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posted by on Thursday April 20 2017, @10:46AM   Printer-friendly
from the breaking-news dept.

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

Or 2018 if you're brave. For now, we have a boot screen!

Story's a bit dated but being as they're in no rush, I don't see any need for us to be either. So, you lot think we'll ever actually get to play with a VMS box on cheap hardware or is this going to be another DNF situation?

Source: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/10/13/openvms_moves_slowly_towards_x86/

Previous coverage:
OpenVMS Not Yet Dead.


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by TheRaven on Thursday April 20 2017, @01:33PM (5 children)

    by TheRaven (270) on Thursday April 20 2017, @01:33PM (#496841) Journal
    Rings 1-2 didn't survive in x86-64. Ring -2 isn't accessible to anything other than the firmware. Ring -1 can be used, but relies on nested paging if you want to have separate memory regions available for the different rings, which incurs a fairly noticeable performance penalty.
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  • (Score: 2) by NCommander on Thursday April 20 2017, @10:09PM (4 children)

    by NCommander (2) Subscriber Badge <michael@casadevall.pro> on Thursday April 20 2017, @10:09PM (#497090) Homepage Journal

    Can you cite sources for ring 1-2 not being usable on x86_64? I googled for it but found nothing.

    Also, I used to develop firmware :)

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    Still always moving
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 21 2017, @09:07AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 21 2017, @09:07AM (#497312)

      I think parent is mistaken:
      https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch10.html#idm9820 [virtualbox.org]

      For guest code in ring 0, VirtualBox employs a nasty trick: it actually reconfigures the guest so that its ring-0 code is run in ring 1 instead (which is normally not used in x86 operating systems). As a result, when guest ring-0 code (actually running in ring 1) such as a guest device driver attempts to write to an I/O register or execute a privileged instruction, the VirtualBox hypervisor in "real" ring 0 can take over.

      • (Score: 2) by TheRaven on Friday April 21 2017, @01:53PM

        by TheRaven (270) on Friday April 21 2017, @01:53PM (#497395) Journal
        Xen does the same trick, but only on i386. It isn't possible for x86-64.
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    • (Score: 2) by TheRaven on Friday April 21 2017, @02:02PM (1 child)

      by TheRaven (270) on Friday April 21 2017, @02:02PM (#497399) Journal
      Intel Architecture Reference, Volume 3A, though it's not actually very explicit. Rings 1 and 2 are still technically there, but there's no mechanism for entering them when in IA32e mode, because the call gate mechanism depends on segments, which are gone in IA32e.
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