Segmentation Faults

[gudu () winternet com (Michael Bresnahan)]

Sorry if this is a reapeat, but I don't think it got distributed because
I was sending from a unsubscribed account.

What is the mechanism that produces a segmentation violation while a users
code is executing.  How does the kernel control the situation when at the
time it is not even executing?  Does it use a interupt?  If so, could someone
explain how this works (a basic understanding of what a interupt is and how
it works would help me here)?  if it does rely on the hardware (I assuming
perhaps incorrectly that such a interupt must have hardware support), how
does that effect the porting of UNIX to different machine architectures?
Specifically it interests me how UNIX is implememted on intel x86 machines
which being designed to run single user OS's might not have the proper      
hardware support for multitasking OS's.

Perhaps this belongs on a different group.  It posted it here, because it 
follows directly from "Tim Newshams" assembly source post.  It would help
to better understand the bug.

MikeB