Re: rtlinux and X, possible kernel problems ?

MOLNAR Ingo (mingo@chiara.csoma.elte.hu)
Thu, 12 Feb 1998 22:30:32 +0100 (CET)


On Thu, 12 Feb 1998, Peter T. Waltenberg wrote:

> This is a followup of a post to the rt-linux mailing list. Daniele
> Lugli first spotted a problem with interupt handling in RT tasks under X
> and did some digging. The X server is apparently doing global cli/sti's.

certain (broken) videocards need to be probed very conservatively,
otherwise the hw might lock up (and/or get damaged). It _has_ to be done
that way.

i suppose there are other pieces of software too that use iopl(3) to do
cli/sti, i think U-Net?

i think RTLinux should disallow iopl(3) and ioperm(), user-code allowed to
manipulate hardware can lead to other, less obvious latency
problems/hw lockups (scanpci comes to mind, etc.).

alternatively, a /proc/sys/kernel/user-io control can be provided too,
thus the box can be configured through X, but can be made safe when it
goes mission-critical...

-- mingo

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