Asterinas: A new Linux-compatible kernel project

https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/1022920/ad60263cd13c8a13/

by howtofly • 1 year ago

224 73 1 year ago

lwn.net

hardwaresofton• 1 year ago

This IPC often has a performance impact, which is a big part of why microkernels have remained relatively unpopular.

Somewhat comforting to see deeply technical people still misconstruing why approaches/projects don't get adopted.

mariusor• 1 year ago

It would help everyone if you'd actually tell us in which way they're doing that.

immibis• 1 year ago

I think they're referring to the fact that projects mostly get adopted or not based on socio-political processes such as marketing, and only rarely on the actual merits of the project such as performance.

yjftsjthsd-h4• 1 year ago

This IPC often has a performance impact, which is a big part of why microkernels have remained relatively unpopular.

I thought newer microkernels... Reduced that? Fixed it? I forget, I just had the impression it wasn't actually that bad except that the industry is still traumatized by Mach.

From the project website:

Only the privileged Framework is allowed to use unsafe features of Rust, while the unprivileged Services must be written exclusively in safe Rust.

That feels backwards to me. If an unprivileged task is unsafe, it's still unprivileged. Meanwhile the unsafe code that requires extra verification... Is only allowed in the part where nothing can safeguard it?

And from https://asterinas.github.io/book/index.html (because it was one of my first questions on seeing 'Linux replacement in rust'):

Licensing
Asterinas's source code and documentation primarily use the Mozilla Public License (MPL), Version 2.0. Select components are under more permissive licenses, detailed here.

Not GPL, but not BSD either.

tatetian164• 1 year ago

if an unprivileged task is unsafe, it's still unprivileged. Meanwhile the unsafe code that requires extra verification...

I am sorry that the doc is a kind of misleading. I wrote that... The statement need to be interpreted in the context of framekernel. An entire Rust-based framekernel runs in the kernel space but is logically partitioned into the two halves: the privileged OS framework and the de-privileged OS services. Here, "privileged" means safe + unsafe Rust kernel code, whereas "de-privileged" means all safe Rust kernel code. And this is all about the kernel code. Framekernels do not put restrictions on the languages of user-space programs.

magicalhippo• 1 year ago

I had the same reaction that this sounded all very backwards, but reading the introduction in the paper[1] made it more clear:

The kernel is logically divided into two parts: the privileged OS framework (akin to a microkernel) and the de-privileged OS services. Only the privileged framework is allowed to use unsafe, while the de-privileged services must be written in safe Rust completely. As the TCB, the privileged framework encapsulates all low-level, hardware-oriented unsafe operations behind safe APIs. Using these safe APIs, the de-privileged OS services can implement all kinds of OS functionalities, including device drivers.

Ostd provides a small yet expressive set of safe OS development abstractions, covering safe user-kernel interactions, safe kernel logic, and safe kernel-peripheral interactions. Of particular note is the untyped memory abstraction, which addresses the challenge of safely handling externally-modifiable memory (e.g., MMIO or DMA-capable memory) – a longstanding obstacle in safe driver development.

So the privileged part is privileged because it does unsafe stuff. It's also quite minimal, so that the "business logic" of a driver or similar can be implemented using safe code in the de-privileged code, which is de-privileged because it doesn't need privileged unsafe access. At least that's my understanding.

[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.03876

ulrikrasmussen• 1 year ago

That feels backwards to me. If an unprivileged task is unsafe, it's still unprivileged. Meanwhile the unsafe code that requires extra verification... Is only allowed in the part where nothing can safeguard it?

The unprivileged task is running in the same memory space as the core kernel, and thus there are no runtime checks to ensure that it doesn't do something which it is not allowed to do. The only way you could enforce it at runtime would be to adopt a microkernel architecture. The alternative architecture proposed here is to enforce the privileges statically by requiring that the code doesn't use unsafe features.

kelnos• 1 year ago

My understanding is they don't mean privileged/unprivileged in the kernel-space/user-space sense. All of it is running at the kernel's privilege level. Just they've logically defined a (smaller) set of core library-like code that is allowed to use Rust unsafe ("privileged"), and then all the code that implements the rest of the kernel (including drivers?) uses that library and is disallowed (by linter rules, I assume) to directly use Rust unsafe ("unprivileged").

It's an unfortunate overloading of terminology that you entirely reasonably interpreted according to the more common usage.

ronjakoi• 1 year ago

Perhaps I, as the author of this article, could have also been more careful with the terminology.

yjftsjthsd-h4• 1 year ago

Oh, okay, so it's "privileged" in that it has the privilege of using unsafe. I got that it was all kernel mode but assumed they were doing something fancy to nonetheless restrict the unprivileged parts (though since they say it's all one memory space, I wasn't sure what)

josephg• 1 year ago

I thought newer microkernels... Reduced that? Fixed it? I forget, I just had the impression it wasn't actually that bad

SeL4 is a microkernel like this. They’ve apparently aggressively optimized IPC far more than Linux ever has. Sending a message via sel4 ipc is apparently an order of magnitude or two faster than syscalls under Linux. I wouldn’t be surprised if most programs performed better under sel4 than they do under Linux - but I’d love to know for real.

winternewt• 1 year ago

The trick with L4 is they treat IPC basically like syscalls. Arguments are left on CPU registers instead of serializing them to a message buffer. The only significant work performed is a change of virtual memory map. The called process continues execution within the time slice of the caller, instead of waiting for the thread scheduler or using synchronization primitives. While some of this could possibly be achieved with Linux, a lot of the optimization is ingrained into the calling convention and so would require changes to the user-mode source code.

pjmlp5• 1 year ago

The problem is that many microkernel haters keep repeating what used to be true like 30 years ago, while running tons of containers for basic tasks.

uncircle3• 1 year ago

There are hordes of developers completely dismissing the idea of microkernels with no serious argument other than "lmao didn't Linus destroy Tanenbaum that one time?"

Designing a modern and secure kernel in 2025 as a monolith is a laughable proposition. Microkernels are the way to go.

yjftsjthsd-h4• 1 year ago

while running tons of containers for basic tasks.

Those containers run on a monolithic kernel; what's your point?

bandrami• 1 year ago

The parts written in unsafe rust implement the memory and access management that make it possible for the other parts to use safe rust.

rwmj• 1 year ago

I thought newer microkernels... Reduced that? Fixed it?

They have.

Actually the elephant in the room is modern hardware which makes even syscalls into monolithic kernels expensive. That's why io_uring and virtio perform well - they queue requests and replies between the OS and applications (or the hypervisor and the guest for virtio) avoiding transitions between address spaces. Any operating system in the future is going to need some kind of queuing syscall mechanism to perform well, and once you've got it doesn't much matter if you structure the components of your OS as a monolith or microkernel or something else.

lifty• 1 year ago

This is an awesome effort, thank you, knowing that one of the authors is in the thread. How far is this from usability, at least in some reduced context? Would love to be able to build server images based on this kernel and play around with it.

tatetian164• 1 year ago

As a relatively new kernel, Asterinas still has a lot of rough edges for general-purpose use. That said, if the goal is to run targeted, real-world services efficiently and reliably, the gap is not that large—I believe we can reach that milestone within a year.

We're actively implementing key features like Linux namespaces and cgroups, and we're also working on the first Asterinas-based distribution. Our initial focus is to use Asterinas as the guest OS inside Confidential VMs. This use case prioritizes security, where Asterinas has clear advantages over Linux thanks to its memory safety guarantee and small TCB.

GardenLetter27• 1 year ago

What about DRM, ALSA, etc.? - I think these are the main blockers for people testing it out on home machines.

lubsch• 1 year ago

Makes me think of https://drewdevault.com/2024/08/30/2024-08-30-Rust-in-Linux-... (HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41404733)

vbezhenar• 1 year ago

Is it novel development: splitting kernel into small unsafe core and large safe modules? It sounds very interesting and promising. No hardware overhead of microkernel and no safety issues of monolith. Such a project, obviously, depends on a systems language with explicit unsafe/safe separation.

plingbang• 1 year ago

A very close idea was jokingly suggested in The Birth & Death of JavaScript[1] at 18:07 (rewind to 14:14 for more context)

[1] https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death...

karmakaze• 1 year ago

Seems like a great idea. We have so much software invested that alternative substrates could yield great benefits or at least alternatives when needed for less technical reasons. Kinda reminds me of kFreeBSD and of course GNU/Hurd.

weinzierl2• 1 year ago

This is an interesting approach, and I wish it will succeed.

I am still skeptical. In the late 90s or early 2000s Linus was interviewed on TV and what he said stuck with me to this day. When asked about competitors he roughly said:

No one likes writing device drivers and as long no one young and hungry comes along who is good at writing device drivers I am save.

I think he was already well aware at that time that keeping the driver interface unstable is his moat. A quarter of a century later kernels that run on virtualized hardware are a dime a dozen but practically useable operating systems in the traditional sense of abstracting away real hardware can still be counted on one hand.

leeter• 1 year ago

but practically useable operating systems in the traditional sense of abstracting away real hardware can still be counted on one hand.

I think this is telling. There are plenty of 'standards' for interfaces in the hardware world. Some (mostly USB) are even 'followed', but the realities of hardware are that it never behaves nominally. So without someone willing to spend the time writing code to handle the quirks that can't be patched out and the errata it's very hard to run on physical hardware with any performance or support.

tatetian164• 1 year ago

keeping the driver interface unstable is his moat

Maybe we will have young and hungry AI-for-system researchers who would like to take on the job of developing AI agents that translate Linux drivers in C to Asterinas ones in (safe) Rust.

Another feasible approach is to reuse Linux drivers by running a Linux kernel inside some kind of isolated environments. For example, the HongMeng kernel leverages User-Mode Linux to reuse Linux drivers on HongMeng [1]. Asterinas can take a similar approach.

[1] https://www.usenix.org/conference/osdi24/presentation/chen-h...

reactordev2• 1 year ago

This is the future. Hardware has already standardized more towards USB HID than in previous decades, Linus interview included. When AI can develop these device drivers based on just probing the HID info, we’ll be on Cloud9. Because maybe then, we’ll get the year of the Linux desktop.

rcxdude2• 1 year ago

The bottleneck, for the most part, is actually being able to test them. Even a translation by a skilled engineer is liable to have issues if they don't actually have the hardware to test things out. Linux's driver support is built out mainly by people doing that, either hobbyists scratching their own itch of hardware they own or manufacturers contributing drivers for their own hardware.

(It's also why regressions are pretty common: it's completely infeasible to test all of linux on each release, some people test some parts of it, but it's all very ad-hoc, very little is automated, and it's not at all unified)

nickpsecurity2• 1 year ago

OKL4, deployed on tons of phones, had the ability to run drivers stand alone or in driver VM's that wrapped them. Other guests could call either. I think Genode uses a similar, L4-based component.

There was also an academic project that combined virtualization with Windows drivers.

tuna74• 1 year ago

If you port drivers from Linux those drivers would have to be GPLv2-licensed.

helpfulContrib• 1 year ago

I have written device drivers for, literally, decades now.

Its the old guys who write the best drivers, naturally.

For me, Asterinas represents a refreshing way to approach some thorny problems in the embedded space, in which embedded-Linux on ARM, RISC-V and MIPS is a viable, economically-speaking, platform for a great deal of industry.

While Asterinas is really sexy, if this same approach were taken for, say, FreeRTOS as well along the way .. then there could at least, also, be "on one hands" worth of operating systems, abstracted, in the "lets just use rust' camp ..

digdugdirk• 1 year ago

Hmmm... Would containers + AI enable a scattershot "just let the LLM keep trying stuff until it works" approach to driver development?

jitl3• 1 year ago

Maybe in a few years. I find ai most successful when you can provide a very clear spec and solid test suite, when I don’t have that it makes a lot of mistakes without handholding.

daeken• 1 year ago

Given the number of times I've bricked hardware during reverse-engineering and driver development, I don't find it super likely, tbh. I'm by no means an expert here, but it's one of those things where if you already have good enough documentation (which in this case could be a known-good implementation) then it's more of a translation task and LLMs could absolutely be helpful there, but the edge cases are sharp and frequent.

jitl3• 1 year ago

On the other hand, running on real hardware is less important if none of your hardware is real!

98% of Linux I interact with is running virtualized: on my desktop/laptop systems it’s either Virtualbox full-screened so I can use Windows for drivers, or a headless VM managed by Docker.app on my Mac. All my employer’s production workloads are AWS virtual machines.

My only Linux bare metal hardware is a home server, which I’m planning to retire soon-ish, replaced by a VM on an ebay Mac mini to reduce power bill & fan noise.

If someone can make a Linux compatible kernel that’s more secure and just as performant, it’s much easier these days to imagine a large new user base adopting it despite a dearth of drivers.

weinzierl2• 1 year ago

In computer science we are taught it's turtles all the way down but in the real world you learn that you hit the world of bits and bytes really fast.[1]

My point is that every virtualized environment needs a layer that talks to real hardware down below. We have enough diversity in the upper layers but not enough in the lowest layer.

[1] I heard it expressed like this from an Azul Systems employee first, but unfortunately don't remember who it was.

jpc0• 1 year ago

Your os might be virtualised but very often the actual hardware leaks through that virtualisation, often intentionally.

I don’t see any support for an os that doesn’t have good driver support for accelerators, whether GPU/TPU or otherwise. And if your look into some of the accelerators built into modern amd and intel chips that becomes a nightmare just supporting the CPU, never mind USB host controllers and network interfaces etc

nickpsecurity2• 1 year ago

Prior art includes SPIN OS (Modula 3), JX OS (Java), House OS' H-Layer (Haskell), and Verve. Each one had a type-safe, memory-safe language for implementing the features. They usually wall off the unsafe stuff behind checked, function calls. Some use VM's, too.

Ignoring performance or adoption, the main weaknesses are: abstraction, gap attacks; unsafe code bypassing the whole thing; compiler or JIT-induced breakage of safety model; common, hardware failures like cosmic rays. This is still far safer than kernels and user apps in unsafe languages.

One can further improve on it by using static analysis of unsafe code, ensuring all unsafe functions respect type-safe/memory-safe interfaces, compilers that preserve abstraction safety during integration, and certified compilers for individual components. We have production tools for all except secure, abstract compilation which (a) is being researched and (b) can be checked manually for now.

exe34• 1 year ago

keeping the driver interface unstable is his moat

It's basically like npm update, at the kernel level.

pxc2• 1 year ago

I think he was already well aware at that time that keeping the driver interface unstable is his moat.

Does Linus have/want a moat? He's not a tech startup founder. He's a kernel hacker who has had success beyond his wildest dreams, and whose needs will be met for the rest of his working life no matter what happens.

It seems like projection to talk about this aspect of the kernel as if it's some intentional strategy for preventing certain kinds of competition.

eikenberry• 1 year ago

I don't believe he wanted or intended a moat. The drivers need to be in the kernel to have a working kernel, that is a kernel that actually runs on the hardware. Move the drivers out of the kernel and Linux would have died long ago as there would have been a proliferation of proprietary drivers that stopped being maintained once the hardware was no longer on sale. And poor driver support is why no other kernel has taken root.

alt187• 1 year ago

I hope this project succeeds. Rust kernel-level development deserves far better than the current state of affairs.

guilhas• 1 year ago

Maybe c/c++ development deserves a better replacement than rust

Toritori12• 1 year ago

What should be the name for these kind of things? *nux?

mdtrooper• 1 year ago

It is licensed under MPL. Well, there is best licenses such as GPLv3.

miniBill• 1 year ago

The have the rationale for why they picked MPL in their documentation. I don't love the choice, but I can see the reasons behind it.

Asterinas: A new Linux-compatible kernel project

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