Adding new top-level section to Developer's Handbook: System Architecture?

[Jim Brown]

* Robert Watson <rwatson at FreeBSD.org> [2003-05-19 14:54]:
> 
> As part of the Network Associates Laboratories CBOSS contract with DARPA
> to improve FreeBSD system security, we have a task to write a FreeBSD
> Security Architecture.  We're preparing to make the first draft of this
> document available -- it provides a high level view of how security
> services in the kernel and userland operate, talks about bullet security
> features, adaptation of FreeBSD security to particular tasks, etc.  Right
> now, our thought is to make it a chapter in the Developer's Handbook.
> Unfortunately, it wasn't immediately clear where it should go.  Today, the
> structure of the document is:
> 
> I Basics
> II Inter-Process Communication
> III Kernel
> 
> "FreeBSD Security Architecture" fits poorly into any of these categories:
> it's not basic, it's not IPC (although it talks a bit about IPC), and it's
> not strictly kernel since it talks fairly extensively about the
> integration of the user security elements.  My first pass temptation was
> to change the format to be more like the following:
> 
> I Basics
> II Inter-Process Communication
> III High-Level Architecture
> IV Kernel
> 
> And stick in the secarch chapter as the (currently) sole section of III.
> 
> At some point, I'd also like to copy the SMP arch document into this tree,
> although that's more strictly a kernel thing.
> 
> I'm not sure adding a High Level Architecture section is the long term
> solution.  The long term solution might be to break it into two books --
> one on developing/debugging FreeBSD, and the other on developing/debugging
> on FreeBSD.  Or perhaps an Architecture/design book separate from a


Did you mean "developing/debugging FreeBSD 4.x" and "developing/debugging
FreeBSD 5.x"?  Works for me.


> practices and procedures book.
> 
> Regardless, would anyone object to my taking the above described strategy
> for the time being, when I bring in the current draft?


(Extraneous bike shed comments rethought and deleted :-)


> 
> Robert N M Watson             FreeBSD Core Team, TrustedBSD Projects
> robert at fledge.watson.org      Network Associates Laboratories
> 
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Best Regards,
jpb
===