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From: jre@amdahl.UUCP (Joe Eykholt)
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards
Subject: Re: Access to kmem - System namelist - 'ps' etc
Message-ID: <934@amdahl.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 14-Jan-85 22:41:14 EST
Article-I.D.: amdahl.934
Posted: Mon Jan 14 22:41:14 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 16-Jan-85 21:11:40 EST
References: <126@dadla.UUCP> <1587@psuvax1.UUCP>
Organization: Amdahl Corp, Sunnyvale CA
Lines: 26

I know I'm coming into this discussion towards the end and I haven't
been keeping up with all the other proposals, but:

I think the method my predecesors at Amdahl chose to solve this problem
is rather clean.  They added a special file that references the process
table memory, exactly like /dev/mem.  Actually this file is just another
minor number for the /dev/mem driver.

A read from offset 0 in /dev/smem/proc reads from the start of the
process table.

Our modified ps doesn't require a namelist.  If none is specified
it just opens /dev/smem/proc and reads process structures until it
gets an EOF.

While I agree that this feature isn't necessary, and that the cost of
every kernel enhancement should be carefully considered.  I think it
would be nice to get away from programs which need to interpret the
namelist, and have to know a lot about the layout of the kernel.

Other special memory files we provided are: /dev/smem/file, inode,
stats (for sysinfo), text, and var.
-- 
Joe Eykholt  ...{hplabs,ihnp4,amd,drivax,nsc,sun}!amdahl!jre

[Opinions expressed by me are not necessarily held by any other entity.]