lkml.org 
[lkml]   [2000]   [Jul]   [25]   [last100]   RSS Feed
Views: [wrap][no wrap]   [headers]  [forward] 
 
Messages in this thread
/
Date
From
SubjectRe: Direct access to hardware
On Tue, 25 Jul 2000, James Sutherland wrote:

> On 25 Jul 2000, Michael Poole wrote:
>
> > There are reasons for non-vendor software to talk to the drive, but
> > you continue to pretend there aren't.
>
> Such as? (Bearing in mind this should void the warranty...)

That's laughable, and somehwat concerning at the same time.
Issueing commands to the device that aren't valid shouldn't void the
warranty. I've heard rumors this may not even be legal in .eu soon,
hopefully the US will do something similar, though I'm afraid it may
be run by the corporations a bit too much for it.

> > There are, however, no reasons for the kernel to filter the commands
> > it sends to the drive only sometimes, but you continue to pretend
> > there ARE (with your compile-time option).
>
> There are reasons to filter these commands out under normal circumstances,
> as Andre has explained. There are also probably exceptional circumstances
> where you would want/need to bypass this - for a repair/diagnostics disk,
> for example.

Only if you consider 'normal circumstances' being when a malicious
abuser has root access. I don't.

> > Talking to the drive should be permitted under Linux or it should not;
> > you shouldn't have to switch on some "firmware upgrade kernel" flag
> > just to talk ATA extensions.
>
> It's not a case of talking "extensions", just a matter of preventing
> access to the vendor-specific commands which potentially void the
> warranty.

Vendor-specific commands may be required to access normal
operations of the device.

Stephen


-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/

\
 
 \ /
  Last update: 2005-03-22 13:57    [W:0.180 / U:0.156 seconds]
©2003-2020 Jasper Spaans|hosted at Digital Ocean and TransIP|Read the blog|Advertise on this site