A reimplementation of NetBSD based on a microkernel - Andy Tanenbaum

Andrew Tanenbaum explains how the MINIX 3 microkernel was used to reimplement NetBSD, detailing its architecture and reliability benefits.

Abstract: The MINIX 3 microkernel has been used as a base to reimplement NetBSD. To application programs, MINIX 3 looks like NetBSD, with the NetBSD headers, libraries, package manager, etc. Thousands of NetBSD packages run on it on the x86 and ARM Cortex V8 (BeagleBones). Inside, however, it is a completely different architecture, with a tiny microkernel and independent servers for memory management, the file system, and each device driver. This architecture has many valuable properties which will be described in the talk, including better security and the ability to recover from many component crashes without running applications even noticing. Updating to a new version of the operating system while it is running and without a reboot is on the roadmap for the future. Speaker biography: Born in 1944 in New York, Tanenbaum currently teaches at the Free University of Amsterdam, where since 2008 his research has been under the aegis of a EU grant for design and implementation of particularly stable operating systems. Minix, which he started in the 1980s, is apparently the reference project. Since its third version, the microkernel operating system has been open source under a BSD license.