VINO 0.50 - Release Notes

Like its predecessor (VINO-0.40), VINO-0.50 is a research release. While we welcome bug reports, we know that there are problems in the system, missing functionality, some "performance challenges," and other less than ideal behaviors. Please do tell us about problems you have with us, but also bear with us as we continue development on VINO.

Before installing and running VINO, be sure to check the list of limitations, so you know what to expect.

Here is a list of behaviors that might be considered "unexpected."

• Although MiSFIT (our software fault isoloation tool) does sign the grafts it processes, we do not verify this in the kernel. Verifying the signature in the kernel requires storing a key; storing this key in a secure manner is still an unresolved problem. We expect a future release of VINO to use proof-carrying-code to verify that grafts have been processed through MiSFIT, obviating the need for key management. Until then, beware, a user, left to his/her own devices could write a malicious graft, not run it through MiSFIT, and then download it successfully.
• Running out of backing store panics the kernel. We do lazy backing store allocation at present so that you can get away with allocating more pages than could theoretically be swapped out as long as you keep them in memory, but if you try to actually swap a page out when there's no available backing store, the system will crash.
• Kernel profiling exists, but the implementation is only valid for a single threaded kernel. Since VINO is not a single-threaded kernel, the profiler gets confused. The counts of how many times each function gets called are correct, but the call graphs and time spent in each function are not.
• This release works well on a Pentium class (or better) machine with at least 32 MB of memory. You can boot on a 486 with 8 MB of memory, but the system may hang.

Last updated on Monday, Novemer 9, 1998 by Margo Seltzer (margo@eecs.harvard.edu).