From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu From: "Thomas Bushnell, BSG" Message-ID: <87sn6ozejb.fsf@becket.becket.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii References: <20020325180557.41B39199B7@mail.cse.psu.edu> Subject: Re: [9fans] long long whining Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2002 09:45:42 +0000 Topicbox-Message-UUID: 6de69f7a-eaca-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 forsyth@caldo.demon.co.uk writes: > that's not what i meant. given the existence of the vnode switch, > and the primitives contained therein, there is no big obstacle to > writing a vfs/vnode implementation that converts the operations > within its scope into messages on a file descriptor in much the same > way as network file systems were implemented by 8th edition, or by > me in my re-ported Unix kernels for the VAX and Sun-3, using a > simpler file system switch. do just one of those and you can have > as many things as you like outside the kernel. There's already in BSD a "portal" concept, though it had not been implemented when I wrote the essay in question. Once you've done that, however, you are no longer a monolithic kernel, however. That's kinda the point of the essay.