Date: Wed, 15 Dec 1999 11:49:56 -0500 (EST) From: Robert Watson <robert@cyrus.watson.org> To: Peter Wemm <peter@netplex.com.au> Cc: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>, Mike Smith <msmith@FreeBSD.ORG>, Greg Childers <gchil0@pop.uky.edu>, Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@critter.freebsd.dk>, current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: HEADSUP: wd driver will be retired! Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.96.991215113708.20990C-100000@fledge.watson.org> In-Reply-To: <19991213234037.36B341CA0@overcee.netplex.com.au>
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On Tue, 14 Dec 1999, Peter Wemm wrote: > The RZ1000 is *dangerous*! We are doing no favours by making it run.. :-/ > IMHO It is better to loose the user by not playing ball than to corrupt > their data or run unreliably and make them hate us for it. > > http://www.faqs.org/faqs/pc-hardware-faq/enhanced-IDE/part1/ ... > > In both cases, the corruption occurs only in specific software > environments and is very subtle; you can go on working for months > without suspecting anything more than buggy software. The damage can > be immense. For all the details, look at Roedy Green's (roedy@bix.com) > "PCI EIDE controller flaws" FAQ included with his EIDE test > <ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/diskutil/eidete19.zip>; program which will > test your system for the bugs. > > BE WARNED that you're playing Russian roulette with your data if you > continue working on an affected machine without taking notice of this > problem. Since someone has code to detect these, how about putting this code in the ata driver probe so it can say something appropriately obscene and we start getting feedback about how widely deployed they are, and so that users can evaluate their risk in using the new driver? There's also mention of being able to disable features in the bios to fix this--is this a workaround that can be initiated from user software in a useful way? I.e., if the ata driver detects bad hardware, it pulls in a loadable kernel module that would somehow address the problem, or avoids the issues which cause corruption, if identifiable? Robert N M Watson robert@fledge.watson.org http://www.watson.org/~robert/ PGP key fingerprint: AF B5 5F FF A6 4A 79 37 ED 5F 55 E9 58 04 6A B1 TIS Labs at Network Associates, Safeport Network Services To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
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