Re: [patch] tls-2.5.30-A1

[Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>]

On Wed, 2002-08-07 at 19:33, Linus Torvalds wrote:
>  - keep the TLS entries contiguous, and make sure that segment 0040 (ie
>    GDT entry #8) is available to a TLS entry, since if I remember
>    correctly, that one is also magical for old Windows binaries for all
>    the wrong reasons (ie it was some system data area in DOS and in 
>    Windows 3.1)

Lots of BIOSes (a million monkeys bashing on typewriters will write
something that passes some BIOS vendor QA in about 2 seconds) illegally
assume that 0040: points at the BIOS data segment 0040 when making APM32
calls. Sufficient that Windows makea it so and its never going to get
corrected.

> Then, for double extra bonus points somebody should look into whether
> those damn PnP BIOS segments could be simply made to be TLS segments
> during module init. I don't know if that PnP stuff is required later or
> not.

PnPBIOS has to rewrite segments as it goes for data passing. It doesnt
really matter where you stuff them though.