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Date:      Tue, 20 Jun 2000 09:49:53 -0700
From:      "'Alfred Perlstein'" <bright@wintelcom.net>
To:        Christopher Sedore <cmsedore@maxwell.syr.edu>
Cc:        "'arch@freebsd.org'" <arch@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: MORE: Re: kblob discussion.
Message-ID:  <20000620094953.R17420@fw.wintelcom.net>
In-Reply-To: <D006CCEB462FD411976100A0C9B413A139E5BB@EXCHANGE>; from cmsedore@maxwell.syr.edu on Tue, Jun 20, 2000 at 12:43:34PM -0400
References:  <D006CCEB462FD411976100A0C9B413A139E5BB@EXCHANGE>

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* Christopher Sedore <cmsedore@maxwell.syr.edu> [000620 09:43] wrote:
> 
> [...]
> 
> >Last night I started thinking about making kblob more flexible,
> >here's the problem I came across:
> >
> >All the papers that have been given to me make sure that once a
> >0 copy buffer is shared across subsystems it is immutable until
> >the data it's loaned has gone back to no references except by
> >the user process.
> >
> >Not following the above system is _wrong_.
> 
> I'm not sure I would put that level of emphasis on _wrong_.    It deserves
> that level of emphasis if it can cause kernel state (or other system)
> corruption (which should be reason for _wrong_, though I'd call this a
> problem with implementation more than anything else).  If the
> user/application can only screw up its own data/connections (in the sense of
> undefined, possibly random data being sent/written), then why not state that
> modifying the data causes undefined results (including TCP checksum errors,
> whatever else) and let the programmer beware.

Because it puts undue burden on the rest of the kernel to cope with
a user's access to internals.  What happens if we are using some
sort of checksum offloading chipset or encryption/compression system
that can't stand the data being ripped out from under it.  What's
the point of recalculating the checksum of a packet when we know
it shouldn't have changed?

It's wrong. :)

-- 
-Alfred Perlstein - [bright@wintelcom.net|alfred@freebsd.org]
"I have the heart of a child; I keep it in a jar on my desk."


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