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by jstgord 1348 days ago
What is the truth of this ?

I would really like to know if my x86 'linux PC', is actually running another 'hypervisor' OS that runs Linux - it seems like a recipe for security vulnerabilities.

If so, there are a lot of Qns :

- what OS, is it up to date ?

- can this OS be communicated with from the network ?

- on which chips does it run ?

- can it be re-flashed / upgraded / replaced ?

- can it interrupt/schedule my normal os ?

- how much CPU/power does it use ?

I would certainly trust an Oxide supplied (Rust) bare metal open-source low-level OS to host linux vms on my dev machine, than say, a totally opaque binary blob that the US government has forbidden xyz company from talking about.. just to speculate wildly.

I also think Oxide has wider market that just the server space - eg. one has to do all sorts of shenanigans to get a core freed up so that you can run timing/latency sensitive apps, without getting interrupted by linux threads doing noisy housekeeping on each core.

1 comments

> I would really like to know if my x86 'linux PC', is actually running another 'hypervisor' OS that runs Linux - it seems like a recipe for security vulnerabilities.

There's not so much a "hypervisor" OS, but instead a congealed set of many different OSes, some realtime OSes, some possibly old Linux variants, some possibly closed source proprietary one-off OSes. I suggest taking a look at the talk Bryan mentioned: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36myc8wQhLo