From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-ID: To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu Subject: Re: Again: (self)hosted Plan9? Was: [9fans] extending xen to allow driver From: Lucio De Re Date: Thu, 7 Dec 2006 06:32:52 +0200 In-Reply-To: <87ejrcaf53.fsf@jorgito.magma.com.ni> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Topicbox-Message-UUID: ec100862-ead1-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 > I guess the Plan9 Kernel could be separated in two layers, the upper > one just doing "high-level" and 9P-protocol stuff, and a lower one, > providing the #-channel interfaces to the upper layer and doing I/O. My thoughts are along similar lines. My approach would be to expose the device drivers in a hardware dependent "BIOS" as Plan 9 devices, adding only as much OS glue at this level as makes this possible. This would be as close as damn what we know as 9load today. The Plan 9 kernel is the only one that would be able to interface to this BIOS currently, but over time it ought to be possible, mutatis mutandis, to boot other OSes on this layer. My dream is that the BIOS could then be extended by the hordes of device driver writers and every compliant OS would be able to use new devices immediately. But I may be just dreaming. ++L