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From: shiva@well.sf.ca.us (Kenneth Porter)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.misc
Subject: Deficiencies in the OS/2 kernel
Message-ID: <25434@well.sf.ca.us>
Date: 14 Jun 91 06:08:23 GMT
Distribution: comp
Lines: 56


While I think OS/2 can be extended in many ways to give it
capabilities now shipped with Unix, one thing I don't see is
the ability to easily add new drivers to the kernel so that
third-party boot devices can be used.  Only MS/IBM-approved
boot disks are allowed, so one can't easily extend OS/2 to,
say, boot over an arbitrary network or disk drive without
OEM-ing OS/2 sources.
 
It's quite common in the Unix market to add drivers to the
kernel, and with Sun's SCSA for SCSI, one can add device-
specific SCSI support as well.  When will we see this in OS/2?
 
Related to this is the need for a standard API for querying
kernel resources.  Such an API would allow a program to get the
kinds of information that a user can get with the PSTAT
utility.  One of the posters here has reverse-engineered the
system call used by PSTAT, but this shouldn't be necessary;
MS/IBM should publish the specs for an approved way of
instrumenting a system.  OS/2 should be able to do this more
cleanly than the Unix method of peeking into the memory of the
running kernel using the on-disk symbol table (as is done with
the ps command).
 
I would suggest that users and programmers post here the kinds
of information that such an API should provide.  I would
personally like to see detailed breakdowns of blocking
conditions of each thread, per-process memory, pipe, queue,
semaphore, and file usage.
 
Another hassle related to booting (and shared with DOS) is the
insistence on booting from the first floppy or the first hard
disk (or first partition).  According to information given in
literature for IBM's new 486 servers, this is hard-coded into
the boot code.  The new servers can get around this by swapping
drive addresses in the BIOS.  Most Unix implementations can boot
from any device built into the kernel.  My 386i can boot from
any of the floppy, the cartridge tape, either hard disk (any
partition), or the network, and this is just the default search
list.  One could in principle boot from any device that can
contain a file.  I suppose that one could even boot over the
serial port if one had the patience.
 
If OS/2 is to be considered a serious operating system, it
should have this technology.  One of the biggest objections to
converting to OS/2 is that one must make it the primary
operating system on a machine, eliminating the possiblity of
going back to DOS.  This has been partly fixed by various
dual-boot kludges, but the result is less than optimal.  As a
developer, I need to be able to freely switch among many
operating environments, including DOS, OS/2 1.x and 2.x, Unix
(in several flavors), and Concurrent DOS.  DOS and OS/2 are
notable in their hostility to co-existence with other operating
environments.
 
Ken (shiva@well.sf.ca.us)