der Mouse <mouse@Collatz.McRCIM.McGill.EDU> writes:

[[Mach's VM system leaving chains of shadow-copy objects]]

>Seems to me we should get something, anything, in to fix this, even if
>it's a scavenger that's run once a minute to find these extra shadow
>objects and nuke them.

Amen.

>But then, given how core has been resisting bounce buffers in the i386
>port, we may have to either live with (yet another) brokenness in the
>VM subsystem [...]

A data point: I'm the NetBSD/pmax chief port-slave.  Some colleagues
here (e.g., CS faculty) have recently asked me about free Unices with
more solid networking than Linux.  I end up advising them that they
should use FreeBSD, because NetBSD/i386 just isn't *REAL*, because to
the best of my knowledge NetBSD/i386 doesn't support more than 16
Mbytes with ISA cards like an aha1542.  And I end up reassuring these
people that the two systems aren't really _that_ different, at least
on x86 hardware.

I find this embarrassing for the project.  It's something that has
given great marketing mileage to (for example).  To the point where
those who _consider_ alternatives to Linux think FreeBSD is all there
is.

I think, respectfully, that this needs to be fixed.  Yesterday.
(Even that  may be too late.)   And it's gone on long enough
that, IMHO, it's time to ask the relevant portmaster and Core members:

	*Why is this still broken?*

> [...] or keep private patches for it.  Not that private patches
>bother _me_ particularly; I've got over 100K of private patches
>already.  But I know they bother some people.

If Mouse has private patches for this, I'd really like to know
where I can FTP them from :).  And I'm sure others would, too.