Date: Fri, 07 Apr 2000 08:56:38 -0700 From: Nick Sayer <nsayer@quack.kfu.com> To: Gustavo V G C Rios <kernel@tdnet.com.br> Cc: Alfred Perlstein <bright@wintelcom.net>, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Is traditional unixes kernel really stable ? Message-ID: <38EE0536.F2305A40@quack.kfu.com> References: <38ED128C.22C3AA28@tdnet.com.br> <20000406192206.N22104@fw.wintelcom.net> <38ED233E.74716D02@tdnet.com.br> <20000406230234.B4381@fw.wintelcom.net> <38EDD209.421EF9B0@tdnet.com.br>
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Gustavo V G C Rios wrote: > Why not starting a microkernel arch? IMHO the microkernel is the emperor's new clothes (so is OOP, but that, I suspect, I won't get quite so much agreement on). Context switching has been mentioned, but in addition to that, the real problem is that it really doesn't change anything. It may somewhat simplify a non-critical driver like a serial port or a mouse or the like, but if a SCSI HBA driver crashes, it's likely going to make life for the microkernel very hairy, just like it would a full kernel. And a driver bug can cause the hardware to wedge the machine whether the driver is in protected or user mode too. Most people who I talk to who bring up microkernel do it because they see the process of compiling a FreeBSD kernel and think that microkernels are somehow the opposite of that. If that's the case, they should believe that Solaris is a microkernel, which it patently is not. NT comes closer, with its rings of protection, but you can hardly call that a picture of stabiliy. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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