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Going Deep Inside Vista's Kernel Architecture
bariswheel wrote to mention an episode of 'Going Deep' on Channel 9 which takes a hard look at the architecture of Windows Vista. From the post: "Rob Short is the corporate vice president in charge of the team that architects the foundation of Windows Vista. This is a fascinating conversation with the kernel architecture team. It's our Christmas present to all of the Niners out there who've stuck with us day after day. This is a very candid interview." Topics discussed include the history of the Windows Registry, and the security/reliability of Microsoft's upcoming operating system.
Is this video a joke? Come on guys I know Windows is a pain, but falsifying a supposed technical release just to get a chuckle, that's pretty-well-funny. The scariest thing about this is the fact that the carpenters that migrated from another country(from some uh southern border) could deliver a more technical interview than this crap. It's funny the guy states that there are 30 'architects' working to manage the different groups-how many Indians is that? I wonder whose brainstorm it was to bring the security guy back out of retirement to f*ck-up this version of Windows? Do the words 'from the ground up' mean anything to these idiots-OMG! I am not in the IT industry, as a matter of fact I got my first computer in 2000 (a Comp-USA laptop rl366 running 98se), and it only took me a matter of months to realize this 'tool' as it was termed is broken. When that realization sank in, I started asking about to find out where a decent OS might be hiding. Someone mentioned Linux, it took me a few weeks to learn what a BIOS is(so I could boot from CD-rom), what partitioning was(as I did not understand how the system was laid out), and when I did learn about these things out Microsoft was well on it's way to being gone. I had to continue to use Microsoft to access my distance learning classes at the local community college and that was the exetent of their supposed 'user friendly' experience. After those classes were done, I made my decision not to support these criminals (and just because you have enough money to change the definition of 'guilty' doesn't mean you're innocent) and I figured if I was going to have to spend time learning either OS it really wouldn't matter-I thank GOD everytime I interface with any of my computers that I'm not supporting crack dealers and pimps, oh I mean, Microsoft and its ilk. I don't support ruthless, unethical, criminal, corporations-if I can avoid it and I research any and all avenues to maintain this ideal. I still don't get how this is anything close to an 'in depth' technical interview. Just an observation from a drop-out, GED packing, lowly remodel carpenter from TEXAS. This comment was made using Fedora Core 4 with the help of the Firefox Web browser. BTW Where have all the ardent Microsoft cheerleaders gone these past few days? Oh, my bad! They must be fixing their 'superior' operating systems right about now WMF WTF?
Life is a gift. And my Karma couldn't possibly be 'Positive'
My SOFTWARE registry hive has 99865 keys and 143228 values in it. User has 18154 keys and 106945 values. Added to SYSTEM, my registry contains a total of 131181 keys, and 291410 values. 131k keys is more than 10x larger than the 11584 files in my \WINNT directory. My main disk has 351k files in 20k directories; moving the registry structure there would mean six and a half times the number of directories and a 83% increse in files, assuming one file per value. I'd characterize my computer as one a typical developer would have.
It's not completely unreasonable, though: NTFS already stores files smaller than about 900 bytes directly in the MFT file record (space that would otherwise be wasted) and NTFS's extended attributes (or even file streams) would provide a nice implementation of key values, but there's still the issue of 6x directories for structure. Although they have the same basic structure, the scale of the registry and filesystem are each quite different. The registry sucks for large entries: the entire SOFTWARE hive is only 26MB, but then again filesystems traditionally suck at tiny files and directories. I suppose Microsoft could've added a special directory flag that optomizes for tiny directories. I suppose the hierarchy in the registry could be flattened/simplified to require less keys, but that would give up security granularity (but I'm sure some could give), and would require a very major overhaul at this point.
The registry hasn't changed much since it was first introduced in its modern form in NT 3.1, so let's look at how things were back then. I've got a VM of NT 3.51 with Office 97 and VB 5 on it. In SOFTWARE, SYSTEM, and USER, there are 12673 keys and 18851 values. Compared to 254 directories and 4k files, moving the registry to the filesystem would've meant 50x the directories and more than 4x the files (or extended attributes, assuming you could get apps to use 'em).
There's a reason that different types of databases exist. Filesystems are general purpose DBs that have direct access and handle large files well. SQLish table oriented databases are used for lots of things that flat files directly on the filesystem suck for. The registry is a specialized database for the high structure low leaf data that comprises config files. Windows is hardly the only software product that uses a special binary config database; see the 'registries' that Mozilla or Eclipse use for examples. Could they have been implemented directly in the file system? Sure... but would it've been the best way?
Windows Vista kernel has architecture? Since when? I thought the windows kernel was just a bunch of amateurish spaghetti code... you'd think so anyway since you need 2GB of memory just to boot it.
Just because something isn't amazing to you doesn't mean it isn't amazing to other people, you self-centered asshat.
I'd rather be lucky than good.