From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Message-ID: <3e1162e60603300808xe9edb49p74230b369c971afe@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2006 08:08:17 -0800
From: "David Leimbach" <leimy2k@gmail.com>
To: "Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs" <9fans@cse.psu.edu>
Subject: Re: [9fans] [OT] linux origins, why not?
In-Reply-To: <0f1fee4b1152f4a6e32e0dd8c5c11acd@quanstro.net>
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References: <442B3496.9060308@lanl.gov>
	<0f1fee4b1152f4a6e32e0dd8c5c11acd@quanstro.net>
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On 3/29/06, quanstro@quanstro.net <quanstro@quanstro.net> wrote:
> do you have some pointers to papers from these guys?
>
> from my uneducated position, it seems to me that plan9 has a large
> percentage of what microkernels claim.  one thing one can't
> do is write a hardware driver that lives in userspace.  one advantage
> of this could be the ability to load drivers depending on configuration.
>
> has anybody invested some brain cells in this?

Userspace drivers?  You can load L4 Linux into userspace and use it's
drivers over L4 IPC calls and get reasonable performance.

Heck, you can even download a live ISO and just boot it that uses some
of this technology.  The FreeBSD IDE driver is pushed into userspace
and accessed by the rest of the L4 system.

Now if I could only find the link....

Dave

>
> - erik
>
> On Wed Mar 29 19:37:48 CST 2006, rminnich@lanl.gov wrote:
> > Lots of good research came out of mach ... not what you think. sandia
> > national labs has done lots of great OS work for 10 years, or so,
> > spurred on by the unusable Mach-derived OSF-1/MK-AD that came on their
> > paragon, and the need to toss it and start clean. SNL did some very nic=
e
> > work, all due to the need to get rid of the "micro kernel".
> >
> > ron
>