Re: A Question to throw at you guys

[olafBuddenhagen]

Hi,

On Tue, Nov 14, 2006 at 12:25:37PM +0100, Christian Helmuth wrote:

> (Please, no direct answer, I'm on the list.)

Your Mutt is misconfigured: It sends a "Mail-Followup-To: Christian
Helmuth <address@hidden>, address@hidden" header. You'll
have to fix it on your side.

> On Tue, Nov 14, 2006 at 12:10:07PM +0100, address@hidden
> wrote:

> > On Tue, Nov 14, 2006 at 10:44:41AM +0100, Christian Helmuth wrote:

> > > IMO the required capabalities for a driver to work can be derived
> > > from the I/O resource and device structure. So devices attached to
> > > buses are dominated by the bus drivers (which may be dominated by
> > > host drivers or bus drivers again, e.g. PCI - USB - USB device).
> > > This requires more trust into bus drivers than into drivers for
> > > the attached devices, but could help to design a trusted driver
> > > tree. Opinions?
> > 
> > This works for some busses, but not all.
> 
> Which busses are you talking about? Could you be a bit more specific
> here?

I don't really have good knowledge of hardware devices, so I can't give
you much details. I only know it myself from Peter De Schrijver. (Who is
on the list, or at least used to be, but probably doesn't read this
thread as the subject in no way indicates it has anything to do with
drivers...)

It is a problem for ISA devices (yes, you still have a couple of those
in your brand new PCIe system, though admittedly only a low and
relatively fixed number, so having special trusted drives for those
should be feasible...), but also some PCI devices with legacy support,
like VGA adapters. It's also a problem for SOC (system-on-a-chip)
busses, though I'm not sure this is an issue for the Hurd.

-antrik-