Guillaume Pierre writes “Andy Tanenbaum announced the availability of the next version of the
Minix operating
system. “MINIX 3 is a new open-source operating system
designed to be highly reliable and secure. This new OS is extremely
small, with the part that runs in kernel mode under 4000 lines of
executable code. The parts that run in user mode are divided into
small modules, well insulated from one another. For example, each
device driver runs as a separate user-mode process so a bug in a
driver (by far the biggest source of bugs in any operating system),
cannot bring down the entire OS. In fact, most of the time when a
driver crashes it is automatically replaced without requiring any user
intervention, without requiring rebooting, and without affecting
running programs. These features, the tiny amount of kernel code, and
other aspects greatly enhance system reliability.”
Minix operating
system. “MINIX 3 is a new open-source operating system
designed to be highly reliable and secure. This new OS is extremely
small, with the part that runs in kernel mode under 4000 lines of
executable code. The parts that run in user mode are divided into
small modules, well insulated from one another. For example, each
device driver runs as a separate user-mode process so a bug in a
driver (by far the biggest source of bugs in any operating system),
cannot bring down the entire OS. In fact, most of the time when a
driver crashes it is automatically replaced without requiring any user
intervention, without requiring rebooting, and without affecting
running programs. These features, the tiny amount of kernel code, and
other aspects greatly enhance system reliability.”
In case anyone wonders: yes, he still thinks that
micro-kernels
are more reliable than monolithic kernels 😉
Disclaimer: I am the chief architect of Globule, the
experimental content-distribution network used to host www.minix3.org.”
Link: oreilly.com
Category:
- Unix
