From owner-freebsd-hackers Fri Apr 7 8:57:13 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from quack.kfu.com (quack.kfu.com [170.1.70.2]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EB7D137BD82 for ; Fri, 7 Apr 2000 08:57:07 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from nsayer@quack.kfu.com) Received: from icarus.kfu.com (icarus.kfu.com [170.1.70.17]) by quack.kfu.com (8.9.2/8.9.3) with ESMTP id IAA84468; Fri, 7 Apr 2000 08:57:06 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from nsayer@quack.kfu.com) Received: from quack.kfu.com by icarus.kfu.com with ESMTP (8.9.3//ident-1.0) id IAA16988; Fri, 7 Apr 2000 08:56:39 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <38EE0536.F2305A40@quack.kfu.com> Date: Fri, 07 Apr 2000 08:56:38 -0700 From: Nick Sayer X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.72 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.2.12 i386) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Gustavo V G C Rios Cc: Alfred Perlstein , freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Is traditional unixes kernel really stable ? 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> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG 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