Messages in this thread |  | | From | (Thomas Koenig) | Subject | Kernel 2.2.0 wishlist | Date | 1 Oct 1996 15:29:20 +0200 |
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Wishlist for Linux 2.2.0
Now that Linux 2.1 is out, it's time for another round of Request For Features.
Here's what people on linux-kernel have been suggesting, in no particular order. Some items are rather hotly debated.
I'm also listing who's working on what, if I know about it. If you want to drop me a line with additional info, I'll put it in. This might be your E-Mail address, or the URL for a patch that people may try out. It might be a good idea to talk to the people who've already done something before you start a project :-)
First, user-visible things: * Modularization of ide.c and ide-cd.c * Minimalistic video code to make Linux more "aware" of the current state * Making the boot process less verbose as an option * Colorizing the boot-up display (as an option, some people can't stand colors :-) * Making 80 chars the maximum line length during boot (optional) * Shared Memory - mapping of /dev/zero or a working MAP_ANONYMOUS * Make the system embeddable (see the [1]Linux 8086 project * [2]Journaling file system * Access Control Lists and other security enhancements (POSIX.6 things) * Full Threads support using clone() * Queued signals and other POSIX.1b (aka POSIX.4) stuff (see [3]A Vision for Linux 2.2 -- POSIX.1b Compatibility and Real-Time Support by Markus Kuhn for a good summary) * signal stacks * Undelete command and/or versioned file system * Turn on the ext2fs secure deletion feature * 32-bit or 64-bit minor/major device numbers * STREAMS support (possibly in userspace) * IPv6 (in progress) * General per-user resources (CPU, IP, memory quotas) * Limiting TCP bandwidth (Alan Cox <iialan@lusers.are.not.humans.org>) see [4]the shaper project * per user accounting and firewalling * System call auditing (for real paranoids) * Making atime a configurable option (per file system?) * Moving of all the relevent README files into the Documention directory * Localtalk support for the Appletalk stack * Allowing the video mode code at bootup to be optional * Being able to run a parallel zip drive and a printer at the same time (Grant Guenther, grant@gear.torque.net) * Ability to change the scheduler at runtime, via loading a module * SCSI device numbers should include drive IDs, not be consecutively numbered * Microchannel support * More flexible configuration through sysctl * Integrated PCMCIA support * hfs filesystem (Paul H. Hargrove <hargrove@sccm.stanford.edu>, [5]http://www-sccm.stanford.edu/~hargrove/HFS/. * userfs and NTFS filesystems * physical/logical volume manager (like AIX) * PC speaker patch * parallel port sound input driver * real swapping (instead of paging) so multiple high memory usage jobs can run concurrently * Preemptive paging * A union file system * Deal with "out of VM" situations more gracefully * revoke() system call (make sure nobody holds this device open) * Swap files over NFS * Opening serial lines or changing the baud rate without raising any modem control lines (DTR, RTS) * Setting the interrupt trigger level for 16650s from the command line * Registering/unregistering transfer functions for the loop device * Fully debugging a running kernel on Intel * Support for more RAID levels * Making mandatory locking a mount option * Add support for the KIP protocol * NFS write clustering/coalescing/biod (Linus) * NFS V3 (RFC 1813) * Caching a slow block device on a fast one (loot at the [6]BCCF project ) * Handle SAK and Ctrl-Alt-Del in raw keyboard mode (see Markus Gutschke's <gutschk@uni-muenster.de> [7]SAK patch) * Secure RPC (for NFS, for example) * Allow process run by normal users to lock a few pages into memory * Get the dumpable flag of a process * Being able to prevent other users from seeing processes (option to /proc) * Better support for Plug'n Play cards (see [8]RedHat's web pages) * Guaranteed stream throughput (for example, reserve 300 kB/sec for reading a file from disk) * Paging binaries run off CD-ROM and NFS to local swap * Uniform pointing device support. * Environment variables as part of symbolic links (may cause security problems with interruptible paths) * Generic "mount one file system on top of another" option * Get memory size using INT 15h, see the [9]documentation about the interface * Update the kernel PLL to the current xntpd specs * support 64-bit file size, according to the [10]Large File / File System Support suggestion * Read-write UFS file system support (Jared Mauch, <jared@wolverine.hq.cic.net>) * Serial console support * Exclusive open mechanism for raw disks (<Andries.Brouwer@cwi.nl>, Grant Guenther <grant@gear.torque.net>) * Full support for EPP/ECP modes in the parallel port disk drivers * Cleanup of boot parameter syntax for insmod and lilo/loadlin * Change removable media withour mount/umount (Stephen Tweedie's [11]supermount patch) * Get a PPS (Pulse per second) signal from the serial port (Harald Koenig's [12]k-dcf patch). * Make up a standardized frame grabber interface (VFG - layer) * File - level compression in EXT2 * Noblink patch * PC speaker sound patch * Being able to mount DriveSpace volumes under Linux * Shrinkable / extensible file system and logical volume manager
Second, internal kernel stuff: * Adaption of all CD-ROM drivers to generic interface * Drivers being able to throw away their init. code once complete * Global min/max functions * Faster dep (qdep, for example) * Being able to compile from sources mounted read-only * Better kmalloc debugging * Cleaner code for swap files (FAT now supports bmap()) * Cleaning up the header files so that everything not needed in userland goes into #ifdef __KERNEL__ (Michael Chastain <mec@duracef.shout.net>) * Better memory management to get large continous DMA buffers * Remapping the kernel to a higher virtual address (<Linus.Torvalds@cs.Helsinki.fi>)
References
1. http://www.linux.org.uk/Linux8086.html 2. http://lucien.blight.com/~c-cook/prof/lfs/ 3. ftp://ftp.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/local/cip/mskuhn/misc/linux-posix.1b 4. ftp://shadow.cabi.net/pub/Linux/shaper-alpha-15.tar.gz 5. http://www-sccm.stanford.edu/~hargrove/HFS/ 6. http://satsuma.sys.uea.ac.uk/~ben/third.html 7. http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/albert/SAK.patch.gz 8. http://www.redhat.com/pnp/ 9. http://www.uruk.org/grub/mem64mb.html 10. http://www.sas.com/standards/large.file 11. ftp://linux.dcs.ed.ac.uk/pub/linux/supermount/ 12. ftp://sol.wohnheim.uni-ulm.de/pub/linux/misc/dcf77-info-1.1.tar.gz
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