From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Message-ID: <4321A7E3.1040106@lanl.gov>
Date: Fri,  9 Sep 2005 09:18:59 -0600
From: Ronald G Minnich <rminnich@lanl.gov>
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To: erik quanstrom <quanstro@speakeasy.net>,
	Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@cse.psu.edu>
Subject: Re: [9fans] hacking issue: memory resizing
References: <20050909145216.4691A106B2F@dexter-peak.quanstro.net>
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erik quanstrom wrote:

> for a toehold on the problem, it looks like the cardbus
> code (/sys/boot/pc/devpccard.c:828) and the functions
> upamalloc() and upafree() in memory.c allow some kernel-level 
> dynamic memory. (although upafree() doesn't do anything.)
> 

My impression in general is that the device stuff in Plan 9 is not 
terribly dynamic -- not surprising, given the time in which the code was 
  written.

It would be cool if devices could be as dynamic as file systems.

Not an issue in my world, but it's getting to be very important in the 
rest of the world, where hotplug is the order of the day, even including 
hotplug CPUs and memory at this point. PCMCIA -- that's old news :-)

Anyway, I hope some smart people out there will take this as a challenge 
in the kernel space and start thinking about it. Plan 9 is not as 
advanced, as some other OSes, in the area of dynamic device management.

ron