Re: FreeBSD vs. OSX

From: Eric Masson (emss_at_free.fr)
Date: 12/24/03 

Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2003 14:47:49 +0100

>>>>> "pat" == pat <patpro@boleskine.patpro.net> writes:

 pat> As far as I know, it can. It's a piece of code loaded by the
 pat> kernel, in the kernel space. If the driver goes wild, it can panic
 pat> the kernel. Any userland soft would get killed by the kernel, but
 pat> drivers are not userland.

You're right, some oses solve this issue by placing drivers in userland
and just keeping basic functions in kernel.

Drivers (hardware, filesystems, protocols) can then be debugged with
userland tools and won't crash the whole system if they fail.

Take a look at the hurd or Mach for further information, FreeBSD has
available patches that help running the ip stack in userland, iirc Dfly
will investigate in this area for filesystems.

Eric Masson 

-- 
 Je viens d'adopter une limace (elle s'appele "Chompie"), et j'ai trouve
 des infos sur un site qui n'a pas ete mis a jour depuis des siecles!
 Meme si l'auteur ne s'y interesse plus, le site garde tout son interet.
 -+- P in : <http://www.le-gnu.net> - L'ęre des limaces média -+-

Relevant Pages

  • Re: speeding up ugen by an order of magnitude.
    ... :> writing a specific kernel driver. ... usb drivers are very easy to write. ... sacrificying this generalness, that's OK. ... don't have userland tcp, for example). ...
    (freebsd-current)
  • Re: [git head] Should X86_PAT really default to yes?
    ... and I also get the messages when logging out and logging in again. ... I do not see any performance issues, but I've only used this kernel for a ... The artifacts may not be a PAT issue directly, but it is a clear regression ... # Device Drivers ...
    (Linux-Kernel)
  • Re: Wanna give me a hand debunking this?
    ... without wild and crazy changes in the kernel and device drivers. ... He wants a stable kernel but a more up to date userland so that the kernel ...
    (Fedora)
  • sensors fun..
    ... etc. sensors report status via an object like this ... - I'm not entirely opposed to having kernel drivers for various known sensor ... Forcing all sensors to be in the kernel. ... consequences in the kernel than in userland. ...
    (freebsd-arch)
  • Re: ACPI Error under 2.6.26-rc*
    ... and attach the rsdp for all of the three cases (good, ACPI Error, ... could you please attach the dmesg output of a 2.6.25.10 kernel which has ... # IPVS transport protocol load balancing support ... # Device Drivers ...
    (Linux-Kernel)