Marcus Brinkmann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On Mon, Jan 25, 1999 at 04:33:38PM +0900, OKUJI Yoshinori wrote: > > > > > In addition, it doesn't make sense to enable all scsi drivers, in > > many cases. Because they often conflict when detecting scsi devices. > > GNU Mach doesn't have loadable modules, so we have to prepare many > > kernel images as Slackware does. > > Ouch!!! I hope this is not the last word on it. Isn't it the real benefit of > a microkernel to be modular and extensible at run time? "many kernel images" > is violent from my point of view.
As far as I understand, the entire notion of "device drivers" in kernel space is more or less herecy when talking about micro kernels. Ideally, all device drivers should be replaced with user-level tasks. >From a practical point of view, I don't really know what's best. I kind of like the principle that no user level program should ever be able to crash the system or it's hardware seriously, which implies severe restrictions on what a driver-like program can do (I really don't like the linux-x86 way of having user programs like svgalib and X write directly to the hardware). Perhaps having the kernel provide reasonably safe but very primitive interfaces to the hardware (raw scsi commands, for instance), and doing the rest by user level programs would be a workable compromise? But then, there are the efficiency issues. For now, I guess that linux-compatibility, in order to borrow support for common PC hardware, is more important than a theoretically beatiful design. /Niels
