Messages in this thread | | | Date | Wed, 28 Apr 2004 15:18:35 +1000 | From | "Nigel Cunningham" <> | Subject | Re: What does tainting actually mean? |
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Hi.
On Wed, 28 Apr 2004 01:19:32 -0400, Chris Friesen <cfriesen@nortelnetworks.com> wrote: > If only it were that easy. > > There has already been a case mentioned of a binary module that messed > up something that was only visible once that module was unloaded and > another one loaded. It all depends totally on usage patterns.
I don't know what module you're talking about, but surely there must be something that could be done kernel-side to protect against such problems. Reference counting or such like? I guess if it was a hardware issue, but then again that might be an issue with too many assumptions being made about prior state? Maybe I am being too naive :>
> Binary modules, on the other hand, are often loaded up by users that > know just barely enough to download them and run an install script. In > this case, it can be helpful to know up front that there has been > proprietary code running in kernel space, and aside from calls to kernel > APIs, we have no clue what else it was doing, what memory was being > trampled, what cpu registers were whacked, etc.
Now I see your point. Of course my previous point about patches is still valid though: the tainted flag only gives part of the picture. The person reporting the bug might create just as much of a black box for us by forgetting to mention that they applied patch foobar.
Regards,
Nigel -- Nigel Cunningham C/- Westminster Presbyterian Church Belconnen 61 Templeton Street, Cook, ACT 2614, Australia. +61 (2) 6251 7727 (wk) - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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