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From: Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com>
To: Bakul Shah <bakul@bitblocks.com>
Cc: TUHS main list <tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
Subject: Re: [TUHS] If not Linux, then what?
Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2019 16:33:38 -0700	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20190827233338.GM13570@mcvoy.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20190827231625.55E991570CEA@mail.bitblocks.com>

On Tue, Aug 27, 2019 at 04:16:18PM -0700, Bakul Shah wrote:
> On Tue, 27 Aug 2019 15:40:02 -0700 Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote:
> Larry McVoy writes:
> > and I can tell you that sockets are WAY WAY better.  I get the "it
> > should have just been file I/O" except that I don't.  I tried to 
> > write a library that let you open up /net/tcp/$host:$port and do
> > I/O like it was a file descriptor.  That works for a lot of stuff
> > but I ran into problems quickly.  A networking connection is not
> > a file handle.  You can make some stuff work but I couldn't figure
> > out how to do all of it.   You end up having to do ioctls to handle
> > the stuff that doesn't fit well into the file system name space.
> > I think plan 9 did this sort of thing, maybe Rob can prove me wrong
> > or remember where it didn't match.
> 
> Plan9 does a decent enough job.
> 
> cpu% ls /net/tcp
> /net/tcp/0
> /net/tcp/1
> /net/tcp/2
> /net/tcp/clone
> /net/tcp/stats
> 
> cpu% ls /net/tcp/1
> /net/tcp/1/ctl
> /net/tcp/1/data
> /net/tcp/1/err
> /net/tcp/1/listen
> /net/tcp/1/local
> /net/tcp/1/remote
> /net/tcp/1/status

I dunno.  I can't look at that and know what it means.  So it means I have
to toss (by the time this came out) a decade or more worth of knowing how
to use sockets and learn this new model that may or may not go anywhere.

> plan9 would've been a big improvement over *BSD or Linux. But
> I think a conceptual merge was needed between some sane
> version of Unix and plan9 so as to not throw out all the dusty
> decks.

That would have made a huge difference.  The problem with Unix is it
is largely good enough.  All sorts of warts appeared over the years
but you can get your job done.  Plan 9 was such a big departure that
it never gained traction.  Having it conform to Posix or pick the
most popular Unix (SunOS?  BSD?) and conform to that.  I'm biased but
even if I wasn't I'd have picked SunOS, virtually all open source back
in the day compiled out of the tarball on SunOS.  Everyone else had 
to tinker or run configure or whatever.

  reply	other threads:[~2019-08-27 23:33 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 96+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2019-08-26 23:13 Arthur Krewat
2019-08-26 23:27 ` Warner Losh
2019-08-26 23:37   ` Larry McVoy
2019-08-26 23:56   ` William Pechter
2019-08-27  0:19     ` Arthur Krewat
2019-08-27  0:30       ` Larry McVoy
2019-08-27  0:58         ` Rob Pike
2019-08-27  1:06           ` Clem Cole
2019-08-27  2:53           ` Larry McVoy
2019-08-27  9:47             ` Rob Pike
2019-08-27  7:47           ` arnold
2019-08-27 16:05           ` [TUHS] Running v10 Angelo Papenhoff
2019-08-27 16:27             ` Henry Bent
2019-08-28  4:22               ` Jason Stevens
2019-08-28  7:34                 ` Angelo Papenhoff
2019-08-28 16:46                   ` Henry Bent
2019-08-27  0:59         ` [TUHS] If not Linux, then what? Arthur Krewat
2019-08-27  1:26           ` Dan Cross
2019-08-27  2:45             ` Larry McVoy
2019-08-27  3:14               ` Arthur Krewat
2019-08-27 14:55                 ` Larry McVoy
2019-08-27 22:30                   ` George Michaelson
2019-08-27 22:40                     ` Larry McVoy
2019-08-27 22:46                       ` George Michaelson
2019-08-27 22:59                         ` [TUHS] [SPAM] " Larry McVoy
2019-08-27 23:10                           ` [TUHS] " Clem Cole
2019-08-28  0:07                             ` George Michaelson
2019-08-28  3:22                           ` [TUHS] [SPAM] " Rob Pike
2019-08-28  3:25                             ` Rob Pike
2019-08-28  4:05                             ` Larry McVoy
2019-08-28 13:52                               ` Clem Cole
2019-08-28 14:31                                 ` [TUHS] " Larry McVoy
2019-08-28 14:57                                   ` Clem Cole
2019-08-28  6:19                         ` Wesley Parish
2019-08-28  6:30                           ` Peter Jeremy
2019-08-28 11:05                             ` Jason Stevens
2019-08-28 11:11                               ` Arrigo Triulzi
2019-08-28 14:04                               ` Clem Cole
2019-08-28 16:34                                 ` Henry Bent
2019-08-28 17:32                                   ` Larry McVoy
2019-08-28 17:51                                     ` Jon Forrest
2019-08-28 18:56                                     ` Clem Cole
2019-08-28 20:23                                       ` Arrigo Triulzi
2019-08-29  3:24                                       ` Lawrence Stewart
2019-08-29 10:55                                         ` Tony Finch
2019-08-28 13:57                             ` Clem Cole
2019-08-28 12:46                           ` Warner Losh
2019-08-27 23:16                       ` Bakul Shah
2019-08-27 23:33                         ` Larry McVoy [this message]
2019-08-28  0:21                           ` Bakul Shah
2019-08-28  1:21                             ` Arthur Krewat
2019-08-28  1:46                               ` Larry McVoy
2019-08-27  0:48   ` Clem Cole
2019-08-27  1:25     ` Gregg Levine
2019-08-27  2:16   ` Theodore Y. Ts'o
2019-08-27  2:39     ` Larry McVoy
2019-08-27  5:54       ` Adam Thornton
2019-08-27  6:05         ` Gregg Levine
2019-08-27  1:17 ` Dan Cross
2019-08-28  3:53 ` Charles H. Sauer
2019-08-28  4:30 ` Jason Stevens
2019-08-28  9:36 ` Angus Robinson
2019-08-28  9:50   ` Michael Kjörling
2019-08-28 10:48     ` arnold
2019-08-28 14:10   ` Earl Baugh
2019-08-28 14:55     ` Clem Cole
2019-08-28 14:22   ` Charles H Sauer
2019-08-28 15:00     ` Steve Nickolas
2019-08-28 15:37       ` Richard Salz
2019-08-28 19:54         ` Peter Jeremy
2019-08-28 20:05           ` Christopher Browne
2019-08-28 20:07 ` Christopher Browne
2019-08-28 20:27   ` Adam Thornton
2019-08-28 20:56     ` William Pechter
2019-08-28 22:24       ` Clem cole
2019-08-28 22:27     ` William Pechter
2019-08-28 22:53       ` Arthur Krewat
2019-08-29 18:40       ` Nemo Nusquam
2019-08-29 19:18         ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2019-08-28 22:28     ` Clem cole
2019-08-28 22:48       ` Adam Thornton
2019-08-28 23:01         ` William Pechter
2019-08-28 23:09           ` Adam Thornton
2019-08-29  6:37           ` Wesley Parish
2019-08-28 23:04       ` Gregg Levine
2019-08-29 11:12     ` Tony Finch
2019-08-28 23:19   ` Theodore Y. Ts'o
2019-08-29 13:31     ` A. P. Garcia
2019-08-29 13:55       ` Arthur Krewat
2019-08-29 15:54         ` Thomas Paulsen
2019-08-29 19:19           ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2019-08-31  1:35             ` Dave Horsfall
2019-08-31 15:14               ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2019-08-31 16:58     ` Christopher Browne
2019-08-31 21:20       ` Theodore Y. Ts'o
2019-08-28 21:02 ` Thomas Paulsen

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