Re: A Question to throw at you guys

[Tom Bachmann]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Richard Braun schrieb:
> [...] First you suggest using drivers
> in userspace, isolated from the kernel (that's the "don't trust drivers"
> part). [...]
> 
> From my point of view, I don't see a way to reliably achieve the first
> part, as hardware devices can be considered as most privileged entities,
> potentially giving less privileged entities (device drivers) access to
> most privileged data.

While true, having device drivers in userspace is still a major
improvement. Drivers are isolated from each other, stray pointers are
not a problem anymore (at least for anyone but the driver itself). Chips
using DMA are still dangerous (more dangerous than other hardware even),
true. But not all devices rely on that, and dmammus are becoming
standard (?).
I've read and can easily imagine that userspace drivers simplify driver
development a lot (the reference is to a userspace usb stack written for
l3, I don't know the exact paper anymore, though).
- --
- -ness-
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFFWNXfvD/ijq9JWhsRAl9lAJ4svlwoPI/AHNU2JpsmH+7OcqU0vACeP9u9
N1yj2/qtkhc0CKVsMeCkpHA=
=hhah
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----