Messages in this thread | | | From | "Khimenko Victor" <> | Date | Tue, 25 Jul 2000 23:06:05 +0400 (MSD) | Subject | Re: Direct access to hardware |
| |
In <Pine.LNX.4.10.10007251926210.15969-100000@dax.joh.cam.ac.uk> James Sutherland (jas88@cam.ac.uk) wrote: > On Tue, 25 Jul 2000, Stuart MacDonald wrote:
>> From: "James Sutherland" <jas88@cam.ac.uk> >> > What functionality? Remember, only the commands which should NEVER be >> > issued except as part of a low-level diagnostic or maintenance procedure. >> > Since nothing should ever issue these commands anyway except the vendor's >> > own software, no functionality is being lost by disabling them, except for >> > that software, which can be adapted to work around that problem in a way >> > which will also improve it significantly. >> >> The functionality of being able to flash running hardware. >> The thread about having an OS independent disk from >> the vendor is nice, but requires downtime. Not everyone >> can afford downtime.
> In this context, it does not. Any hot-swappable hardware could be removed > from the production system, flashed and tested off-line, then restored.
You just need day or WEEK of downtime for that in some cases :-) Really nice. Thnx for big present. Why so much ? It's simple: think about server installed on ISP. Thee are just ONE service offeren by ISP: give us your system (without keyboard and monitor, obviously) and will'll plug in it two connectors: power and ethernet. You need to do some service with your system ? No problem: write offer to replace it with other system and no slower then in week time we'll replace it (usually it takes less then day though). Looks overly draconian to you ? May be. But it's CHEAP service! Of course this web server is not mission-critical and you can tolerate this few days downtime once or twice per year. Now: do you really think you should wait for system to crash so you can fix security problem in NIC's firmware ?
> Much safer, and not OS dependent - without any downtime on the production > system.
See above. This service is TYPICAL. It's NOT something unique. Really. And Linux is used VERY often on such systems.
> This approach is only a problem for non-hot-swappable hardware on a > mission critical system, or if you don't have any non-critical systems > with a suitable interface. In the case of IDE or SCSI, this doesn't seem > likely.
See above. Your approarch will not work for LOTS AND LOTS systems out there. "One size does not fit all". Really.
- 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/
| |