From owner-cvs-all Fri Jul 30 12:39:18 1999 Delivered-To: cvs-all@freebsd.org Received: from dingo.cdrom.com (dingo.cdrom.com [204.216.28.145]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 72955151FA; Fri, 30 Jul 1999 12:39:10 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from mike@dingo.cdrom.com) Received: from dingo.cdrom.com (localhost.cdrom.com [127.0.0.1]) by dingo.cdrom.com (8.9.3/8.8.8) with ESMTP id MAA00684; Fri, 30 Jul 1999 12:33:39 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from mike@dingo.cdrom.com) Message-Id: <199907301933.MAA00684@dingo.cdrom.com> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.0.2 2/24/98 To: Warner Losh Cc: Mike Smith , Mike Smith , cvs-committers@FreeBSD.org, cvs-all@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: cvs commit: src/usr.sbin/apm apm.c In-reply-to: Your message of "Fri, 30 Jul 1999 13:11:25 MDT." <199907301911.NAA83225@harmony.village.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Fri, 30 Jul 1999 12:33:39 -0700 From: Mike Smith Sender: owner-cvs-all@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk > In message <199907301843.LAA00424@dingo.cdrom.com> Mike Smith writes: > : I'm not entirely sure yet about the ramifications of user-space code > : being able to call the BIOS; there are security and locking implications > : that I want to consider, and a good case for a more generalised > : interface. > > What are the security implications? Only root or group operator, by > default, can do this. Only root can use the bpf device, yet there are screams of protest every time people talk about that too. > Your point about the locking mechanism is well > taken. Nothing else is doing any locking, so the same problem exists > with the information interface. I'm looking at a "bios lock" that should be fairly straightforward to implement; it needs to cover the vm86 stuff as well, as there are several ways into the BIOS. > I'm not sure why you say that it can't work. It is just using the > same mechansim that the the get information stuff is using... Data > structures in memory aren't supported accross this interface... It wouldn't work because the arguments to the BIOS connector changed; it wasn't too hard to copy them back and forth from the "old" ones. > : APM should also become a module (real soon now), which will take the > : pressure off on any "vendor specific" features as well; so far we don't > : actually support anything "vendor specific" anyway, so it's a bit of a > : furphy right now. > > Right now there are a couple of information producing programs that > use this interface. Where? -- \\ The mind's the standard \\ Mike Smith \\ of the man. \\ msmith@freebsd.org \\ -- Joseph Merrick \\ msmith@cdrom.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe cvs-all" in the body of the message