On 11/22/20, Heiser, Gernot (Data61, Kensington NSW)
<[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Yes. While this is a reasonable use case, it’s not one we see happening.
> Very few real-world systems are built from scratch, they almost inevitably
> are an evolution of something existing. And, compared to pulling out
> critical assets to run native (as in the Cog phone), the additional security
> gain from running *everything* native is small, compared to the huge
> refactoring/porting effort. That’s why just about everyone opts for the
> HACMS-style incremental cyber retrofit, as Cog have done it.
>
> But if you think you gain enough by going fully native on an unverified
> microkernel OS, then Genode is what you should use. If you want high
> assurance for your critical assets, then the seL4 Core Platform is the way
> to go (at least once it supports VMs).
>

I'm (still) working on UX/RT, my own implementation of a QNX-like OS
based on seL4, which I've posted about here in the past. It will use
code from existing free Unices wherever possible. This includes using
the LKL project to run multiple kernel-only Linux systems as servers
to provide device drivers, disk filesystems, and a network stack. Most
of the "regular" user-mode tools and libraries will be forked or
ported from Linux and BSD. Many Linux-specifc API functions will be
natively supported (making it easier to implement a Linux binary
compatibility environment as well as porting Linux applications). I'm
certainly not attempting to build a full-featured Unix-like system
from scratch by myself because that would be a lot of reinvention of
the wheel. Much of what I need is already out there. I just need to
fill in the gaps.

Basically, I'm intending to make a general-purpose Unix-like
microkernel OS that is practical for most use cases where legacy
Unices (including Linux) are currently used, while hopefully being
more secure and easier to manage than any legacy Unix, and still
maintaining a reasonable degree of backwards compatibility (and also
following the Unix philosophy, or at least my interpretation of it,
considerably better than any other modern system).
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