From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Date: Thu,  6 Sep 2007 20:09:09 -0700
From: Roman Shaposhnik <rvs@sun.com>
Subject: Re: [9fans] plan 9 overcommits memory?
In-reply-to: <13426df10709061238l1e081fel101928310c9db13c@mail.gmail.com>
To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@cse.psu.edu>
Message-id: <1189134549.6197.2.camel@ginkgo>
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On Thu, 2007-09-06 at 12:38 -0700, ron minnich wrote:
> On 9/6/07, Joel C. Salomon <joelcsalomon@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I can't imagine that either of these uses are nearly compelling enough
> > to open this can of worms....  Has anyone truly felt confined by Plan
> > 9's fork+exec model?
>
> yes, because exec takes a pathname. that's a pull model. That is
> pretty awful in a large machine. Define awful: ok, it's the difference
> between startup times of 3+ minutes, 400 nodes, vs. 3 seconds. That's
> awful.
>
> it's why we started doing xcpu in the first place: push the binary to
> a ram disk, then at least xcpu is pulling from a local place, not a
> network. But xcpu was a compromise: I really wanted to do a process
> creation device.

  Exposing an interface for process manipulation to userspace would be
quite cool. Any prototypes on Plan9 so far?

Thanks,
Roman.