Kernel debugging / drivers (was: USB keyboard driver the GNU Mach)

[Olaf Buddenhagen]

Hi,

On Mon, Feb 29, 2016 at 12:41:43PM +0100, Justus Winter wrote:

> While we generally want to move away from drivers in the kernel, it
> might indeed be nice to have a keyboard driver inside it for kdb.

Hm, this is an interesting point. I haven't actually considered keyboard
drivers up till now; but there is an even bigger problem: as soon as you
are no longer running VGA text mode, kdb won't work without huge amounts
of graphics driver code in the kernel.

In the end, it seems we have to give up on the idea of kdb using
in-kernel console drivers. That doesn't mean we have to give up on a
kernel debugger though: we could load a self-contained, separate OS
alongside gnumach, which remains inactive until kdb (or the panic
handler) is invoked.

-antrik-