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Date:      Fri, 7 Apr 2000 11:30:53 -0400 (EDT)
From:      Kenneth Wayne Culver <culverk@wam.umd.edu>
To:        Gustavo V G C Rios <kernel@lince.tdnet.com.br>
Cc:        Alfred Perlstein <bright@wintelcom.net>, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Is traditional unixes kernel really stable ?
Message-ID:  <Pine.GSO.4.21.0004071128590.23186-100000@rac3.wam.umd.edu>
In-Reply-To: <38EDD209.421EF9B0@tdnet.com.br>

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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.
> 
> 
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> 



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