Re: System architecture view

[olafBuddenhagen]

Hi,

On Fri, Dec 07, 2007 at 11:45:31PM -0800, Praveen A wrote:

> Glibc sits in between the userspace and mach. It provides the complete
> posix api on top of mach. So all the libraries and translators use
> glibc.

This statement is correct, but a bit misleading: glibc does not provide
the POSIX API on top of Mach alone. For many system calls, it contacts
various translators -- most notably the low-level Hurd servers, but in
case of file operation, of course also the respective filesystem server.

(As I already pointed out, calls to other servers go through Mach IPC as
well; but unlike actual Mach calls, Mach doesn't handle them itself, but
forwards them to the respective server.)

Also, glibc not only provides POSIX. It also offers the basic
functionality -- mostly used in translators and the Hurd libraries used
by translators -- to talk to Mach and to other translators below the
POSIX level.

Admittedly, this is all pretty confusing :-)

-antrik-