Messages in this thread | | | From | "Russell Coker - mailing lists account" <> | Date | Wed, 30 Jul 97 18:51:52 +1100 | Subject | Re: Pentium emulation |
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>> > Couldn't the kernel provide emulation of the Pentium instructions >> > for the 386/486, to solve this problem? I guess it could be done >> > since it would be very similar to the FPU emulator. >> > >> > So the question is mainly: Would it make sense? >> >> Not really. Except for BSWAP the 386/486/586 user mode stuff is basically >> all down to how you order instructions and how you align them not to new >> instructions
>I thought there was some problem with 386s not write faulting correctly >when you had kernel level privileges? Hence the 386/486 differences in >verify_area.
A couple of years ago someone posted some assembly that would lock any 386 up solid. It didn't require kernel mode and worked on OS/2 as well as Linux (so I doubt that it was related to a Linux bug). It was apparently impossible to work-around this bug, thus if you want to run a multi-user system in a hostile environment then you need something other than a 386.
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