Date: Thu, 13 Nov 1997 16:35:41 -0700 (MST) From: Nate Williams <nate@mt.sri.com> To: hackers@freebsd.org Cc: sef@kithrup.com, jkh@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Pentium lockup fix in FreeBSD Message-ID: <199711132335.QAA11405@rocky.mt.sri.com> In-Reply-To: <199711132030.MAA16638@kithrup.com> References: <Pine.BSF.3.96.971113111843.26396A-100000@spiv.fnal.gov> <Pine.BSF.3.96.971113130811.6998B-100000.kithrup.freebsd.hackers@phoenix.its.rpi.edu> <199711132030.MAA16638@kithrup.com>
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.. > I have been trying to get this working in FreeBSD since last night; right > now, I'm not sure why what is happening is happening. But I'm giving up -- > I've had it "explained" to me by Jordan that even if I got it working, it > would not be considered, because this is simply not anything that anyone > needs to worry about. I think we need to give Jordan a big noogey if he indeed said that. For many people with shell machines, running 'crashable' in unacceptable, and if many of the other shell-account OS's allow them to workaround this bug (albeit with a performance hit, however major or minor) then they'll simply switch. Plus, as you pointed out to me in private email, any programs running as root that are network accessible that have the possibility of executing instructions (over-writing boundaries, etc..) are possible targets. In short, running any sort of public system on a P5 chip w/out the workaround is simply trouble waiting to happen, and if *we* as FreeBSD don't provide a fix and others do, we're screwing our customers. > (And, yes, I find Jordan's attitude that nobody should care, since there are > other things that can be done to destroy a system, offensive. Just as > offensive as Intel's official suggestion that you can always reboot your > system.) I disagree with Jordan as well. The crack/hack has been posted too widely across the internet so much that even curious folks who normally wouldn't do malicious things will end up crashing computers 'just to see if it works'. How many developers wiped out our boxes out of curiousity sakes because we didn't believe it could actually kill it? Nate
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