Why is the kernel code backed by Page File?

NTFSD
1

Hi!

It may be a question with a simple straight forward answer, but I was
wondering why the kernel code is backed by Page File instead of the binary
itself?

Moreover, is it for all types of drivers or some specific category of
drivers (boot drivers, etc)?

Thanks & regards,

Ayush Gupta

2

Well, among other things, if you rm -rf /, or a broken driver starts
corrupting random file on the disk, you system won’t immediately fall to
pieces the first time it needs to page in some code. That’s a pretty
extreme example.

A more realistic one might be if you consider a simple update mechanism.
You can replace the disk copy of the file transparently to the running
system. Mind you I’m sure windows uses something a bit more
sophisticated to actually update the system, but at the end of the day,
the new binary has to end up with the old binary’s name.

An alternative to backing it with the pagefile would be to have kernel
files marked as “special”, but why would you go to the extra trouble of
supporting the “special” functionality if you didn’t need to.

~Eric

From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of Ayush Gupta
Sent: Thursday, December 20, 2007 11:00 AM
To: Windows File Systems Devs Interest List
Subject: [ntfsd] Why is the kernel code backed by Page File?

Hi!

It may be a question with a simple straight forward answer, but I was
wondering why the kernel code is backed by Page File instead of the
binary itself?

Moreover, is it for all types of drivers or some specific category of
drivers (boot drivers, etc)?

Thanks & regards,

Ayush Gupta

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