS
I've found case-preserving files with case-ignoring searches is very
handy.

> 		Embedded file types?

NO.

>               >32-bit file offsets?

It will have to do this.

More bits in st_flags, so you don't have to do weird overlays of ISVTX
and ISGID (or whatever it is) to implement symlinks... or the next neat
hack.

Watchdogs (see recent Usenix paper).

> Security:	ACLs?

Perhaps. This would solve the bits-in-st_flags problem.

>               Get rid of root?

Hmmm. Go to something like DEV:path as per VMS/AmigaDOS/MSDOS/...?
Handy, particularly if you have assigns. But too many incompatibilities.

>               Security monitors? Auditing?
> 		Provably secure(A1)?

Not possible, I think, with the resources GNU has.

> Scheduler:	Real-time support? Task-driven? Event driven?
> 		Direct brain hookups:-)?

Threads. See 1) 2) and 3) above...

> Virtual Memory:	Should GNU run on non-VM machines? Algorithm ideas?
> 		How general (map *everything* into VM space, like Multics)?
> 		Shared libraries?

See above.
-- 
Peter da Silva, Xenix Support, Ferranti International Controls Corporation.

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