linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 1/2] VMware detection support for x86 and x86-64

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Message-Id: <1222381254.27056.194.camel@bodhitayantram.eng.vmware.com>
Date:	Thu, 25 Sep 2008 15:20:54 -0700
From:	Zachary Amsden <zach@...are.com>
To:	"H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@...or.com>
Cc:	Alok Kataria <akataria@...are.com>,
	Alok kataria <alokkataria1@...il.com>,
	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...e.hu>, Yan Li <elliot.li.tech@...il.com>,
	"linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org" <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	"joerg.roedel@....com" <joerg.roedel@....com>,
	"rjmaomao@...il.com" <rjmaomao@...il.com>,
	Yinghai Lu <yhlu.kernel@...il.com>,
	Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>,
	Daniel Hecht <dhecht@...are.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/2] VMware detection support for x86 and x86-64

On Thu, 2008-09-25 at 14:59 -0700, H. Peter Anvin wrote:

> However, it is the particular use of this for detection use that is
> utterly damning.  Using random I/O port probes for hardware detect
> should have disappeared in the early 1990's, and it's really disturbing
> that virtualization vendors -- not just VMWare -- are, in effect,
> re-making all the mistakes hardware vendors did in the 1980's.

It's not disturbing, it's expected.  Re-using old broken solutions happens all the time, they can be perfectly valid in some contexts.  The problem is that they tend to live on and evolve into a larger context where they break again.  Surely we can do better, but how to do that isn't always clear-cut.  DMI is a pretty good standard for this, but it still doesn't solve the problem in all contexts (userspace apps).

Zach

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