On Saturday 19 March 2005 00:07, Daniel Phillips wrote:
> On Friday 18 March 2005 14:29, I wrote:
> > As Timothy pointed out and I should have known, currently there is no
> > window-level security for X programs.  So we just mmap video memory,
> > provide a way of flushing the render pipeline, and we're done.
> >
> > We should however, keep the window security question alive as a
> > background project.  To me, it looks like a bleeding wound in X.  Doing
> > something about it would be a worthwhile long term project.
> 
> OK, I talked this over with some folks here and we noticed that there is a 
> much easier problem to tackle with a more clearcut benefit.  Right now, a 
> single buggy or malicious unprivileged 3D program can lock up your whole 
> desktop if it fails to release the hardware lock, and there is not a lot 
> you can do about it other than restarting X.  This we can fix, by moving 
> the synchronization into the kernel as I described earlier, and I think we 
> can even do it within the current DRI framework.  We can fix this because 
> of our complete reliance on the indirect DMA command interface for 
hardware 
> access.  So I think we ought to plan on this right from the beginning.

First of all, this is not entirely correct: You can kill the offending 
application (if you're able to find out which it is), this will also 
release the lock.

Second, when I first got involved in R300-related experimentation, I wrote a 
DRM watchdog timer patch that basically killed any (non-root) process that 
kept the hardware lock for too long (where "too long" is defined as some 
constant wallclock time). This still has some problems, but it is a lot 
simpler than what I think you're suggesting (perhaps you might want to 
clarify).

Third, I don't think we rely on indirect DMA completely, and even if we did, 
it wouldn't have a significant effect on the nature of this and related 
problems.

Having said that, I am definitely interested in looking at those DRM-related 
problems, but *after* we have a working driver.

cu,
Nicolai

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