Wine kernel acceleration module?

Francois Gouget fgouget at free.fr
Sun Jan 19 03:37:44 CST 2003


On Sun, 19 Jan 2003, Shachar Shemesh wrote:

> Francois Gouget wrote:
>
> >Anyway, when compared to the shared memory server it seems to me that
> >the main advantage of a kernel module is stability. It is my
> >understanding (correct me if I'm wrong) that with the shared memory
> >approach, a buggy (or malicious) Wine/Winelib application could crash
> >all other Wine/Winelib applications using that server (at least only one
> >user would be affected).
> >
> Whereas with the kernel module, it could panic the entire machine. Yepee!!

But of course that's true only if the kernel module has a bug.
With the shared memory server any Windows application can crash all the
others (but not the machine).

To sum up, here's a table of what crashes based on the source of the
bug:

                  | Current       | Kernel         | Shm
------------------+---------------+----------------+--------------------
Bug in the server | Wine          | Machine        | Wine
------------------+---------------+----------------+--------------------
Bug in a Windows  | Process       | Process        | Wine
application       |               |                |


So you're better of with the kernel module if the bug is in the
application, and you're better of with shm if the bug is in the server.
Then it's a matter of which one is more likely. It's also a good
argument for having the option to keep using the current server so that
you can make the trade-off between speed and stability yourself.


-- 
Francois Gouget         fgouget at free.fr        http://fgouget.free.fr/
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