Re: Announce: ndiswrapper

[Maciej Zenczykowski]

> Pontus Fuchs wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > Since some vendors refuses to release specs or even a binary
> > Linux-driver for their WLAN cards I desided to try to solve it myself by
> > making a kernel module that can load Ndis (windows network driver API)
> > drivers. I'm not trying to implement all of the Ndis API but rather
> > implement the functions needed to get these unsupported cards working.
> 
> Sounds like a plan!

Definetely agree - question though, are you loading these drivers into 
ring 0 (kernel space)?  As far as I know linux only supports ring 0 
(kernel) and 3 (userspace).  However this would seem to be the perfect 
place to load the binary modules in ring 1 (or even userspace if that was 
possible...).  I can't say I trust any binary only and/or windows driver 
to not make a mess of my kernel :)  actually the driver may actually be 
errorless - it's just designed for a different operating system and thus 
some unexplainable misshaps could easily happen...

While we're at it, loading binary only modules into ring 1 would probably 
also be a good idea for the NV module et al.  Although I have no idea how 
hard it would be to make ring 1 function (and whether there actually is 
any point to doing it in ring 1 instead of ring 3 with iopl/ioperm anyway) 
and how big the performance penalty for non-ring 0 would be...

Cheers,
MaZe.


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