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Date: Tue, 24 Sep 2002 03:01:14 -0400
From: Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@pobox.com>
Organization: MandrakeSoft
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To: "Eric W. Biederman" <ebiederm@xmission.com>
CC: "Gustafson, Geoffrey R" <geoffrey.r.gustafson@intel.com>,
       "'Andy Pfiffer'" <andyp@osdl.org>, cgl_discussion@osdl.org,
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Subject: Re: [Hardeneddrivers-discuss] RE: [cgl_discussion] Some Initial Comments
 on DDH-Spec-0.5h.pdf
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Eric W. Biederman wrote:
> Oh, and don't forget that the hardware specification that drivers are
> written to, many times are not generally available greatly reducing 
> the pool of capable people who have the opportunity to review the and
> debug the drivers.  I would make it a requirement for a hardened
> driver that both the code and the hardware documentation be publicly
> available so the code can easily be reviewed by as many people as wish
> to.


This is a good point that bears highlighting.  Donald Becker's [and thus 
the kernel's] eepro100.c had certain bugs for years, simply because 
access to Intel E100 hardware docs was damn near impossible to obtain.

I don't see driver hardening being very feasible on such drivers, where 
the vendor refuses to allow kernel engineers access needed to get their 
hardware working and stable.  [why vendors want crappy Linux support, 
I'll never know]

	Jeff


P.S.  In all fairness, Intel is doing a really good job maintaining the 
e100 and e1000 drivers nowadays, and e100 docs should be public very 
soon.  [e1000 docs? who knows...]