Hi! > > I think the biggest areas of practical concern would be: > > > > - Can this mechanism ever, under any circumstance corrupt any real > > data, destroy the MBR or do other nasties. Can you think of any > > additional fail-safe measures where you could _further robustify > > the BIOS calls_ to make sure it can never go to the wrong > > sector(s)? I really do not want to think of trusting a BIOS to > > _write to my disk_. > > It's quite unlikely but I wouldn't say it's completely impossible. > It's common for ATA controllers to have dual modes of operation - the > old IDE compatible interface by emulation which is used by BIOS and > older operating systems and newer interface (ahci) to be used by > modern OS. Some need to be explicitly switched and some just need to > be accessed carefully. If the controller is accessed by bIOS after > switched to ahci or commands are in progress via ahci, anything can > happen. Could we read the log area, first, verify it contains signature, write it back? Pavel -- (english) http://www.livejournal.com/~pavelmachek (cesky, pictures) http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~pavel/picture/horses/blog.html -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-ide" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
