From owner-freebsd-questions Fri Jun 2 1: 6:44 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from wantadilla.lemis.com (wantadilla.lemis.com [192.109.197.80]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4C0E437BAE8 for ; Fri, 2 Jun 2000 01:06:32 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from grog@wantadilla.lemis.com) Received: (from grog@localhost) by wantadilla.lemis.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id RAA26421; Fri, 2 Jun 2000 17:36:20 +0930 (CST) (envelope-from grog) Date: Fri, 2 Jun 2000 17:36:20 +0930 From: Greg Lehey To: "Raymundo M. Vega" Cc: Luke Scharf , freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Genreal kernel architecture. Message-ID: <20000602173620.T22978@wantadilla.lemis.com> References: <39374B81.C1C5B591@vt.edu> <393758F2.150A1FB2@home.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0pre2i In-Reply-To: <393758F2.150A1FB2@home.com> Organization: LEMIS, PO Box 460, Echunga SA 5153, Australia Phone: +61-8-8388-8286 Fax: +61-8-8388-8725 Mobile: +61-418-838-708 WWW-Home-Page: http://www.lemis.com/~grog X-PGP-Fingerprint: 6B 7B C3 8C 61 CD 54 AF 13 24 52 F8 6D A4 95 EF Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Thursday, 1 June 2000 at 23:49:22 -0700, Raymundo M. Vega wrote: > Luke Scharf wrote: >> >> Does FreeBSD protect drivers from each other? > > yes it does not let them break each other noses ;-) This is not correct (for some definition of "nose"). Drivers have free access to kernel memory. >> I've started playing with the Linux kernel, but my badly written >> drivers are free to wreak havoc all over kernelspace and take down >> the entire system... :) > > now seriously, actually this is C, remember it lets you do anything > (if you have the rights), it is assumed that you know what you are > doing. In fact, Luke's question was very valid. There are good reasons to give drivers less power than the kernel itself, and most architectures have hardware support for such a concept. Unfortunately nobody's interested enough to change things, though it could make for a more reliable operating system. Greg -- When replying to this message, please copy the original recipients. For more information, see http://www.lemis.com/questions.html Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key See complete headers for address and phone numbers To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message