I don't think that's quite true. I've seen microkernels crash because of
bad drivers. I think no matter what, even in a microkernel the drivers
have to interface directly to the kernel. I could be wrong but I thought
that in a microkernel, drivers were loaded as kernel modules.
=================================================================
| Kenneth Culver | FreeBSD: The best OS around. |
| Unix Systems Administrator | ICQ #: 24767726 |
| and student at The | AIM: muythaibxr |
| The University of Maryland, | Website: (Under Construction) |
| College Park. | http://www.wam.umd.edu/~culverk/|
=================================================================
On Fri, 7 Apr 2000, Gustavo V G C Rios wrote:
> Alfred Perlstein wrote:
> >
> > Some archs (such as i386) allow the OS to set page protections and
> > io permission bitmaps that effectively can pretect against problems
> > with drivers touching incorrect IO ranges, however...
> >
> > >
> > > Worse yet: What about hardware buggy devices?
> > > This could case the entiry system to crash, isn't it ?
> >
> > Yes, incorrectly programmed hardware either by firmware (on
> > chip/board) or by drivers can cause crashes and hardware damage.
> >
>
> That's the point!
> Why not a different approach ?
> Why not starting a microkernel arch? The microkernel would basically do
> just feel tasks, like:
>
> IPC: managing and routing messages.
> Process scheduling.
> First level interrupt handling.
>
>
> All other tasks would run in like any other user process, like a fyle
> system daemon, process daemon , internet daemon (not inetd), and, of
> course, device drivers programs.
>
> This design, would not let a system crash due to device drivers problems
> or even bad hardware desgin.
>
> What all you think about that ?
>
>
> --
> If you're happy, you're successful.
>
>
> To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
>
To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
