From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Jan 12 16:50:35 2011 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id BA750106564A for ; Wed, 12 Jan 2011 16:50:35 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from me@erik.eu) Received: from sophie.mysmt.net (sophie.mysmt.net [82.150.137.40]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 188B88FC0A for ; Wed, 12 Jan 2011 16:50:34 +0000 (UTC) Received: (qmail 18602 invoked by uid 89); 12 Jan 2011 16:23:50 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO ?192.168.0.21?) (microcon@erik.eu@83.163.18.105) by 82-150-137-14.mysmt.net with ESMTPA; 12 Jan 2011 16:23:50 -0000 From: Erik To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org In-Reply-To: References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2011 17:23:51 +0100 Message-ID: <1294849431.43712.41.camel@tessa.office.datact.nl> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Evolution 2.30.3 FreeBSD GNOME Team Port Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailman-Approved-At: Wed, 12 Jan 2011 16:58:02 +0000 Subject: Re: why panic(9) ? X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2011 16:50:35 -0000 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"