On Tue, 13 Jun 2000, Pavel Machek wrote:
> Hi!
>
> > > Nice things about VSTa ukernel was that things were simple. Do you
> > > want to change your keymap? Just recompile keyboard driver, then
> > > killall keyboard; ./ikeyboard &
> > > ... and keymap is changed. Did your vfat driver crash? Never minds,
> > > you just loosed some of your fs's. Just reload the vfat driver.
> >
> > And, of course, that would work, because the vfat driver (being perfectly
> > written) doesn't trash the disks in question when it crashes, right?
>
> So what. You do reboot, fsck, and mount vfat. I do fsck and mount
> vfat. That's a lot faster.
A little bit faster, perhaps. Rebooting doesn't take very long.
> > Interesting example - except I've never seen X fail without taking the
> > machine with it anyway. In theory, if X fails, I should be able to kill it
> > off and access another VT to restart it; in practice, I can't do anything,
> > since X also controls the keyboard and mouse. Perhaps I could telnet in
> > and try to kill it, then try to find some way of resetting the keyboard
> > and mouse remotely over telnet - but rebooting is a lot easier...
>
> You lost mouse and keyboard. That's very different from loosing
> machine. At least you can schedule your downtime that way!
In a normal workstation, that is exactly equivalent to losing the machine!
Admittedly, if the machine is a network server, it will continue to
perform that function until a scheduled reboot.
One objection I have to the microkernel approach is the need to give
userspace programs hardware access. That opens up a whole new can of
worms; just saying "userspace things cannot touch hardware" is a lot
simpler.
Anyway, I think we all know that Linux isn't going to become another Hurd
any time soon, so there is little point debating it here.
James.
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jun 15 2000 - 21:00:27 EST