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Date:      Fri, 07 Apr 2000 12:59:48 +0000
From:      Gustavo V G C Rios <kernel@tdnet.com.br>
To:        Nick Sayer <nsayer@quack.kfu.com>
Cc:        Alfred Perlstein <bright@wintelcom.net>, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Is traditional unixes kernel really stable ?
Message-ID:  <38EDDBC4.51F2414D@tdnet.com.br>
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> <38EE0536.F2305A40@quack.kfu.com>

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Nick Sayer wrote:
> 
> 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.

Yeah! I had started to study OS (UNIX Internals: the new frontiers)
internals. That book tell the same about microkernel, but when i
downloaded QNX demo disk i got confused.

If microkernel has such a drawnbacks, why QNX is so fast and reliable?
Should you download it too, and realize what i mean.


Thanks a lot for the patience.

PS: I am just a beginner, so, don't take me wrong. The fact is that i am
really confused about what books say about microkernel and what in that
single demo floppy. I would be really glad to have some here to kindly
clarify it to me.

-- 
If you're happy, you're successful.


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