General sandbox specs?

[Thomas Leonard]

On Fri, Mar 12, 2004 at 02:48:58PM +0100, Lars Hallberg wrote:
> This is something I been wondering about sens the birth usermode linux.
> 
> Would it be possable to build a sandbox, wher it is safe to download and 
> run untrusted binarys?

User Mode Linux would be a good place to start. You'll get problems as
soon as you try to share your display with untrusted applications, though,
so you'd basically need to run them in a sub-desktop with Xnest or
something like that:

	http://user-mode-linux.sourceforge.net/

> * For the sandbox itself, what libs etc is avalible. Possably a 
> 'dependency' standard wher each pakage can tell what they need - then 
> the underlaying distro can be asked if these dependencys exists and 
> possably offer to automaticly install dem.

For dependancies, you should take a look at (my) zero install stuff. This
will let users/sandboxes access any libraries they want without risking
the rest of the system:

	http://zero-install.sourceforge.net/

> But the first question is, is it att all possably, ind if, hove is it 
> best done, and hove much effort is needed?

The actual sandboxing is quite easy, but getting trusted and untrusted
apps to integrate well is much harder (drag-and-drop, copy-and-paste,
shared file system, etc).


-- 
Thomas Leonard			http://rox.sourceforge.net
tal00r at ecs.soton.ac.uk	tal197 at users.sourceforge.net
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