Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!decwrl!ucbvax!bloom-beacon!athena.mit.edu!jik
From: jik@athena.mit.edu (Jonathan I. Kamens)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: syscall(2) function
Keywords: syscall, not system calls
Message-ID: <9507@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>
Date: 28 Feb 89 06:30:32 GMT
References: <3740@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu>
Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU
Reply-To: jik@pit-manager.MIT.EDU (Jonathan I. Kamens)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Lines: 14

The workstation installation floppies at Project Athena are severely
limited by space -- they must fit on a 1.2meg floppy (for a VAX
workstation) or on 2 1.2meg floppies (for an IBM RT).  We can't
include a different binary for every system call we need to use, so we
write one binary with a simple interface to syscall() and then write
shell scripts to do what the rest of the binaries would do.

Works great for us :-)


Jonathan Kamens			              USnail:
MIT Project Athena				410 Memorial Drive, No. 223F
jik@Athena.MIT.EDU				Cambridge, MA 02139-4318
Office: 617-253-4261			      Home: 617-225-8218