19.1.1. High priority tasks

The following tasks are considered to be urgent, usually because they represent something that is badly broken or sorely needed:

1. 3-stage boot issues. Overall coordination: FreeBSD technical discussions mailing list <freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG>
   • Do WinNT compatible drive tagging so that the 3rd stage can provide an accurate mapping of BIOS geometries for disks.

2. Filesystem problems. Overall coordination: FreeBSD filesystem project mailing list <freebsd-fs@FreeBSD.ORG>
   • Clean up and document the nullfs filesystem code. Coordinator: Eivind Eklund <eivind@FreeBSD.ORG>
   • Fix the union file system. Coordinator: David Greenman <dg@FreeBSD.ORG>
3. Implement Int13 vm86 disk driver. Coordinator: FreeBSD technical discussions mailing list <freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG>
4. New bus architecture. Overall coordination: New Bus Architecture mailing list <new-bus-arch@bostonradio.org>
   • Port existing ISA drivers to new architecture.
   • Move all interrupt-management code to appropriate parts of the bus drivers.
   • Port PCI subsystem to new architecture. Coordinator: Doug Rabson <dfr@FreeBSD.ORG>
   • Figure out the right way to handle removable devices and then use that as a substrate on which PC-Card and CardBus support can be implemented.
   • Resolve the probe/attach priority issue once and for all.
   • Move any remaining buses over to the new architecture.

5. Kernel issues. Overall coordination: FreeBSD technical discussions mailing list <freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG>
   • Fix the syscons ALT-Fn/vt switching hangs. Coordinator: Søren Schmidt <sos@FreeBSD.ORG>

6. Add more pro-active security infrastructure. Overall coordination: FreeBSD security mailing list <freebsd-security@FreeBSD.ORG>
   • Build something like Tripwire(TM) into the kernel, with a remote and local part. There are a number of cryptographic issues to getting this right; contact the coordinator for details. Coordinator: Eivind Eklund <eivind@FreeBSD.ORG>
   • Make the entire kernel use suser() instead of comparing to 0. It is presently using about half of each. Coordinator: Eivind Eklund <eivind@FreeBSD.ORG>
   • Split securelevels into different parts, to allow an administrator to throw away those privileges he can throw away. Setting the overall securelevel needs to have the same effect as now, obviously. Coordinator: Eivind Eklund <eivind@FreeBSD.ORG>
   • Make it possible to upload a list of 'allowed programs' to BPF, and then block BPF from accepting other programs. This would allow BPF to be use e.g. for DHCP, without allowing an attacker to start snooping the local network.
   • Update the security checker script. We should at least grab all the checks from the other BSD derivates, and add checks that a system with securelevel increased also have reasonable flags on the relevant parts. Coordinator: Eivind Eklund <eivind@FreeBSD.ORG>
   • Add authorization infrastructure to the kernel, to allow different authorization policies. Part of this could be done by modifying 'suser()'. Coordinator: Eivind Eklund <eivind@FreeBSD.ORG>
   • Add code to the NFS layer so you cannot chdir("..") out of a NFS partition. E.g.: /usr is a UFS partition with /usr/src NFS exported. Now it is possible to use the NFS file handle for /usr/src to get access to /usr.