From owner-freebsd-hackers Fri Apr 7 8:31:33 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from po4.wam.umd.edu (po4.wam.umd.edu [128.8.10.166]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3D22B37BF06 for ; Fri, 7 Apr 2000 08:31:26 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from culverk@wam.umd.edu) Received: from rac3.wam.umd.edu (root@rac3.wam.umd.edu [128.8.10.143]) by po4.wam.umd.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id LAA00680; Fri, 7 Apr 2000 11:30:56 -0400 (EDT) Received: from rac3.wam.umd.edu (sendmail@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by rac3.wam.umd.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id LAA24445; Fri, 7 Apr 2000 11:30:54 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost (culverk@localhost) by rac3.wam.umd.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id LAA24441; Fri, 7 Apr 2000 11:30:54 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: rac3.wam.umd.edu: culverk owned process doing -bs Date: Fri, 7 Apr 2000 11:30:53 -0400 (EDT) From: Kenneth Wayne Culver To: Gustavo V G C Rios Cc: Alfred Perlstein , freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Is traditional unixes kernel really stable ? In-Reply-To: <38EDD209.421EF9B0@tdnet.com.br> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG I don't think that's quite true. I've seen microkernels crash because of bad drivers. I think no matter what, even in a microkernel the drivers have to interface directly to the kernel. I could be wrong but I thought that in a microkernel, drivers were loaded as kernel modules. ================================================================= | Kenneth Culver | FreeBSD: The best OS around. | | Unix Systems Administrator | ICQ #: 24767726 | | and student at The | AIM: muythaibxr | | The University of Maryland, | Website: (Under Construction) | | College Park. | http://www.wam.umd.edu/~culverk/| ================================================================= On Fri, 7 Apr 2000, Gustavo V G C Rios wrote: > Alfred Perlstein wrote: > > > > Some archs (such as i386) allow the OS to set page protections and > > io permission bitmaps that effectively can pretect against problems > > with drivers touching incorrect IO ranges, however... > > > > > > > > Worse yet: What about hardware buggy devices? > > > This could case the entiry system to crash, isn't it ? > > > > Yes, incorrectly programmed hardware either by firmware (on > > chip/board) or by drivers can cause crashes and hardware damage. > > > > That's the point! > Why not a different approach ? > Why not starting a microkernel arch? The microkernel would basically do > just feel tasks, like: > > IPC: managing and routing messages. > Process scheduling. > First level interrupt handling. > > > All other tasks would run in like any other user process, like a fyle > system daemon, process daemon , internet daemon (not inetd), and, of > course, device drivers programs. > > This design, would not let a system crash due to device drivers problems > or even bad hardware desgin. > > What all you think about that ? > > > -- > If you're happy, you're successful. > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message