Re: Direct access to hardware

From: Horst von Brand (vonbrand@inf.utfsm.cl)
Date: Wed Jul 26 2000 - 09:28:02 EST

James Sutherland <jas88@cam.ac.uk> said:
> On Tue, 25 Jul 2000, Horst von Brand wrote:

[...]

> > Please show me where Linux checks every byte of an executable before
> > running it to make sure it doesn't f00f or coma your CPU.

> Inside the CPU, in hardware. If you attempt to execute invalid code, Linux
> knows about it straight away.

I.e., Linux (the kernel) does _no_ checking at all, it gets notified by the
hardware when something is awry. Exactly the same thing as I advocate for
hard disks et al: They have to protect themselves, and notify <somebody>
when things do go wrong.

Thanks. 

-- 
Dr. Horst H. von Brand                       mailto:vonbrand@inf.utfsm.cl
Departamento de Informatica                     Fono: +56 32 654431
Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria              +56 32 654239
Casilla 110-V, Valparaiso, Chile                Fax:  +56 32 797513

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