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From: lid@cernvax.UUCP (lid)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apollo
Subject: Re: /dev/kmem ...
Message-ID: <493@cernvax.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 21-Jun-87 05:47:25 EDT
Article-I.D.: cernvax.493
Posted: Sun Jun 21 05:47:25 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 26-Jun-87 03:59:02 EDT
References: <8706181935.AA01574@fleetwood.cc.umich.edu> <1894@zeus.TEK.COM>
Reply-To: lid@cernvax.UUCP ()
Organization: CERN European Laboratory for Particle Physics, CH-1211 Geneva, Switzerland
Lines: 33

In article <1894@zeus.TEK.COM> bobr@zeus.UUCP (Robert Reed) writes:
>In article <8706181935.AA01574@fleetwood.cc.umich.edu> paul@FLEETWOOD.CC.UMICH.EDU ('da Kingfish) writes:
>
>	>"I am no UNIX guru and so would like to know what's wrong in
>	>using /dev/kmem"
>
>    I think we (those of us who don't like using /dev/kmem even if we have
>    one on the system) say something like "procedural interfaces are nicer
>    than having to know about data structures."
>
>It's fine to say that procedural interfaces are safer and provide a more
>insular wall between a changing kernel and the applications which it
>supports -- as long as those procedural interfaces are provided to the user.  
>
>To my knowledge, albeit limited on this subject, there is no documentation
>from Apollo in the procedural interfaces to support such a program as ps(1).

Even worse than that, Apollo does not provide any procedural interface
to their network, or to the process management procedures etc.

Try for instance to write a server,using only the Aegis released
procedures, that provides some network service and try to contact it
without knowing on which machine it is running. There is no way to
do that in a clean way (i.e. without using files to store information
about location of server etc.)

Or try to name a process from the process itself, or try to send
a fault from one process to another, or try to know from which
partner a given node is booting from etc.

I think procedural interface is fine, as long as you get it !

A. Petrilli