On Friday 16 December 2005 12:54, Peter Beutner wrote:
Let's just look at the problem with the memory layout. Wine relies on the possibility to load certain codes at fixed addresses as this is how it works under windows. Linux choose exact the opposite direction, i.e. try to ensure that libraries are loaded at random places in the memory. This is not a missing feature it is a complete different design decision. And I seriously doubt that the kernel/or glibc guys will import the security flaw from windows to always load code at fixed positions. So wine will have to live forever with it's custom preloader hack to emulate the windows process environment.
Well, wine is loading code at fixed positions. So we are bypassing this security mechanism, right? If I understand correctly, if the kernel/glibc guys will "fix" this, Wine will have major problems.
This means there are many people (all wine users) dependend on being able to load stuff at fixed positions. Since we are doing it anyway, and if the PE loader would be integrated with the standard ELF loader, the kernel could make an exception for PE executables. That's what I mean about the environment adapting to given usage scenarios like wine. If this is too much of a security problem for a given system, one would'nt install wine anyway.
But this only applies to wine, not to software companies trying to make money with their work? Is it too much to expect that enthusiasm from them? Or how should I interpret this?
All I meant to say is that Wine is great and very successfull at working against the odds.
Bye,