lkml.org 
[lkml]   [1999]   [May]   [7]   [last100]   RSS Feed
Views: [wrap][no wrap]   [headers]  [forward] 
 
Messages in this thread
/
Date
From
SubjectRE: Oops assist... [New idea]


On Fri, 7 May 1999, BROWN Nick wrote:

> >1) what's 'fast reboot'.
> >Windows 95 has the feature that you can reboot Windows without
> >restarting
> >the computer, i.e. not BIOS self test. Much faster.
> >It's implemented by an old DOS program that sits below Windows:
> >(WIN.COM)
> >if Windows exits with return code 0x42, then it will restart
> windows
> >instead of shutting down the computer.
>
> You are "rebooting" Windows, only to the extent that the word "reboot" has
> been redefined (actually I think MS say "restart Windows", which is more
> accurate, so for once it's not them hijacking jargon to mean what they feel
> like). Windows 95 is barely more of an OS than Windows 3.x was - it's just
> that there is more stuff done by 32-bit drivers and not many calls back to
> services provided from real mode. But Windows 95 isn't really in control of
> the machine - it's just a huge complex DOS extender with a GUI.
>
> In fact you can start Windows 95 (or rather, DOS 7.0) in text-only mode,
> quite trivially by hacking a line or two in the file called (!) MSDOS.SYS.
> In fact, it's a text-mode operating system with an optional graphical window
> environment running on top of it. Hmmm, where have I seen that before ?...
> (This is not a trivial analogy. If an average user has an X server problem,
> s/he can restart X without rebooting Linux, and this is not far off what
> happens when you "restart" Windows 95. DOS 7 doesn't provide the kind of
> fast reboot we're trying to propose here.)

Sigh... L-k is not a good place for that stuff, but anyway:
a) There is no such thing as text-mode or graphical OS. Kernel is kernel
is kernel.
b) Windows 95 is ugly as hell, but its kernel is not DOS. Take a Sun and
hit L1-A. You'll get what? Exactly. Now look at the SunOS kernel (or
Linux, for that matter). It is not an OpenPROM extender.
c) For all practical purposes Windows *is* in the control of the box. It
controls MMU, it controls context switches and it controls access to the
hardware.
d) "Fast" reboot is fast only because Windows doesn't do fsck. BTW,
writing to disk after oops may be dangerous or not, but dirty reboot
definitely *is* dangerous. So the whole idea looks pretty bogus.


-
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 13:51    [W:0.289 / U:0.152 seconds]
©2003-2020 Jasper Spaans|hosted at Digital Ocean and TransIP|Read the blog|Advertise on this site