Comment Feed for Rob Short (and kernel team) - Going deep inside Windows Vista's kernel architecture (Going Deep on Channel 9)

Re: Rob Short (and kernel team) - Going deep inside Windows Vista's kernel architecture

nicholas22 — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 22:45:51 GMT

"... how reliable, scalable, secure, etc Windows Vista actually will be"

LOL, no to my and many others' experiences

Re: Rob Short (and kernel team) - Going deep inside Windows Vista's kernel architecture

blad3runn69 — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 23:50:53 GMT

clever, interesting and insightful stuff, thank you.

Re: Rob Short (and kernel team) - Going deep inside Windows Vista's kernel architecture

haranadh — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 10:13:12 GMT

I could not play the videos. Some times It is saying network error.

Re: Rob Short (and kernel team) - Going deep inside Windows Vista's kernel architecture

Al-Mahani — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 18:55:51 GMT

It really seems like windows is broken. From the pervasiveness of the registry to the lack of modularity and isolation - the kernel seems to be a jumbled mess. On a plus note, it is great to see that they are starting the discipline of component isolation. The question is how deepley coupled these components are? Would it just make more sense to build an entire new system? Or does it make more sense to iteratively partition the system along componet lines? Or maybe Singularity is the savior. Great video!

Re: Rob Short (and kernel team) - Going deep inside Windows Vista's kernel architecture

BobTurbo — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 12:01:10 GMT

Ok don't worry. I was just thinking out aloud. I would say it is likely that eventually the whole thing will have to be redesigned.

I think I was just going over in my head the notion of "it must be replaced now! Windows is too insecure! I deserve better!" But then I look at the alternatives, and they are not really that secure. Any change in security has to be fairly large to be noteworthy, and that will require a fair bit of development in new areas such as the singularity project.

Re: Rob Short (and kernel team) - Going deep inside Windows Vista's kernel architecture

BobTurbo — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 11:51:16 GMT

One thing I (and I think many people), are very interested in, is the idea of "can this restructuring be done", as in can you really turn the huge pile of spaghetti into a well layered, separated, more secure codebase that uses virtualisation to get rid of the burden of backward compatability? I am assuming the idea is to continue down this path and maybe seemlessly transfer to a totally new design based on research and lessons learned (e.g singularity), say 10 years down the track?

Some people suggest that the codebase should be scrapped as per Apple OS X, and the whole thing should be redesigned (with a virtualisation or compatability layer to deal with backwards compatability). The assumptions behind this seems to be that a). The NT kernel and/or Windows architectural design is no longer adequate from a security perspective, and b). It is impossible to fix the mess that is the Windows codebase.

Assuming it is possible to completely separate things between the drawn lines as mentioned in the video, would the underlying architecture, and code, still be of a design that is not really optimal, as it is based on the previous constraints and design of the past.

Is it the goal to say "OK this codebase is pretty flawed, lets just get it to a working state that enables us to compete while we design another OS". Or is it truly the goal that slowly, every single piece of code can be "converted" into a new, optimal design.

I guess the main question is, what is the real state of the codebase? And is it possible to completely fix? Is it fundamentally sound, but with a lot of extra, but manageable, bloat, that you can get to the point of saying "I am 100% able to show that this has been removed". Or are you trying to fix it to a point, and then transfer technologies across to a new design?

Re: Rob Short (and kernel team) - Going deep inside Windows Vista's kernel architecture

earnshaw — Sun, 05 Mar 2006 01:23:22 GMT

I think videos like this one with Rob Short are *GREAT* because they provide context for understanding product and how it got that way and how people think it should evolve. Learning about product in a contextual vacuum is, for me at least, an unrewarding exercise.

Re: Rob Short (and kernel team) - Going deep inside Windows Vista's kernel architecture

rgriff — Sun, 08 Jan 2006 12:39:15 GMT

Alot of this went over my head. Specificly, what was he talking about when he said they "had mapped the functional dependencies between binarys"?

..and why is that such a good thing?

Re: Rob Short (and kernel team) - Going deep inside Windows Vista's kernel architecture

Daveed — Sat, 07 Jan 2006 00:18:29 GMT

Great Interview!

So who trains MSFT Product Managers? Do they have an internal goup or use an specific training partner?

Re: Rob Short (and kernel team) - Going deep inside Windows Vista's kernel architecture

JimJam — Fri, 06 Jan 2006 13:04:28 GMT

That was an interesting show.

How about, another interview with Steve Lacey and the Flight Sim team? The first one was awesome, and now they have just announced a few details about the next version (FSX).

Jim.

Re: Rob Short (and kernel team) - Going deep inside Windows Vista's kernel architecture

m4dc4p — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 18:41:52 GMT

Great video - I too enjoyed hearing what these guys are thinking about and working on. I would really like to hear more about how they are trying to manage state and state dependencies. One example mentioned was the case of two apps using the same registry setting. They may not be dependent by calling each other, but they are certainly dependent through that bit of state. I don't think the video really gave much information about that aspect of their work and would like to hear more. Also, as far as static analysis goes, are these techniques going to work with more "dynamic" languages such as Python or Ruby? Given the recent beta release of "IronPython", this may be more than an academic question. Again, thanks for the great video! The setting, lighting and sound were excellent and all participants seemed very comfortable!

Re: Rob Short (and kernel team) - Going deep inside Windows Vista's kernel architecture

LarryOsterman — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 13:56:10 GMT

IRenderable wrote:
Where the guy was talking about them having the tech to find dependencies for binaries I thought they already had that. Thats what Depends(Start->Run->Depends (May need Visual Studio installed, I cannot remember where its actually located...)) does.

Depends doesn't work - consider COM and LoadLibrary. These also introduce dependencies but can't be tracked by depends. Also consider RPC interfaces - an RPC client depends on its server.

These guys have some amazing static analysis tools, when they caught one of my dependencies, I was amazed - I hadn't even realized they would find that dependency.

Re: Rob Short (and kernel team) - Going deep inside Windows Vista's kernel architecture

RMD — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 01:47:36 GMT

Prepare yourselves boys, you've been Slashdotted. ;)

Re: Rob Short (and kernel team) - Going deep inside Windows Vista's kernel architecture

dsr56 — Sun, 01 Jan 2006 03:53:27 GMT

I also have a quick poll question.

Does Windows Vista go too far in security and impede usability?

http://www.dPolls.com/PollPage.aspx?PollID=108

Re: Rob Short (and kernel team) - Going deep inside Windows Vista's kernel architecture

dsr56 — Sun, 01 Jan 2006 02:52:01 GMT

I have a urgent request for the Vista team. Please, please, please include a checkbox near the start of the setup process that will allow users to opt-out of being protected from themselves. Yes, I understand that user ignorance has been at the core of the black eye Microsoft has gotten over security. Yet, not all users are idiots. If you were only allowed to eat when my computers caught a virus or malware, you’d be dust by now! It has only happened twice, and I’m 49.

What I’m really saying, of course, is that Vista–and its setup–must allow for differing levels of user competency. I love XP, but I can’t begin to tell you how many times it has hobbled me as I tried to complete a legitimate task. For my own usage, I need less security interference, not more.

Re: Rob Short (and kernel team) - Going deep inside Windows Vista's kernel architecture

deedubb — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 10:52:38 GMT

n4cer wrote:

VDDM display drivers run in user mode in Vista. There is a kernel mode miniport as well, but the main driver runs in user mode.

I was reviewing the topic and found http://www.dpolls.com/PollPage.aspx?PollID=57

Re: Rob Short (and kernel team) - Going deep inside Windows Vista's kernel architecture

William Stacey — Sun, 25 Dec 2005 23:29:27 GMT

Nice vid. Love that stuff. Too bad you could not get Cutler to join the fun.

Seems the direction is a bit like Singularity already with SIPs in user mode and maybe SIPs in kernel mode and the line is beween upper and lower sips and between peer SIPs. Then use message passing (channels) between all sips. Now that would truly be some seperate black boxes with effectively *one input queue as the single "API" for each SIP and the Contract becomes the *messages. The apis become private implementation details inside each sip. Not sure if parsing messages becomes the perf killer or if that can be (or has been) sorted out. That would be interesting.

What was the Obfuscator in the kernel thing? Have a vid scheduled on that? Thanks again!
--
wjs

Re: Rob Short (and kernel team) - Going deep inside Windows Vista's kernel architecture

Charles — Sun, 25 Dec 2005 19:35:52 GMT

I plan on talking to Richard Ward (solo) regarding his work in more detail given its importance and implications.

Stay tuned,
C

Re: Rob Short (and kernel team) - Going deep inside Windows Vista's kernel architecture

BuckyBit — Sun, 25 Dec 2005 18:23:48 GMT

I agree /w Rich Neves towards the end of the tape. The future wont be the "one-size-fits-all"-OS/Kernel. Listening to these "Biggies" gives me a glimpse of how painfull it must be to go through the code and "componentize" the system. It must be a "pain-in-the-youknowwhat" re-designing/refining this extremly complicated and complex code-snippets. I can only guess...

A lot of things that were discussed (virtualization,usermode-device-driver-framework, fragmentation, memory_management) reminded me of the discussions I follow with the linux-kernel-newsgroup (- no flaming intended).

The "Do you guys wish (that) the Registry would have never been developed?" was sure a fun question which led to some serious answers. Thats what I like.

Unfortunately I had some difficulty to understand what Richard Ward was saying. I guess I was not the only one.

Re: Rob Short (and kernel team) - Going deep inside Windows Vista's kernel architecture

leighsword — Sun, 25 Dec 2005 09:38:09 GMT

Download link of the video doesnot work.:(

Re: Rob Short (and kernel team) - Going deep inside Windows Vista's kernel architecture

leighsword — Sun, 25 Dec 2005 09:20:56 GMT

bariswheel wrote:
- "I don't regret the registry was developed; It's unfortunate that the registry was overused"
- "overused is the wrong word for the registry. The real problem with the regsitry is that we never actually defined the set of guidelines and schema for how people should use the registry - and if we had done that, we wouldn't be in this mess today."

Do ask why the registry was overused.
As I know, Windows Users(not professional developers, or power users) dislike touch the registry at first, but the registry is designed that 1)Windows depend on it too much, and 2)'terrorists' are easy to write a piece of code or javasicrpt(through IE) to affect the use of Windows, at final, the Windows Users have to google 'the register' for get relative knowledge about the register.
The same thing is , you guys write an application(windows) with a Button(the registry), and you tell your customers DONOT click the Button(the registry), because it may damage the application(windows), that's ridiculous.

I personal think the register is more like DOS(or win98...), it's a good idea(or good product) at its time, but now, I have to say it's out of date.

Re: Rob Short (and kernel team) - Going deep inside Windows Vista's kernel architecture

Shiv — Sun, 25 Dec 2005 07:05:11 GMT

Architecture, must master it sometime ;)

Re: Rob Short (and kernel team) - Going deep inside Windows Vista's kernel architecture

bariswheel — Sun, 25 Dec 2005 06:45:26 GMT

- "I don't regret the registry was developed; It's unfortunate that the registry was overused"
- "overused is the wrong word for the registry. The real problem with the regsitry is that we never actually defined the set of guidelines and schema for how people should use the registry - and if we had done that, we wouldn't be in this mess today."

Re: Rob Short (and kernel team) - Going deep inside Windows Vista's kernel architecture

Charles — Sun, 25 Dec 2005 02:29:03 GMT

KevinB,

The Singularity folks will be visited again in 4-6 months. They're rather busy researchers and I don't want to wear out our welcome ;)

C