At the moment the setproctitle call is implemented with a sysctl, this has the unfortunate side effect that this simple call locks the Giant-lock. As this call is a simple matter of setting a value, it could be better implemented with shared memory between the kernel and user-space.

This project purposes a scheme to securely share process specific data, between the kernel and a user-space process. This is done by having each process allocate a special memory page, on which the kernel and user-space process can share data. This will give the security needed, as the VM-system will make sure that no outside processes can fiddle with a process' data. As everything is going on it user-space, there is no concern about a rogue process could write inside the kernel memory. There is still a locking concern, which will be addressed either by locking the entire page, or micro-locking each data field on the page. To test the scheme, I will implement the setproctitle call with share memory as oppose to the current syscall version.

This is a list of milestone, and the order in which I will take them.

1. Allocate a page in each process on creation.
2. Deallocate the page.
3. Write something to the page.
4. Read from the page from the kernel.
5. Figure out a suitable data structure.
6. Figure out a locking scheme.
7. Add the new scheme to setproctitle, running along side the old.
8. Phase out the old scheme.

As I complete the milestone they will be marked with ( ✔ ).

All weeks included.

This project is for the 2007 Google Summer of Code. [:JesperRosenkilde:Jesper B. Rosenkilde] will be working on it with [:ScottLong:Scott Long] as mentor