[vortex] Tyan Thunder K7 S2462 Dual 3c59x

[Bogdan Costescu]

On Tue, 15 Jan 2002, Donald Becker wrote:

> > I actually wonder what would happen if I would put a DEC-based card PCI ID 
> > in this EPROM. Would the tulip driver detect it and try to drive it ?
> Yup.  And that would be the proper action.

Heh, a new kind of DoS (of whatever this might be called): a script-kiddie 
gets root on a Linux box with such a card and uses the proper tool to 
modify the PCI ID. Neither the existing driver on the system nor a new one 
from a new installation of the system would be able to drive the card... 
and the sysadmin would go mad !

> Ohhh, watch out for this.  Most *-diag programs implement but disable
> the -E option to do an emergency reload.  When I enable it, people use
> it without understanding the implications, and usually break their NICs. 

Well, there are some (very few) situations when such a thing is needed. I 
haven't seen it in vortex-diag, so that's why I did it. I'll remove it 
from the site now and make it appear again when I think that it's actually 
needed... Anyway, that was just a quick-and-dirty solution. As vortex-diag 
has to be run as root, care must be taken to prevent symlink problems - I 
have taken none; return values from file functions should be checked - I 
didn't and so on.
I have no intention to keep a separate version of vortex-diag, just to be 
able to let people use these "dangerous" functions when they actually need 
them.

-- 
Bogdan Costescu

IWR - Interdisziplinaeres Zentrum fuer Wissenschaftliches Rechnen
Universitaet Heidelberg, INF 368, D-69120 Heidelberg, GERMANY
Telephone: +49 6221 54 8869, Telefax: +49 6221 54 8868
E-mail: Bogdan.Costescu@IWR.Uni-Heidelberg.De