*BSD News Article 99616


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From: adam@thelonious.new.ox.ac.uk (Adam Spiers)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,rec.games.computer.quake.misc
Subject: Re: Linux Quake under FreeBSD?  -Working, kinda (How good is SVGAlib support?)
Followup-To: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,rec.games.computer.quake.misc
Date: 14 Jul 1997 11:18:18 +0100
Organization: Not very much, unfortunately.
Lines: 22
Sender: Adam Spiers <adam.spiers@new.ox.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <5qcuda$dca@thelonious.new.ox.ac.uk>
References: <5q71m2$1tm$1@nntp2.ba.best.com> <5qbgba$oc1$2@nntp2.ba.best.com> <5qbii2$c3g@thelonious.new.ox.ac.uk> <5qbkhl$oc1$7@nntp2.ba.best.com>
Reply-To: adam.spiers@new.ox.ac.uk (Adam Spiers)
NNTP-Posting-Host: thelonious.new.ox.ac.uk
Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:44394 rec.games.computer.quake.misc:66915

In article <5qbkhl$oc1$7@nntp2.ba.best.com>, Zenin  <zenin@best.com> wrote:
> > Annoying ... yes maybe, and I can fully appreciate your security
> > concerns, but there's not much choice since it needs to write
> > directly to video memory.
> 
> I think this is probably my problem, along with Quake trying to
> get direct access to system memory (which as I under stand it is
> why it needs suid root to bypass the kernel).
> This bypassing of the kernel also creates the possibility of
> memory corruption and with it system crashes and disk
> corruption ala Win96/NT et al if Quake desides to have a fit.
> This would by itself of course, basicly remove any reason to
> run Unix at all and just boot NT... :(

Well it's not "bypassing" of the kernel, but you're right in
thinking that something that runs as root can effectively do
anything to the memory or disk.  However you are probably more
likely to be run over by a car than for this to happen.  In all
my experience with squake and qwcl (and that's a fair bit) the
very worst it will do is crash you back out to the console.  And
don't be silly --- it /certainly/ wouldn't be reason to remove
Unix and boot NT!  You get system crashes all the time with NT.