site_archiver@lists.apple.com Delivered-To: darwin-kernel@lists.apple.com On Nov 22, 2006, at 3:54 AM, Stephane wrote: _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Darwin-kernel mailing list (Darwin-kernel@lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/darwin-kernel/site_archiver%40lists.a... This email sent to site_archiver@lists.apple.com The kernel is sort of one big program in a single address space. If some function "A" corrupted a memory structure of another function "B", most likely "B" would cause the kernel to crash. Indeed, if memory structure "B" suddenly started pointing into structure "C" because of "A's" mistake, it would be "C" that crashed, etc. Memory protection exists between the kernel and user processes (and between user processes), but not between various regions of the kernel itself. If you ever did programming on OS 9 and earlier you probably experienced lots of random system crashes caused by wayward applications, extensions, etc. since the whole world was one giant address space. - can you kernel panic outside your own kernel extension if you're doing bad things with memory (till now I've always KPed in my code)? smime.p7s