Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2011 17:23:51 +0100 From: Erik <me@erik.eu> To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: why panic(9) ? Message-ID: <1294849431.43712.41.camel@tessa.office.datact.nl> In-Reply-To: <EDA4E84D0FDD44908E07588CB8BE187C@Nemesis> References: <AANLkTi=OQbS-0jJx0YwZhM7xDWPLOkaYYZAYfESUEvvM@mail.gmail.com> <CB13B0A9-E5EF-4351-9F17-C4628AA38004@mac.com> <AANLkTikP%2BxuPpVOxhU2msHHraRQRSUCqjG59S_Ss6pQ=@mail.gmail.com> <AF555A64-C04E-420A-9A2B-2C9AECF17BA1@mac.com> <AANLkTi=2Wo%2BRjyDrVRfCwyZYAprKe7U8k-DmwiVu0cM4@mail.gmail.com> <EDA4E84D0FDD44908E07588CB8BE187C@Nemesis>
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On Wed, 2011-01-12 at 13:43 +0100, Nils Holland wrote: > C. P. Ghost wrote: > > > As far as I know, Windows NT is a microkernel arch, and > > faulty drivers, often provided by external vendors would not > > bring that system (as much as we hate or despise its > > Windows OS personality that runs on top of it) to a complete halt. > > I don't know ... when Windows crashes (I'm no fan of it either, but anyway) > and you ask Microsoft about it, then it's most of the time an external > driver that is responsible. Graphics card driver seem to be the cause most > often, but other stuff as well. Here at work, we had a Windows Vista (moving > the focus of this discussion away from Windows 2000) machine that crashed > every time it was attempted to establisch a PPTP VPN connection. The reason, > as the blue screen clearly showed, was a faulty driver that was part of a > firewall made by AVG. > > So I would vote for exactly the contrary: Windows itself, in terms of "just > the Microsoft components" is fairly stable, and it's third-party drivers > that tend to bring it down most of the time. Having a job in which I have to > support people working on Windows, I can say for sure that there's no such > thing in Windows that prevents third-party system level stuff to bring down > the system. ;-) > > But back to the topic itself: Of course panics are useful. It's not a > feature you'll use to advertise your operating system with, but an > appropriate comparison is this: When you no longer know what you're doing, > it's better to just stop immediately. And that's what a panic does: When the > kernel has somehow gotten into an "undefined" state it cannot cope with, it > just pulls the plug before any additional damage can be done. Totally sane > thing. Of course, improving the kernel so that such "undefined states it > cannot cope with" occur as little frequently as possible makes sense (and > FreeBSD is certainly very good in that area), just "removing" panic doesn't > make any sense. When somehow you've gotten in front of a tunnel and there's > a train approaching, you don't believe that just standing still and closing > your eyes will save you. ;-) On one of my first linux desktops, I had a screensaver which displayed rotated dumpscreens of all kinds of different Operation systems. Apple, Basic, linux and BSOD.. (come to think about it BSD was not included) my 2 cents ;-) Best regards, -Erik. > > Greetings, > Nils > > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-current@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-current > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-current-unsubscribe@freebsd.org"
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