linux-kernel - Re: Can we move device drivers into user-space?

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Date:	Fri, 24 Feb 2012 09:07:09 -0800
From:	Guenter Roeck <guenter.roeck@...csson.com>
To:	Greg KH <greg@...ah.com>
CC:	Jidong Xiao <jidong.xiao@...il.com>,
	Kernel development list <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: Can we move device drivers into user-space?

On Fri, 2012-02-24 at 10:38 -0500, Greg KH wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 10:19:36AM -0500, Jidong Xiao wrote:
> > On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 11:56 PM, Jidong Xiao <jidong.xiao@...il.com> wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > I am just curious. Since the concept user-space device drivers has
> > > been proposed for several years, and some related projects and
> > > research papers have demonstrated the feasibility of of moving device
> > > drivers into use space. In particular, this paper:
> > >
> > > Tolerating Malicious Device Drivers in Linux.
> > > http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/papers/sud:usenix10.pdf
> > >
> > > In this paper, existing device driver code need not to be changed,
> > > which should help the idea to be applied in practice.
> > >
> > > The advantage and disadvantage of move device drivers into use space
> > > of both obvious:
> > >
> > > Advantage: Since most of kernel bugs are caused by device drivers
> > > issues, moving device drivers into user space can reduce the impact of
> > > device driver bugs. From security perspective, the system can be more
> > > secure and robust if most device drivers are working in user space.
> > > Disadvantage: At least, existing techniques as well as the above paper
> > > showed a relatively high overhead.
> > >
> > > So is it mainly because the high overhead that prevents the user-space
> > > device drivers ideas being accepted in Linux?
> > >
> > 
> > Actually, my major concern is, since UIO has been accepted, then why
> > don't we move all the rest device drivers into user space as well. As
> > I understand, currently, some of device drivers are running on user
> > space, while the other (or say the majority of) device drivers are
> > running on kernel space, so why don't we maintain a consistent device
> > drivers infrastructure, say, either all in user space, or all in
> > kernel space. (Sure some critical device drivers still need to be kept
> > in kernel space.)
> 
> Feel free to create patches to do so, and handle all of the userspace
> changes needed in order to implement this.
> 
> I think you haven't thought through the true reason we have device
> drivers, and why Linux isn't a microkernel...
> 
> And I'd take exception to your "advantage:" line above, I don't believe
> that is true at all.

I second that. Worse, the real disadvantages are ignored. Crappy
user-space code, code is kept proprietary, code is no longer submitted
upstream, people don't care about implementing interrupts and instead
implement polling loops, porting to later kernel versions is a pain. The
list goes on and on. This is all more than annoying.

I would prefer another approach: Fix the problematic drivers, and spend
time researching how to improve forced module unload to a point where
modules can be re-loaded after an OOPS.

How about dropping UIO support from the kernel ? That would make more
sense to me.

Guenter


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