Re: is killing zombies possible w/o a reboot?

[Matthias Andree]

On Wed, 03 Nov 2004, Gene Heskett wrote:

> >Yes it does - the problem is that not all resources are managed
> >by processes.  Some allocations are managed by drivers, so a driver
> >bug can get the device into a unuseable state _and_ tie up the
> >process(es) that were using the driver at the moment.
> 
> This from my viewpoint, is wrong.  The kernel, and only the kernel 
> should be ultimately responsible for handing out resources, and 
> reclaiming at its convienience.

Linux's driver model is the way it is. If you want the kernel to clean
up after a driver has puked, you need something like a microkernel I
believe, where only a minimal core kernel is a real kernel and where all
the drivers are actually in user-space, but that's no longer Linux then.

I'm not reflecting the down- and upsides to of this as I have no
experience with microkernels (and have never used OS9 or GNU Hurd
either). I know there have been attempts to port Linux to a Microkernel
but I don't know what's come out of it.

-- 
Matthias Andree
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