RE: Binary Kernel Patching - Upgrading without a reboot
Fagerburg, Eric D (eric.d.fagerburg@intel.com)
Fri, 25 Jun 1999 06:39:06 -0700
> > On Fri, 18 Jun 1999, Jordan Mendelson wrote:
> > >
> > > I know a while back there was talk of a method of upgrading your
> > > kernel for things like security holes, new features, etc using a
> > > binary method similar to the way we use insmod to load
> kernel modules.
> > >
> > > Does anyone know what happened to all the plans that were made? It
> > > sure would be nice not to have to reboot to upgrade my kernels.
> > >
> >
> > You know, I don't know a whole lot about the internals of
> an operating
> > system... but I do believe that you have to be crazy to
> think that you can
> > change the *core* of an OS and not reboot it... Think about
> it. You can't
> > do that with a user-level program, the exact reason escapes
> my mind now,
> > but it has to do with how the memory is mapped during execution.
>
> I was thinking more on the lines of small patches. For
> example, HP/UX has the
> ability to use it's kernel module system to make binary
> patches to the kernel
> itself while it is running. You could, for instance, patch a
> bug in the
> scheduler without requiring a reboot.
NetWare does this too. If you look at their Y2K "patch" to 3.12 you'll see
that they load a huge number of little NLMs to fix all the Y2K bugs.
I'm not sure I like the idea for Linux but it could have benefits for people
running stable kernels. The latest exploits could be fixed on the fly
without having to rebuild the kernel and restart the machine. Think of the
uptimes we'd get then!
Just my 0.02USD,
Eric
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