Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!purdue!umd5!umbc3!alex
From: alex@umbc3.UMD.EDU (Alex S. Crain)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: man section for kernel functions?
Message-ID: <734@umbc3.UMD.EDU>
Date: 23 Jan 88 09:12:51 GMT
References: <5174@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu> <335@tub.UUCP>
Reply-To: alex@umbc3.UMD.EDU (Alex S. Crain)
Organization: University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Lines: 28
Keywords: kernel man pages

In article <335@tub.UUCP> cabo@tub.UUCP (Carsten Bormann) writes:
>In article <5174@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu> mangler@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu (Don Speck) writes:
>() There are manual page sections for almost everything... why are
>() there none for kernel functions such as sleep, wakeup, physio,
>() splx, ubasetup, getblk, getc, timeout and all the others that
>() are called from drivers?  It would make it a lot easier to
>() write drivers...
>
>Because people who still need a manual entry for sleep() and wakeup()
>are not supposed to muck around with the kernel     :-)
>
	Actually, I think that there is a bit more truth to this than 
originally intended. There was (of course) no kernal docs included with
my machine (AT&T 3b1), but all I had to do was call AT&T and they sent me
a very nice ~50 page document on writing device drivers and all that nifty
kernal stuff. The fact that I recieved photostat copies and not a printed
document suggests that they don't get much call for it, and I sure wouldn't
want my support team explaining to someone why his machine is crashing after
he started mucking about with the kernal.

	And the Post-Bach era really is here, The other day I saw a unix book
that discussed device driver writing and low-level kernal guts. Unfortunately
I can't recall the name or author, only that it exists.

-- 
					:alex.

alex@umbc3.umd.edu