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    1: **Contents**
    2: 
    3: [[!toc levels=2]]
    4: 
    5: This page is about rump kernels in NetBSD and assumes the reader knows
    6: the basics of rump kernels.  See
    7: [rumpkernel.org](http://www.rumpkernel.org/) for general information
    8: about rump kernels.
    9: 
   10: ## System security
   11: 
   12: File system drivers are vulnerable to consistency errors in
   13: file system images, see e.g.
   14: [here](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.114.4312)
   15: 
   16: What this vulnerability means is that whenever an untrusted file system
   17: image is mounted using an in-kernel driver, system compromise should be
   18: expected.  This untrusted images include for example ones on USB sticks.
   19: There are heavyweight workarounds for the problem, for example including
   20: virtual machines.
   21: 
   22: NetBSD allows transparently mounting an untrusted file system image by
   23: running the kernel driver in a rump kernel in userspace.  The driver
   24: is thus isolated and any damage that a malicious file system image
   25: can directly cause is restricted to a userspace process.  From a user
   26: perspective, mounting with the `-o rump` option is the only change
   27: required, or `rump` in `/etc/fstab`.  Notably, even though interacting
   28: with untrusted file systems will suffer from a minor performance penalty,
   29: the performance of mounts from trusted file systems is completely
   30: unaffected.
   31: 
   32: 
   33: ## Automated testing
   34: 
   35: The problems of automated kernel testing are documented for example in
   36: [The Design and Implementation of the Anykernel and Rump Kernels](http://lib.tkk.fi/Diss/2012/isbn9789526049175/isbn9789526049175.pdf).
   37: Rump kernels are used in the continuous tests run by the NetBSD project.
   38: See [Release Engineering Status Site](http://releng.NetBSD.org/) for the results or the NetBSD source tree
   39: under `src/tests` for the test programs themselves.
   40: 
   41: 
   42: ## Kernel development
   43: 
   44: On the flipside of testing is kernel development.  Rump kernels allow
   45: developing kernel drivers in a test-driven manner, including both unit
   46: tests and integration tests.  Since the iteration time with a rump
   47: kernel is in the subsecond range, the development process is smoother
   48: than with a virtual machine.  Also, the tests written during development
   49: can be entered into the automated tests (see above), and later used
   50: for further development.  This method avoids "throw-away" tests that
   51: are hardcoded for one virtual machine environment and unusable in both
   52: automated testing and further development done in another environment.
   53: 
   54: 
   55: ## Source Code
   56: 
   57: You can also [browse](http://cvsweb.NetBSD.org/bsdweb.cgi/src/) the
   58: source code history online. Code is found from all areas of the source
   59: tree. Some examples of where to look include
   60: [src/lib](http://cvsweb.NetBSD.org/bsdweb.cgi/src/lib/),
   61: [src/usr.bin](http://cvsweb.NetBSD.org/bsdweb.cgi/src/usr.bin/) and
   62: [src/sys/rump](http://cvsweb.NetBSD.org/bsdweb.cgi/src/sys/rump/).