[ale] kernel funness?

Chris Ricker kaboom at gatech.edu
Tue Sep 2 23:42:42 EDT 2003


On Tue, 2 Sep 2003, Jonathan Rickman wrote:

> On Tuesday 02 September 2003 17:38, Stephen Turner wrote:
> > hey i seem to recall in a magazine or something reading about a web
> > server embedded in the kernel. has anyone done such a thing and is it a
> > good idea/performs well? i was thinking a small embedded kernel and not
> > much else would be nice if i could get a console (which i seem to recal
> > kernel will give one) a webserver and some security like ipchains or
> > somthing
> 
> khttpd is a loadable kernel module that provides limited webserver 
> functionality. Very basic, but it works and is pretty fast. However, some 
> things are better left in userland. Web servers have no business living in 
> kernel space IMHO. It's there for some reason and has obviously been 
> approved by Linus, but I can't imagine why. Maybe someone else can 
> enlighten us all as to the advantages of such a setup.

It's there for performance. khttpd / TUX can avoid the copy to userspace and 
back by virtue of being in the kernel. It's more-or-less why NFS is in the 
kernel as well.

later,
chris
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