A method, apparatus, and system for preventing each of a plurality of operating
system within a logically partitioned data processing system from interfering with
the operation of the other operating systems is provided. In one embodiment, a
logically partitioned data processing system includes a plurality of logical partitions;
a plurality of operating systems, a plurality of assignable resources, at least
one non-assignable resource, and a hypervisor. Each of the plurality of operating
systems is assigned to a separate one of the plurality of logical partitions and
each of the plurality of assignable resources is assigned to one of the plurality
of logical partitions. The hypervisor provides a set of services to each of the
plurality of logical partitions, wherein these services safely perform modifications
to non-assignable processing system resources in response to operating system requests
without allowing direct access to the non-assignable resources by the operating
system image. Thus, each operating system is prevented from modifying the non-assignable
resource in such a way that interferes with the operation of other ones of the
plurality of operating systems.