Re: What does tainting actually mean?

From: Nigel Cunningham
Date: Tue Apr 27 2004 - 23:44:40 EST


Hi.

On Wed, 28 Apr 2004 06:27:42 +0200, Jurriaan <thunder7@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
From: Nigel Cunningham <ncunningham@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, Apr 28, 2004 at 02:00:35PM +1000
Hi all.

I'm probably going to regret this, but seeing the current discussion on
binary modules makes me wonder:

What does tainting actually mean?

It means you can never be sure the bug is _not_ in some binary module.
It may be unprobable, you may be able to find a bug in the kernel, but
you're never _sure_.

Is that true? We can see where the oops occurs. If it's in the module, nothing more needs to be said. If it's in the kernel itself, we can check our source. We could check all the calls the module makes to open source code and validate that the parameters are correct. We should be able to say with authority 'the module is doing the wrong thing'. We might not be able to say exactly what, but we could determine that it is the module.

Nigel
--
Nigel Cunningham
C/- Westminster Presbyterian Church Belconnen
61 Templeton Street, Cook, ACT 2614, Australia.
+61 (2) 6251 7727 (wk)
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