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Re: Re[2]: general protection: 4f00



On Thu, 20 Aug 1998, Evgeny Stambulchik wrote:

> Shlomi Fish <shlomif@vipe.technion.ac.il> wrote:
> 
> >  On Thu, 20 Aug 1998, Constantin Eizner wrote:
> >  
> >  > >From time ti time I get the following message and computer stop
> >  > responding.
> >  
> >  This is one of two things:
> >  1. a buffer overflow or something like that in squid, that had a deadly
> >  effect.
> 
> Are we talking about Windows or a real OS?! How can a buggy program make a
> bug-free kernel (running on a stable hardware) crash?!
>

If the program is ran as root it can crash the system in a thousand
different ways. (e.g: "rm -fr /"). Besides, every OS can have fatal buffer
overflows, including Linux. At least on an i386.

Maybe VMS or MVS or other real-time or mainframe OSes do something to
ensure this thing cannot happen. I'm not sure that Pentium processors
offer enough functionality to prevent this, or that Linux is designed with
this in mind. 

And then again: who said the Linux kernel (or the i386 hardware for that
matter) is bug-free. You can't tell if there's a bug until you find one...

	Shlomi Fish