[TUHS] Shell control through external commands

[norman@oclsc.org (Norman Wilson)]

It sounds like my understanding of the different 4.1x versions is
just mistaken.  If 4.1c had FFS and sockets, the kernel on which
V8 was built must have been an earlier 4.1x.

I believe the reason for adopting that kernel, rather than sticking
with 32/V, was exactly to get paging support.  There was a competing
32/V descendant with paging, written by John Reiser at Holmdel, which
I gather was thought by many to be much cleaner technically; e.g. he
unified the block-device buffer cache and the memory-page cache, and
implemented copy-on-write paging rather than resorting to the messy
vfork.  I have heard that there was considerable argument and
hand-wringing over whether to use Reiser's kernel or the BSD one.
It all happened well before I arrived, and I don't know what the
tradeoffs were, though one was certainly that Reiser's management
didn't support his work and nobody in 1127 was keen to have to take
it over.

Norman Wilson
Toronto ON