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From: gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore)
Newsgroups: comp.sources.d
Subject: Re: Changing sysname and nodename dynamically.
Message-ID: <1279@hoptoad.uucp>
Date: Mon, 10-Nov-86 18:06:54 EST
Article-I.D.: hoptoad.1279
Posted: Mon Nov 10 18:06:54 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 10-Nov-86 22:06:46 EST
References: <464@cdx39.UUCP>
Organization: Nebula Consultants in San Francisco
Lines: 27

In article <464@cdx39.UUCP>, jc@cdx39.UUCP (John Chambers) writes:
>              ...if you tell it to use "/dev/kmem", it
> will change the name of the live system.  
> 
> This is a nice example of moving a "system hook" out
> of the kernel and into user space, thus making the
> kernel smaller and simpler.  (The concept does tend
> to horrify many people, good system design though it
> may be. :-)

Moving "system hooks" out of the kernel into user space is a good
idea.  But if you make the interface to the "hook" unclean and unportable
in the process, then it's a bad implementation of the good idea.
What horrifies people like me is that many uncultured people will
write the bad implementation and think it's good.  Many of these
make it into products and this is even worse since it means thousands
of people will have to live with this cruddy unportable interface,
all because somebody got a "good idea" but didn't have the talent or
the judgement about when to use it.

Writing to /dev/kmem is like using peek and poke in micro Basics.
You know it works, but you know damn well that this program will not
work on a different brand of computer.
-- 
John Gilmore  {sun,ptsfa,lll-crg,ihnp4}!hoptoad!gnu   jgilmore@lll-crg.arpa
    "I can't think of a better way for the War Dept to spend money than to
  subsidize the education of teenage system hackers by creating the Arpanet."