Operating System Design, 2nd Edition

Chapter Contents

• 24.1 Introduction
• 24.2 Terminology: Faults, Checks, Traps, And Exceptions
• 24.3 Vectored Exceptions And Maskable Interrupts
• 24.4 Types Of Exceptions
• 24.5 Handling Exceptions
• 24.6 Exception Vector Initialization
• 24.7 Panic In The Face Of Catastrophic Problems
• 24.8 Implementation Of Panic
• 24.9 Perspective
• 24.10 Summary
• Exercises

24 Exception Handling

I never make exceptions. An exception disproves the rule.

– Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

24.1 Introduction

This chapter discusses the topic of exception handling. Because the underlying hardware dictates exactly how an exception is reported, the techniques an operating system uses to handle exceptions depend entirely on the hardware. Therefore, we will describe how exceptions are ...