rump

Virtualized NetBSD kernel components in userspace

Rump (Runnable Userspace Meta Program) is a mechanism for running kernel code as part of a user program's address space. As opposed to executing system calls for requesting kernel services, rump programs do a library call into the kernel code for equivalent functionality. Kernel code is simply recompiled as a userspace shared library from the kernel sources instead of being rewritten, so services imitate the same services being provided by the kernel. Select architectures such as i386 and amd64 also support directly linking binary kernel modules against rump programs.