[vortex] Tyan Thunder K7 S2462 Dual 3c59x

[Donald Becker]

On Wed, 16 Jan 2002, Bogdan Costescu wrote:

> 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 !

Don't go down that path -- there are even worse things that can be done.

> 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...

Don't be too concerned.

I say the same thing about always removing/disabling the station address
override, but some of the diagnostic programs currently have that code
enabled in the public version.  This is directly related: most
diagnostics that implement '-E' emergency overwrite, insist that you
provide a new station address with '-H' at the same time.

Here is the code from the diag skeleton:

if (emergency_rewrite  &&  ! set_hwaddr)
	printf("*** Emergency EEPROM rewrite is only valid when you also "
		   "specify a new\n*** station address with -H <xx:xx:...>\n");

Donald Becker				becker@scyld.com
Scyld Computing Corporation		http://www.scyld.com
410 Severn Ave. Suite 210		Second Generation Beowulf Clusters
Annapolis MD 21403			410-990-9993