Re: What does tainting actually mean?

[Muli Ben-Yehuda]

On Wed, Apr 28, 2004 at 03:27:00PM +0200, Måns Rullgård wrote:
> Muli Ben-Yehuda <mulix@xxxxxxxxx> writes:
> 
> > On Wed, Apr 28, 2004 at 02:48:30PM +0200, Måns Rullgård wrote:
> >> > Stack overflows in a badly written device driver can overwrite task
> >> > structures and cause apparent filesystem problems which are blamed on
> >> > the hapless filesystem authors instead of where the blame properly
> >> > lies, namely the device driver author.
> >> 
> >> Wouldn't the problem be just as difficult to pin to a certain module
> >> even if the source code was open?  I prefer open source modules (I
> >> have Alpha machines), but I just can't see this argument work.
> >
> > No. If the code is open, you can read it and find the bug - just by
> > reading it. If the code is closed, your only recourse is to observe
> > the corruption while it happens or read the assembly, which is quite a
> > lot more difficult. 
> 
> Something has to hint to as to which code to read.  The usual way to
> find the offending module is to remove modules until the problem goes
> away.  The availability of source code only matters when you have
> found which module actually has the bug.  

If it's closed, you may think you have found the bug, but you can't
verify. If it's open, you can. 

Cheers, 
Muli 
-- 
Muli Ben-Yehuda
http://www.mulix.org | http://mulix.livejournal.com/

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