Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1752394Ab2BZRke (ORCPT ); Sun, 26 Feb 2012 12:40:34 -0500 Received: from out5-smtp.messagingengine.com ([66.111.4.29]:52883 "EHLO out5-smtp.messagingengine.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751838Ab2BZRkd (ORCPT ); Sun, 26 Feb 2012 12:40:33 -0500 X-Sasl-enc: JnGMML6146jh6tnTfuIAs+e1gTLlYqcphtY3M4CkEKc2 1330278032 Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2012 09:40:22 -0800 From: Greg KH To: Jidong Xiao Cc: Kernel development list Subject: Re: Can we move device drivers into user-space? Message-ID: <20120226174022.GB3531@kroah.com> References: <20120224153811.GA16535@kroah.com> <20120224165448.GA8751@kroah.com> <20120225205540.GA29303@kroah.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 3121 Lines: 63 On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 06:43:58PM -0500, Jidong Xiao wrote: > On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 3:55 PM, Greg KH wrote: > > On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 02:23:07PM -0500, Jidong Xiao wrote: > >> Hi, Greg, > >> > >> These two studies support my point. If the first one is too old, then > >> the second one should be more convincing. To save your time, you can > >> take a look at their conclusion first. > >> > >> An Empirical Study of Operating Systems Errors > >> http://www.stanford.edu/~engler/metrics-sosp-01.pdf > >> > >> Faults in Linux: Ten Years Later > >> http://pagesperso-systeme.lip6.fr/Suman.Saha/src/asplos11.pdf > > > > This second paper proves my point, it's funny that you tried to use it > > to prove yours, you obviously must not have read the conclusion... > > > > Anyway, any paper that goes "look at all of these problems in the code!" > > and isn't instantly followed by patches fixing ALL of those problems by > > the authors of the paper, should be ignored as a troll masquerading as a > > "study". > > > My point was "a significant portion of kernel crash incidents are due > to bugs in drivers". You said no. I did *not* say bugs in device > drivers are the dominant factor of kernel crashes/faults. So at least > my point matches with the conclusion of the second paper. You can > certainly say these academic studies are meaningless because they are > not telling the whole story, but you can not deny the fact that > because of the large code base, it is the almost impossible to > eliminate all the bugs/problems from device drivers. That's why people > are doing research to mitigate this problem, even though moving device > drivers to user space may not be a good idea, or it is unrealistic in > Linux, those researchers as well as their results deserve more > respect. Everyone in the whole community, including kernel developers > and researchers, shares the same goal, namely, improving the kernel > code quality. I don't see much help from the majority of researchers toward actually helping change Linux for the better, their goals usually are just publishing a paper and then moving on. Yes, some stick around, and some people are working on making the intersection between researchers and real-life more condusive toward helping us out, but that is a hard task given that the goals of the two groups are usually totally different in the end. I suggest, if you have the time, to try to work with the researchers to resolve the problems that they find. They said that they found hundreds of problems. Why aren't those problems all now fixed? What kept them from getting fixed after they found them? Was it something that the community ignored, or did they not even try? Find out the root cause of that, and then, for their next paper, they might have something totally different to report... good luck, greg k-h -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/