From: Paul Guyot (pguyot_at_kallisys.net)
Date: Tue Mar 09 2004 - 23:23:32 PST
À (At) 8:10 +0100 10/03/04, Robert Benschop écrivait (wrote) :
>On 9-mrt-04, at 17:02, Norman Palardy wrote:
>>> DCL-based applications are not run as root and therefore should not
>>> be able to panic MacOS X.
>> Neither is Word X but I've seen it do it
>
>Really? ;-)
I wouldn't seem to take Word X's defense, but a panic means that the
kernel crashed.
The kernel can only crash if there was a bug in the kernel (including
letting applications corrupting it) or if there was a bug in some
code loaded into the kernel. Theoretically, only programs run as root
can load code in the kernel (or corrupt it). If a program not running
as root can crash the kernel, then it's a bug in the kernel.
I know it was doable with earlier version of MacOS X. But in that
case there is a least a bug is on Apple side (there could be a bug on
Word side as well, i.e. the bug on Apple side may be triggered by
some undocumented or bad way to call some system function).
The joy of preemptive multithreading operating systems with protected
memory is that if it crashed, you can always say that it was the OS
vendor's fault. Alternatively, you can lose several hours of work in
Word or any other application because it crashed but you (normally)
do not have to wait 30 seconds for your machine to reboot, and that's
an extraordinary improvement, it gives you 30 more seconds to redo
that big work of yours.
Paul
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