On 2012-06-07 15:55, Mark Benson wrote: On 7 Jun 2012, at 13:44, Jordi Guillaumes i Pons <jg at jordi.guillaumes.name> wrote: If I've understood it correctly, the idea is to replace the (dying) kernel support for DECNet under linux by userland code, so it the current module dies definitely due to kernel ABI changes we could still use decnet in the Linux boxes. As Johnny pointed out, some root access is required for a daemon to play with the ethernet but with that in place the rest would be userland, yes. The key is no kernel module or kernel support is necessary because it's going away. I guess it might be worth pointing out that running as root still means it's in user mode. There is nothing that needs to be in the kernel itself. You can do all of it from userland. But you need parts to be running as root. That is potentially a security problem, yes. No helping that. But carefully written code is always a good idea. I'd add as an additional benefit that moving decnet out of the kernel would make possible to port it to other unix flavours, like the BSDs and Mac OSX. That was also part of my modus operandi. It would port to prettymuch and OS that supports libpcap and MAC address spoofing (possibly Windows?). Actually an interesting point. Johnny