[geeks] Prolog for network configuration

[David Cantrell]

On Thu, Aug 08, 2002 at 02:38:20PM -0400, Joshua D Boyd wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 08, 2002 at 06:18:08PM +0100, David Cantrell wrote:
> > Is there not a single standard malloc/free in whatever the Doze equivalent
> > of the standard C library is?  If people are writing their own malloc/free,
> > then I suggest that the problem lies with those developers and not with
> > Windows.
> It seems that there are a minimum of 2 Microsoft provided malloc free
> sets.  One for C and one used by new/delete (according to my memory of
> the article, which was in Windows Developer Magazine, the new/delete set
> were for some reason not built on top of the same malloc/free as the C
> one was).

That's dumb.

>           And then further, the malloc/frees used by Borland C++,
> mingw32, and cygwin are again all different.  So, a DLL needs to find
> out what the application is using and use it.  Otherwise, things are
> going to get seriously screwed up.

Errm, surely it would use whichever malloc/free the application was linked
against and which existed in its address space.  I know that DLLs get loaded
once and shared amongst many apps, but I thort that it would be mapped into
the application's address space whenever there was a context-switch to that
app.

> One could argue about the idiocy of the other compilers not just sharing
> MSs malloc/free, but I think that MS makes it extremely difficult for
> them to do so.

Bastards.  Even so, that DLLs can't easily figger out which one to use is a
bug in Windows AFAIC.

> > > And of course, I've always liked that NT had a fairly fine grained ACL
> > > system, for the FS at least.
> > I remember reading that it's similar to VMS in that regard.
> My understanding is that the ACL system applies to far more than just
> the FS, and that it is all based on what VMS did.  I've only been
> exposed to the FS though, and have yet to touch VMS.

Yes, it applies to all sorts of other areas.  I've done NT, haven't done
enough VMS.  I will when I get enough tuits to install it on my Vaxstation.

> > Things went wrong when:
> >   they didn't have a console, and
> >   they put graphics drivers in the kernel
> That second complaint didn't occur until version 4.0 BTW.

I know.  The consensus amongst NT admins is that 3.51 was far more stable.
That's certainly my experience.

> > That Doze programmers have this nasty habit of writing stuff that "needs"
> > to be run as root doesn't help either.  Even worse is the amount of stuff
> > that "needs" to run in kernel-space.
> What needs to run in root and kernel space?  I've never come across
> anything but installers that wouldn't run under non-administrator
> accounts.

Plenty of applications want to install their own little device drivers and
stuff whenever you run them (the drivers are only inserted into the kernel
when the app is running).  This means that the app has to run as root*, and
that parts of it run in kernel space.  As far as I could tell, most of
those drivers exist purely to enable them to ignore all those nasy ACLs :-)
Thankfully, it's some years since I had to use it, so the details have
faded from my brane.

>            And I wasn't aware that they had added still more to kernel
> space since the graphics moved there.  That would explain some things
> though.  

I was talking about applications, not the OS.

Changing the subject completely, why the buggery does OS X 10.1.5 not want
to let the display sleep when any Quicktime app - such as iTunes - is running?

* - or at least be setuid root**
** - or maybe there's a "fuck with kernel" option in the ACLs.  Eek!

-- 
David Cantrell    |    Reprobate    |    http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david

       The Americans will always do the right thing...
       after they've exhausted  all the alternatives.
                                  -- Winston Churchill