Anthony Towns <aj@azure.humbug.org.au> writes: > On Mon, May 20, 2002 at 08:39:12AM +0200, Marcus Brinkmann wrote: > > > Hrm? Why are you typing "/hurd/foo" in your settrans command instead of > > > "/servers/foo" then? What's /servers for? > > /servers is an area where active translators reside. > > Ah! That would be a very /proc-ish namespace then.
Well, in one way maybe. Except that in /proc the idea is deliberately to export a file interface for things. Mostly read-only (is there support for Plan-9 style writing to /proc things?). Each service lands as a file in /proc, and you read that file to find out about it. /servers is explicitly not that; if you open a file in /servers you generally can't read it at all. Instead, you will communicate with it by some protocol totally other than the filesystem protocols, which are being used just as a naming scheme to get to it in the first place. > Which makes /hurd be the namespace for inactive servers, and /servers be > the namespace for activer servers. Hrm. If I understand this right, it > probably would've been tidier to have: > > /hurd/msdos > /hurd/active/socket/2 > > under a single hierarchy. "active" should probably be spelt "actv" for Unix > compatability ;) I can't tell whether you understand here, because we already use "active" and "passive" in a very specific sense here. An "active" translator is the dynamic existence of a mount point. A "passive" translator is a static record set up by settrans; when someone attempts to open the file, the specific program is run and hooked in as the active translator. So the very same name gets an active and passive translator; that's the whole point. :) > Well, for the "settrans" stuff, the purpose is to make some files > available in the filesystem. That a new process happens to start up to > do it, and that you have to give the name of the executable, is really > fairly irrelevant to your purpose. Actually, no. You're thinking of translators as a way to get a file to show up, but the whole design of the Hurd is that you should think of them as a way to hook into a different program entirely. Thomas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]