[9fans] more "Plan 9 from Bell Labs" questions

[quanstro@quanstro.net (erik quanstrom)]

On Mon Apr  4 11:54:45 EDT 2011, eekee57 at fastmail.fm wrote:
> 
> On 4 Apr 2011, at 9:36 am, faif wrote:
> >
> > "Using streams to implement network interfaces in the kernel allows
> > protocols to be connected together dynamically, such as to attach the
> > same TTY driver to TCP, URP, and IL connections, but Plan 9 makes no
> > use of this configurability."
> 
> This one makes no sense to me. TTY driver... network interface? If  
> those two things make sense together, it still makes no sense to put  
> them both together in the Plan 9's kernel, I'm sure.

plan 9 is fairly unique in that a file server can just as easily
be in the kernel, or in user space, or on another machine; and
a device driver is nothing more than a file server.  put 'em
all in the kernel for purely parsimonious reasons doesn't make
too much sense to me.

but that's just in theory.  in practice, it's been
easiest, simplist and fastest to put most hw
drivers in the kernel.

by the way, you can plug file servers together regardless of where they
live.  kernel, user space, another machine.  it matters not.

- erik