EROS (operating system)

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EROS (short for The E xtremely R eliable O perating S ystem ) was a research project for an operating system with special reliability and a very fine-grained assignment of rights to users and programs. This is not implemented via access control lists and "classic" Unix- like rights in a file system, but EROS uses an alternative idea of ​​operating system design from the Multics era, so-called capabilities .

Is Unix in the broadest sense all a file is at EROS all a Capability (dt .: capability ). Similar to a handle or an access control list, a capability designates a resource and grants access rights to it. While the access protection for an access control list is practically implemented externally, for a capability it is an internal property of the object . As with DRM , a capability only fits tailor-made to authenticated programs and users, which is intended to prevent unauthorized copying or use of the capability by other programs. In contrast to Unix or Microsoft Windows, there is also no administrator user ( root ). The status of all capabilities and thus of the entire system (and all running programs) is backed up every five minutes and persistently restored after each restart.

history

EROS is the re-implementation of the concepts of the KeyKOS operating system, which was also based purely on capabilities.

EROS is open source and was maintained by Johns Hopkins University . The further development of EROS was discontinued with version 1.1 of April 18, 2001; with CapROS there is an offshoot, and Hopkins University is working with Coyotos on a follow-up project.

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