Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: memory protection

Author: David Rasmussen

Date: 08:28:16 01/10/02

Go up one level in this thread


On January 10, 2002 at 11:19:52, David Hanley wrote:

>Sorry, but that's not really true.  The OS and the processor are both
>responsible for memory protection.  Saying all os's are the same that run on the
>same processor is like saying all people are equally strong because we are all
>made of the same things.  Obviously not true.
>

Eh.. no.

>Windows now usually catches pointer-out-of-bounds errors, but in windows, you do
>get writable access to small shared areas with the kernel.  In linux, you don't.
> Also, in windows, you can leak references to DLL's which then get held in RAM.

Sure, but he was asking if one (user-level, I assume) program can corrupt the
memory of another such program. And it can't if an OS uses the protection
facilities of the processor, which Windows does. That being said, the kernel
design of Windows is different from that of Linux in some respects, as you point
out. That makes the Windows kernel more vulnerable in some ways.

>You can also screw up shared in-process DLL's.  Generally, those sorts of things
>are much harder in linux, or not possible.
>

Linux are vulnerable in other aspects. In practice, I experience at least at
many crashes in Linux as I do in Windows. I like both OS'es for different
reasons, but Linux certainly isn't more stable thatn Windows 2000, in my
experience, whether I run user level programs, or server software.

>I dual-boot NT and linux, and linux has crashed once on me, but i have to
>restart windows every few days or else it will crash for sure ( it does crash if
>i forget to reboot ).
>
>dave

What version of NT? 3.x and 4.0 are crap. Windows 2000 (NT 5.0) is at least as
stable as Linux in my experience. And I run a _lot_ of software, both userlevel
and server software, on both.

/David



This page took 0 seconds to execute

Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700

Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.