Fixed memory address

Bert Freudenberg bert at freudenbergs.de
Fri Oct 5 03:28:55 EDT 2007


Hi folks,

once security containers are enabled, each activity basically "owns"  
the box, right? It will basically feel alone in both the file system  
as in memory, appearing as a single task. This might make some  
optimizations possible that otherwise aren't in a generic multi- 
tasking OS.

One thing would be Etoys startup time. Etoys loads its object memory  
on startup and then adjusts all the pointers in it to the actual base  
address it got in memory. Now if the system could guarantee (or at  
least try to give) the same base address on each run, this step  
(which will touch about every single page in memory) could be omitted.

Would that be possible with the virtualization containers?

Btw, if I'm not mistaken, the Linux loader does something similar, so  
if the relocating step could be skipped, it may help every executable  
in the system.

Or is that already possible because of virtual memory, and the base  
addresses are just randomized for security reasons? We wouldn't need  
that kind of security with rainbow, do we?

- Bert -



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