James Sutherland <jas88@cam.ac.uk> said:
> On Sun, 23 Jul 2000, Linus Torvalds wrote:
[...]
> > OR should we
> >
> > - move this policy into user space, and potentially have programs that
> > know what different drives can do, and upgrade them the proper way
> IOW, pass the buck to every app that runs? Let's go one better, shall we,
> and put file access controls in userspace too? And network protocol
> handling, scheduling, etc. In fact, let's just remove the whole OS and go
> with an MS DOS clone, and leave EVERYTHING up to userspace! :-)
Yep. Already done, from day one even: All file access checks for *root* are
userspace only, and we are talking about root-only stuff here.
> One of the functions of an OS is to act as the interface between hardware
> and applications. The approach being advocated here by some is "just leave
> the unmarked minefield sitting in the penguin enclosure - we'll squeegee
> Tux off the walls later". I'd rather keep the munitions somewhere else.
Use another system then. Unix/Linux _is_ dangerous, it has little safety
net built in. And I like it exactly because of this, it allows me to boldly
go where no other system I've seen lets me go even near.
To get what you are asking for would give a kernel source of a gigabyte or
so (just add up all the funny things you might want to send to a random
IDE, SCSI, FireWire, USB, ... device, consider that downloadable firmware
is becomming the norm, and devices are proliferating like never before),
and _that_ doesn't scale at all.
-- Horst von Brand vonbrand@sleipnir.valparaiso.cl Casilla 9G, Vin~a del Mar, Chile +56 32 672616- 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/
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