Re: So many cookies

[Chris Herborth <herborth@53iss6.waterloo.NCR.COM>]

What you wrote:
> So, if Supexec() is to become root-only, how do you now find out whether
> you're running under MiNT?  I guess you try to Supexec() first, and look
> for the cookie, and if Supexec() doesn't work, assume you're running
> under a secure MiNT.  Or maybe the kernel should place some value into
> the process's basepage to tell it that it should expect to be unable to
> switch to supervisor mode...  Alternatively, there was the suggestion
> some time ago of a new executable binary type, which would support TOS-
> incompatible features...
> 
> This looks to me as if it could be a problem.
 
If you're using the MiNTlibs, extern long __mint will be set to the
MiNT version (ex, 0x0000010a for MiNT 1.10) if MiNT is present, 0 otherwise.

The details of how MiNTlibs figures this out are, of course, where the
difficulty will occur, but from a program's point of view, there's no
problem.  The libs just have to be changed.

> compatibility.  I suppose the unix domain would be the 'ultimate' in
> this: a unix-compatible environment, running concurrently with a TOS-
> compatible environment.  (Btw, isn't this very similar to what Microsoft
> has done with Windows NT?)

Not really.  Both NT and OS/2 run their DOS/Windows as a process within
the native NT or OS/2 environment... ie, it's not really a separate
environment, it's just a program.  NT's "POSIX" sub-system probably works
the same way.

-- 
----------========================_   /\ ============================----------
Chris Herborth                    \`o.0'       herborth@53iss6.Waterloo.NCR.COM
Information Products Developer    =(___)=
AT&T Global Information Solutions    U