> Ah, this is Aegis. I used Aegis in the mid-80s (with Cadre Teamware).
Sorry, Cadre Teamwork. > I moved on to SunOS and hadn't realized it was renamed to Domain OS. > > Thanks, > > Alan > > ----- Original Message ----- > Richard L. Hamilton <rlhamil at smart.net> wrote: >>> > Is this intended to be something like the >>> conditional symbolic links that have >>> > been in Apollo Domain system 23 years ago? >>> > >>> >>> I'm not familiar with that proposal. Can you provide >>> details? >>> >>> Thanks, >>> >>> Alan >> >> As I recall, Apollo Domain OS implicitly made environment variables >> available >> to "system calls" (the quotation marks being because the OS was different >> enough >> that traditional system calls might often have been implemented more in >> user >> space than is typical on the historical Unix code-base). Therefore, >> symlinks >> on Domain OS could contain environment variable references; I think these >> looked >> like $(name); so they might have symlinks like >> >> /usr -> /$(SYSTYPE)/usr >> >> where SYSTYPE could be sys5.3 or bsd4.3. (give or take details, I recall >> that as an >> actual example) >> >> Of course, Apollo also did some other odd things with path names: >> >> //nodename >> >> referred to the / direcctory of node nodename, as seen by other nodes >> (similar to AFS /afs/node, or automounter /net/node) >> >> `node_data >> >> referred to the per-node private data directory (/sys/node_data on a >> diskful >> node, something like /sys/node_data.nodeid on the diskful partner of >> diskless node nodeid) >> >> And Apollo had a "typed" filesystem, where types for device files, >> symlinks, FIFOs, >> Unix-domain sockets, and unstructured files were only _some_ of the types; >> others >> could be for record-oriented files, windowing system entities (scrolling >> back through >> a transcript pad with mixed text and graphics would replay the graphics! - >> a "terminal" >> based on such a transcript pad was effectively seekable, but append-only >> for writing), >> files that incorporated revision history (the ancestor of Rational Rose), >> etc. >> In some cases, something that was not a directory could be other than the >> last >> level of a path name, in which case it would be up to the object at that >> level >> to interpret the "residue" of the pathname. >> >> (They also had a form of ACLs long before those were commonplace on other >> Unix-like OSs.) >> >> So while the Apollo was IMO a _brilliant_ example of what's possible, some >> of what >> it could do exceeds what would readily fit the Unix model (although it >> could present >> a very credible approximation of that model as a subset of what it could >> do). And >> thus, examples from an Apollo may be useful in terms of thinking about a >> problem, >> but could often not be reasonably implemented to look similar on a more >> traditional >> Unix-like OS. >> >> (way OT: ISTR one limitation on the Apollo: anything that was executable >> was >> effectively also readable, due to some architectural constraint) >> -- >> This message posted from opensolaris.org >> _______________________________________________ >> opensolaris-arc mailing list >> opensolaris-arc at opensolaris.org >> > > _______________________________________________ > opensolaris-arc mailing list > opensolaris-arc at opensolaris.org >
