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Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2012 01:58:20 +0000 From: "Dr. David Alan Gilbert" <linux@...blig.org> To: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@...hat.com> Cc: Eduard - Gabriel Munteanu <eduard.munteanu@...ux360.ro>, Jidong Xiao <jidong.xiao@...il.com>, david@...g.hm, Cong Wang <xiyou.wangcong@...il.com>, Kernel development list <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org> Subject: Re: Can we move device drivers into user-space? * Mauro Carvalho Chehab (mchehab@...hat.com) wrote: > Em 25-02-2012 13:10, Eduard - Gabriel Munteanu escreveu: > > On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 04:21:09PM -0200, Mauro Carvalho Chehab wrote: > >> Moving a buggy driver to userspace won't fix the bug. You're just moving > >> it from one place to another place. Also, the code will likely require changes > >> to work on userspace, so, the chances are that you're actually introducing more > >> bugs. > > <snip> > >> That's said, there are much more eyes inspecting the kernel sources than on any > >> other userspace project. So, the risk of a bad code to be inserted unnoticed at > >> the Linux kernel is degrees of magnitude lower than on an userspace driver. > > > > Those much more eyes have already missed important bugs in the past. > > Yes, nobody is perfect. But the probability that something passes on a 4000+ people > review is lower than the probability of a bug on a piece of code where just one > or two people are looking on it. That there are 4000+ people reading a driver is a big assumption; for common drivers I'd agree - one problem though is there are a lot of drivers for obscure hardware or old/dead hardware/protocols that frankly near to nobody cares about. Very few people read those drivers; yet sometimes they get built and distributed and someone then finds that since no one has looked at them they're full of holes, and given a malicious USB device for example, you can suddenly create one of these devices that only 3 people have bothered to read the source to - 5 years ago. (The Econet security bug recently would be an example of that). There is a line which says that things that really aren't used just shouldn't be built; but then there are things that are only used by a few people, and then ones only used by a few organisations - and it gets very difficult to say at what point you say just turn it off. Dave -- -----Open up your eyes, open up your mind, open up your code ------- / Dr. David Alan Gilbert | Running GNU/Linux | Happy \ \ gro.gilbert @ treblig.org | | In Hex / \ _________________________|_____ http://www.treblig.org |_______/ -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@...r.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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