[Xorg] The big multiconsole nasty

Egbert Eich eich at pdx.freedesktop.org
Mon Jul 12 04:48:32 PDT 2004


Keith Packard writes:
 > 
 > Around 14 o'clock on Jul 7, Egbert Eich wrote:
 > 
 > > For HW access this is certainly true, but it also deosn't make the kernel
 > > a better choice than user land.
 > 
 > Yes, that's exactly right.  We need to treat any such code with the same 
 > care one would treat the kernel itself, it's all essentially equivalent.
 > 
 > > On the other hand a sloppy written user land code will probably just 
 > > segfault while similar flaws in a kernel module may mess up your entire
 > > system.
 > 
 > The contrarary is equally true; kernel mistakes often result in benign 
 > (from the system perspective) oopses while user-level mistakes can easily 
 > lock up the PCI bus.  Touching device registers is like that; there's no 
 > magic bullet here.

We are talking about different things here. If code in user land locks up
the bus the same code in the kernle will certainly have the same effect.
It certainly will not just produce a 'benign oops'.

Egbert.





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