[Info-vax] Assembly languages

[VAXman- at SendSpamHere.ORG]

In article <t318l3$92b$3 at dont-email.me>, Simon Clubley <clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> writes:
>On 2022-04-10, Richard Maher <maher_rjSPAMLESS at hotmail.com> wrote:
>> On 10/04/2022 10:44 pm, Hein RMS van den Heuvel wrote:
>>> On Saturday, April 9, 2022 at 2:51:56 PM UTC-4, Simon Clubley wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> And with that experience, I believe the time for assembly language
>>>> is well and truly past, unless it's needed for something specific
>>>> such as some inline assembly fragment to access a CPU-specific
>>>> register (for example), or really low-level stuff such as the
>>>> initial interrupt
>>> 
>>> I agree for production use, but disagree as a general rule notably
>>> for OpenVMS. It's the only 'language' every single OpenVMS system has
>>> available. I have a dozen or so small tools I needed over the years. 
>>> Silly things like a 'strings' program, a patch tool for RMS indexed
>>> files, and more. Using Macro I can provide them as text to customers
>>> who would not readily accept binaries.
>>> 
>>> Hein.
>>
>>   Remember when inner-mode code and protected sub-systems were essential.
>>
>> Happy days.
>
>From a _security_ point of view, VMS has only ever had one inner mode,
>just like other operating systems.
>
>Once you are in one of the hardware inner modes, you can get to the
>others without any additional privileges required on the part of the
>account doing it.

If that were true, then Joe Noprivuser could go from user mode to kernel mode
through a series of steps -- user->supervisor then supervisor->executive then
executive->kernel.

-- 
VAXman- A Bored Certified VMS Kernel Mode Hacker    VAXman(at)TMESIS(dot)ORG

I speak to machines with the voice of humanity.