help-hurd
[Top][All Lists]
Advanced

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: Creating new interfaces for specific servers


From: Stephan Trebels
Subject: Re: Creating new interfaces for specific servers
Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 20:34:18 +0200
User-agent: Mutt/1.2.5i

On Thu, Jun 13, 2002 at 06:10:21PM +0200, Ludovic Court?s wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 12, 2002 at 10:30:30AM -0700, Thomas Bushnell, BSG wrote:
> > There are two options: create a new interface, or use existing
> > read/write calls the way Plan 9 does.  Which is better is up to the
> > programmer, within the normal canons of good style and such.
> 
> What is Plan 9? Is it the one in
> http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9dist/index.html ?
> 
> It seems to be quite similar to what the Hurd does, using the filesystem as
> the server namespace, right?

This is not quite right.  Plan9 has a namespace per collection of
processes.  I.e. every process can have it's own directory tree, if
that's desired.  Any process can bind any directory to be anywhere in
the tree.

>From what I understand, the Hurd still has a static view of the
namespace, even if enhanced by translators.  Unless you count
fakeroot, of course.

What Thomas is probably referring to, is, that all control commands
(actually most) are replaced by read and write of ascii commends to
files.  E.g. to connect to a server via TCP you can use something like
echo 'dial 1.2.3.4!2' >/net/tcp/clone, or the like.  A bit like the
/proc filesystem in Linux, but used throughout.

This together with the namespace notion makes sure, that a network of
Plan9 machines can be used as a single entity, where the namespace
stays virtually identical, if you change the cpu (telnet to a server).

Stephan

-- 
           Stephan Trebels <stephan@ncube.de>, Consultant
mail: nCUBE Deutschland GmbH, Hanauer Str. 56, 80992 Munich, Germany
phone: +49 89 149893 0  cell: +49 172 8433111  fax: +49 89 149893 50 



reply via email to

[Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread]