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From: darrell@sdcsvax.UUCP
Newsgroups: mod.os
Subject: Re: Who needs files. [Really "Apollo's been doing it for 6 years"]
Message-ID: <2941@sdcsvax.UCSD.EDU>
Date: Mon, 30-Mar-87 17:49:18 EST
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Posted: Mon Mar 30 17:49:18 1987
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> Two more questions:  
> 
> 1)  Does Aegis have an advise function that allows a process to give
>     advanced information to the system about which pages are needed?

There is an advice call, but only one that is related to the touchahead
and growahead features I mentioned in my previous article.

> 2)  How much of this is available in Apollo's Un*x environment?  It
>     would be nice if Aegis provided a "real" BSD Unix environment,
>     but still had the "advanced" facilities available as system
>     services.

Well, it's ALL available from the Unix environment.  One might argue
that we could do a better job of making the interfaces to the feature
more culturally compatible with Unix (e.g. omitted return parameters
that tell you more than than "errno" and made the documentation more
opaque :), but that's really just noise.  Seriously though, I think we
could do a better job of making it clear that these are extensions
available to all, not just some wierdo "Aegis users".  Of course, using
the features might make your code less portable, but sometimes you just
have to decide how long coding with the constraints that existed in
1970 minicomputers is appropriate.

                    -- Nat Mishkin
                       Apollo Computer Inc.
                       Chelmsford, MA
                       {wanginst,yale,mit-eddie}!apollo!mishkin

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