I have no informed opinion on Linux's /proc. -rob On Wed, Jun 26, 2019 at 10:46 AM Larry McVoy wrote: > I'm curious what Rob and others think of the Linux /proc. It's string > based and it seems like it is more like /whatever_you_might_want. > > The AT&T /proc that Faulkner worked on was much more narrow in scope, > in keeping with the Unix tradition. The linux /proc was both a way > to dig into kernel stuff and control kernel stuff, it was way broader. > > On Wed, Jun 26, 2019 at 10:37:39AM +1000, Rob Pike wrote: > > Peter Weinberger started and Tom Killian finalized a version of /proc for > > the eighth edition that is ioctl-driven. It was done in the early 1980s. > I > > don't know where the idea originated. > > > > In Plan 9, we (I?) replaced the ioctl interface, which was offensively > > non-portable. > > > > -rob > > > > > > On Wed, Jun 26, 2019 at 10:01 AM ron minnich wrote: > > > > > On Tue, Jun 25, 2019 at 12:34 PM Norman Wilson > wrote: > > > > > > > > It's interesting that this comment about ptrace was written > > > > as early as 1980. > > > > > > > > Ron Minnich's reference to Plan 9 /proc misses the mark, though. > > > > > > your comment about my comment misses the mark; I was not talking about > > > the origins of /proc. This is probably because I was not clear and > > > probably because few people realize that the plan 9 process debugging > > > interface was strings written and read to/from /proc//[various > > > files], rather than something like ptrace. > > > > > > The first time I saw that debug-interface-in-proc in plan 9, it made > > > me think back to the 4.1c bsd manual ptrace comment, and I wondered if > > > there was any path that led from this man page entry to the ideas in > > > the plan 9 methods. > > > > > > I actually implemented the plan 9 debug model in linux back around > > > 2007, but was pretty sure getting it upstream would never happen, so > > > let it die. > > > > > > ron > > > > > -- > --- > Larry McVoy lm at mcvoy.com > http://www.mcvoy.com/lm >