@whose

One common problem I think is really common that no one is taking about is programs that are not designed to be thread safe at all, I think there is general a lack of understanding between developers about how to make programs thread safe, and what it means.

Software might work most of the time work, but under rear condition might fail, due to this kind of issue.

I think current memory protection can detect most problems but it can't detect if the programmer made the software thread safe.

Anyway there is lot things programmer need to understand, to make complex program, but less complex programs that don't need to be super fast, can be written in almost anything.

Quote:

as even software developers are just humans

Are you shore the universe is really big

Quote:

A code review is good, but I meant "audit". Avoid known pitfalls by checklists, intense testing by weird input and how this affects the output etc. If all developers would really do this, overall code quality would be much better.

Well a code review should be done by some one else, then one who wrote the code, this way developers who wrote the code and developer who reviews the code can learn some thing.

But anyway many Amiga developers do not work in teams.

User feedback and a stack trace is maybe more important to a developer, and its some time hard to know what can go wrong.

Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 03-May-2014 at 09:11 PM.
Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 03-May-2014 at 09:10 PM.
Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 03-May-2014 at 08:50 PM.

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Quote:

Full MP is useful for systems that need to run although there is faulty software in memory trying to run havoc. It´s useful for systems that have to stand a demand for availability. This is, servers.

I'm happy I dont have to restart my phone each time a faulty app crashes... Each OS should have memory protection today. It's not only about servers.

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@Leo

Some thing like C# might solve a lot of problems. If it existed for AmigaOS.
Full memory protection is just one way to solve a problem.

Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 03-May-2014 at 09:24 PM.
Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 03-May-2014 at 09:24 PM.

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@Leo

It's not like MP is waterproof though. I'm running Linux on my laptop and it has MP and sometimes when a faulty app crashes, I still have to reboot.

_________________
Proud user of AmigaOS 4.1 on an AmigaONE 500. This is the first Amiga I've ever had so I don't know all the ins and outs of AmigaOS yet, so I'm sorry if I'm asking noob questions and stuff.

@Vistaus: it's not indeed. But it's a must. The fact the Amiga doesn't have it doesn't change that. Although you of course sometimes (but it's rare) still have to reboot in some cases (low level stuff crashing like drivers,..), it's a must for developers and users. And for the Amiga too...

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@Leo

I believe that for developers review/audit is a must. Crashing applications must not happen, with or without MP.

I´m developer AND user and I never needed MP such bad. It´s nice to save my work if a faulty program brings the OS to its knees, but I don´t need this feature. As today´s systems are anything but safe, I try new applications on a clean system first (no background work. I can work on one thing at a time only anyways ).

Oh, and I need to restart my cell phone from time to time for no apparent reason, although it has full MP... I think the positive effects of full MP are overrated.

As for the programming languages, I don´t think that Python is a good choice for beginners (I even don´t believe that it is a good choice at all). I also don´t believe in developers coming from another platform needing a "standard" programming language. I think that, if people (developers) want to spend some time with Amiga, they wanna do it because it´s different.

@whose

Quote:

Oh, and I need to restart my cell phone from time to time for no apparent reason, although it has full MP... I think the positive effects of full MP are overrated.

With OS4.1 you have to do this nearly every time some application crashes including new modern software like timberwolf. Windows and Linux can run for months with heavy use without requiring a reboot at all. This is completely impossible without MP.

@Tomas

True, but some people install their computers full of sh*t, and they need to restard computer more often. Windows machines are notorious, because there is 100x more that kind of software for windows, than Linux.

@Tomas

Quote:

With OS4.1 you have to do this nearly every time some application crashes including new modern software like timberwolf. Windows and Linux can run for months with heavy use without requiring a reboot at all. This is completely impossible without MP.

this way I don't use timberwolf, actually I have stoped using FireFox (nightly) on my PC as well, they never got around to get Flash running perfect, I'm now using chrome.

Anyway the last Oddissy (MUI OWB) web browser run hell a lot smother on my computer then the old one, also NetSurf is getting better every version so there is really no point in using Timberwolf atm, when HJF makes a new version I try it, but if its not any faster then the old one or is just as buggy it want be used.

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@NutsAboutAmiga
OWB did the same thing for me when it crashed. Sometimes you got a grim reaper that let you ignore the error but even clicking that would often crash the system or make it unstable in some ways. On windows and linux with proper MP this just does not happen and in 99% of the cases it only takes down the software that caused the crash.
I am sure OBW has improved since I used it though but still if it somehow crashed there is a very good chance it would take the OS with it.

Windows was known for being unstable in the past, but now for most part it is rock solid. If it crashes it is nearly always either due to bad drivers, hardware problems or malware.

@Tomas

> Windows and Linux can run for months with heavy use without requiring a reboot at all.

Depends greatly on how they are used.
At work windows weekly reboots are mandatory because of security updates.
Also if not rebooted weekly you will start to see more and more SW crashes and things simply not working or things getting insanely slow (like notepad opening taking 20 seconds).
Using windows hibernate/sleep features are still the only features that pretty quickly end up requiring hard reset as the display(driver) becomes corrupted.

Linux behaves better in above situations. (even if not totally immune... and except in sleep/hibernate things)

>This is completely impossible without MP.

Without MP one needs to know exactly what SW is bullet proof.
A lot of systems in the world still run without memory protection when they run only a few well tested SW apps.

I would love to have MP option when booting to AOS/MOS/AROS for some use cases.

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@KimmoK

Quote:

KimmoK wrote: @Tomas > Windows and Linux can run for months with heavy use without requiring a reboot at all. Depends greatly on how they are used. At work windows weekly reboots are mandatory because of security updates. Also if not rebooted weekly you will start to see more and more SW crashes and things simply not working or things getting insanely slow (like notepad opening taking 20 seconds).

Have not happened to me since Windows XP. The cause then was a bad driver.

Quote:

Using windows hibernate/sleep features are still the only features that pretty quickly end up requiring hard reset as the display(driver) becomes corrupted.

That have never happened for me while using at least 5 different computers, with different processors from Intel and AMD, with different graphics chips from Intel, Nvidia, AMD and even
Imagination.

Quote:

Linux behaves better in above situations. (even if not totally immune... and except in sleep/hibernate things) >This is completely impossible without MP. Without MP one needs to know exactly what SW is bullet proof. A lot of systems in the world still run without memory protection when they run only a few well tested SW apps.

The problem is that no software is bullet proof. Not even the software developed using the best practices for super-reliable software creates entirely bug free code.

Quote:

I would love to have MP option when booting to AOS/MOS/AROS for some use cases.

Too bad it is impossible.

@megol

>Have not happened to me since Windows XP. The cause then was a bad driver.

My experience is with HP and Acer.
Perhaps both ship with bad drivers then (for XP and for Win7).
(I do not have time to do my own, I need tools that work)

>>Using windows hibernate/sleep features are still the only features that pretty quickly end up requiring hard reset as the display(driver) becomes corrupted.
>That have never happened for me while using at least 5 different computers, with different processors from Intel and AMD, with different graphics chips from Intel, Nvidia, AMD and even
>Imagination.

Happened to me last week with this HP and Win7.
Display was corrupted untill I rebooted.
Week before that win7 wanted to use landscape on my portrait display. Again, reboot fixed.

>Not even the software developed using the best practices for super-reliable software creates entirely bug free code.

True. But I have seen even Amiga (1.3) system to run ~1 year without reboot.

From professional side:
10+ years ago it was great advantage vs competitors to have a system that ran months without reboots, without MP. I believe modern versions of same products need to reboot almost every night to be on the safer side (not sure if they managed to enable MP at some point (in 1210 there was a study on it, not sure how it then went), but 10 years ago MP just killed the SW performance (in telecom applications)).

>>I would love to have MP option when booting to AOS/MOS/AROS for some use cases.
>Too bad it is impossible.

LOL!

M$ did it, Apple did it, but Amiga can not?
Next you say Atari TOS is best?

Last edited by KimmoK on 05-May-2014 at 11:33 AM.
Last edited by KimmoK on 05-May-2014 at 11:22 AM.

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@KimmoK

Apple could not do it. They tried but failed.

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@itix

But also Apple today has memory protected systems.


Even if we can not afford to sandbox the legacy side, it would anyway be better to build new system with MP enabled boot -option rather than remain with old 32bit nonMP API forever.
(for some days using NG SW with MP is enough, for legacy playground I do not mind rebooting to it or even having another HW for it)

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@KimmoK

Quote:

KimmoK wrote: @megol >>I would love to have MP option when booting to AOS/MOS/AROS for some use cases. >Too bad it is impossible. LOL! M$ did it, Apple did it, but Amiga can not? Next you say Atari TOS is best?

That's right, it's not possible. At least not if you want to retain compatibility with legacy software. Amiga is a single CPU single threaded system with a unified open for everyone 31 bit memory system, it's as simple as that. There are tons and tons of Amiga applications that simply takes this for granted and rely on this to be true in the most unpredictable ways. You can't have both single CPU and SMP at the same time, you can't have open memory and protected memory at the same time, you can't have 31 bit and 64 bit at the same time. New apps could perhaps be made to handle some of it but since it breaks the Amiga prerequisites there is no telling in how all those legacy apps will behave. The only pure and clean way to do what you are talking about, is to sandbox the entire legacy environment and start over with a fresh start. It could become something "Amiga like" in spirit and perhaps in branding, but technically it won't be the Amiga that Amigans are interested in, it will be something else but perhaps Amiga like. If that's what you want, then a little endian x86 64-bit multithreaded SMP system with full memory protection etc could be done fairly quick and easy.

@KimmoK

Quote:

KimmoK wrote: @megol >Have not happened to me since Windows XP. The cause then was a bad driver. My experience is with HP and Acer. Perhaps both ship with bad drivers then (for XP and for Win7). (I do not have time to do my own, I need tools that work) >>Using windows hibernate/sleep features are still the only features that pretty quickly end up requiring hard reset as the display(driver) becomes corrupted. >That have never happened for me while using at least 5 different computers, with different processors from Intel and AMD, with different graphics chips from Intel, Nvidia, AMD and even >Imagination. Happened to me last week with this HP and Win7. Display was corrupted untill I rebooted. Week before that win7 wanted to use landscape on my portrait display. Again, reboot fixed. >Not even the software developed using the best practices for super-reliable software creates entirely bug free code. True. But I have seen even Amiga (1.3) system to run ~1 year without reboot. From professional side: 10+ years ago it was great advantage vs competitors to have a system that ran months without reboots, without MP. I believe modern versions of same products need to reboot almost every night to be on the safer side (not sure if they managed to enable MP at some point (in 1210 there was a study on it, not sure how it then went), but 10 years ago MP just killed the SW performance (in telecom applications)).

Well I don't know of such systems but doubt greatly that 2004 hardware would have any significant overhead from using memory protection/virtual memory (those two are linked in most current architectures) but I know that for a 386 system one could expect up to 15% performance hit when enabling virtual memory. That was over two decades ago, close to three in fact.

There have been some products that have been designed for extreme scalability that doesn't use hardware for memory protection choosing instead to use secure languages. In most cases using a secure programming language have higher overheads than using hardware support, it can pay off in cases where each execution thread is smaller than the smallest hardware supported virtual memory page as one can pack more threads into existing memory.

Quote:

>>I would love to have MP option when booting to AOS/MOS/AROS for some use cases. >Too bad it is impossible. LOL! M$ did it, Apple did it, but Amiga can not? Next you say Atari TOS is best?

Microsoft and Apple haven't, don't know what you mean by listing them? They both have "new" operating systems with memory protection but the legacy support used sandboxing.
As for Atari TOS I don't understand your reference at all, I've never talked about TOS which is a 68k MSDOS clone as far as I know - which also is impossible to make protected.

@KimmoK

Copland

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@itix

Just reading that article has increased my anxiety levels - I pity anyone who worked in that nightmare scenario.

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@TRIPOS
"The only pure and clean way to do what you are talking about, is to sandbox the entire legacy environment and start over with a fresh start. It could become something "Amiga like" in spirit and perhaps in branding, "

Not all would be lost, even if a lot would be.

"but technically it won't be the Amiga that Amigans are interested in,"

I do not understand why it would not be.
I do not need my AmigaOS5.0 to run all of AOS4.0 apps, it's ok if good amount can be compiled to it.
And if better than UAE sandbox is out of reach, so be it.

" it will be something else but perhaps Amiga like."

Different people have different view to what they consider Amiga.
To me it's more about system simplicity and speed than the programming api etc.

"If that's what you want, then a little endian x86 64-bit multithreaded SMP system with full memory protection etc could be done fairly quick and easy."

Yes, that is what I want. But PPC is ok for me.
(alternatively custom x86, as I can not see any future in off the self x86 PC as reliable base for our platform)

@megol

"Microsoft and Apple haven't, don't know what you mean by listing them? They both have "new" operating systems with memory protection but the legacy support used sandboxing."

And that is possible also for AOS-NG, MOS-NG and AROS-NG.

I would like to see backwards incompatible NG system today (with or without legacy 68k+PPC support) rather than frankenmonster AOS4.9 in 2019.

It really pisses me off that 90% of OS teams development time goes with legacy stuff without the true NG AmigalikeOSs becoming any closer.

(I really hope MOS team and AOS team have something prepared behind the closed doors as I'm afraid the sun explodes before AROS get's "NG" done )

About the telecom example I mentioned...
When the MP was found impossible (2002-2004) it was with telecom protocol SW running on a few hundred mhz PPC405 and PPC440. It was clear that the protocol SW latencies did not allow MP. Most likely, in current implementations, that SW part runs in kernel space on their modern multicore MIPS based HW running RT Linux.

@itix

So MOS team has done their homework!
Looking forward ...

Last edited by KimmoK on 06-May-2014 at 09:53 AM.
Last edited by KimmoK on 05-May-2014 at 03:37 PM.
Last edited by KimmoK on 05-May-2014 at 03:36 PM.

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// For freedom, for honor, for AMIGA
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