*BSD News Article 13684


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From: cgd@erewhon.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Chris G. Demetriou)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.bugs
Subject: Re: my bug list
Date: 30 Mar 93 02:13:41
Organization: Kernel Hackers 'r' Us
Lines: 41
Message-ID: <CGD.93Mar30021341@erewhon.CS.Berkeley.EDU>
References: <DERAADT.93Mar11154207@newt.fsa.ca> <1993Mar15.223046.10278@fcom.cc.utah.edu>
	<DERAADT.93Mar25200858@newt.fsa.ca>
	<1993Mar30.003656.2601@fcom.cc.utah.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: erewhon.cs.berkeley.edu
In-reply-to: terry@cs.weber.edu's message of Tue, 30 Mar 93 00:36:56 GMT

just a couple of questions...

In article <1993Mar30.003656.2601@fcom.cc.utah.edu> terry@cs.weber.edu (A Wizard of Earth C) writes:
>You can't do a device/slot reset on an ISA bus.  In order to cause a real
>reset, you have to drop out of protected mode and hit the keyboard soft
>reset code.  This is not necessarily possible on all ISA machines due to
>the way one has to drop out of protected mode generally causes a reset --
>and the BIOS is relied upon (incorrectly, for your machine) to issue a
>bus reset as part of this.

i don't understand this.  _what_ about dropping out of protected mode
causes a reset?  (that's what your statement says, unless i misread it...)

i've yet to understand why 386bsd doesn't use the standard
keyboard-controller method of resetting the CPU.


things like windows (obviously) can drop out of protected mode,
without causing a reset, and i think that it *IS* valid to be able to expect
386bsd to be able to do the same.   should be possible, at worst,
by making the physical and virtual mappings of some part of the kernel
match, being in that part, dropping out of protected mode, and then
immediately using the keyboard controller reset method.
this double mapping could take place right before reboot,
or could even be done (as a hack) for *everything* -- a process's
zero-page shouldn't be accessible to it anyway, and this would
be a reasonable thing to put it in, if necessary...


regardless of other points (i think that device shutdown routines
are a good idea), the keyboard controller method is IMO (i make no
claims of humility 8-) the correct way to reboot a PC, and causing
the CPU to fault itself it death isn't...



chris
--
Chris G. Demetriou                                    cgd@cs.berkeley.edu

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