RE: local APIC may cause XFree86 hang

[Linus Torvalds]

On Wed, 13 Nov 2002, Nakajima, Jun wrote:
> 
> Are we disabling vm86 code to access to PIT or PIC? I saw some video ROM
> code (either BIOS call or far call) did access PIT, confusing the OS.

Well, the kernel itself doesn't actually disable/enable anything, it 
leaves that decision to the caller. 

XFree86 obviously does have IO rights, and I suspect it may allow the 
video BIOS to do just about anything, simply because it doesn't have much 
choise (the video bios clearly needs a lot of IO privileges too). So yes, 
that could easily confuse the OS if it happens, but it should be 
independent of IO-APIC vs not.

		Linus