Messages in this thread | | | Date | Fri, 18 Dec 1998 18:50:05 +0000 (GMT) | From | Chris Evans <> | Subject | Re: Should raw I/O be added to the kernel? |
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On Wed, 16 Dec 1998, Glendon Gross wrote:
> I am reminded of the catch-22 that results from loading products like > Direct-X to a M$ environment. Enabling direct access to hardware often > results in instability and system crashes, which anyone who loads the > above product on a Windows 9x box can testify to after a program in > userspace brings the whole system down, ad infinitum ad nauseum.
Raw IO isn't direct access to hardware, it's direct access to the hardware _driver_. A user program with permission to access a raw device won't be able to cause system instability any more than a user program with permission to access a file. Indeed, the file access case has many more layers of code to go through.
The classic example of allowing userspace direct access to hardware is X - another lovely can of worms.
Chris
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