Subject: Re: 'nother idea: /kern/unix virtual file
To: Luke Mewburn <lm@rmit.edu.au>
From: John F. Woods <jfw@ksr.com>
List: current-users
Date: 02/11/1994 10:18:41
> How difficult would it be to implement another file in /kern: /kern/unix?

This should not be terribly hard for disk boot; you'd have to change to boot
program to pass the pathname loaded to the kernel; I don't know offhand if
it passes any information right now, but I assume if it does this would be
a simple extension (as long as you limit the length of the string to something
reasonable).  /kern/unix would then be a "virtual" symbolic link.  I've done
this kind of thing, but not for UNIX.  Of course, for diskless boot, you have
a problem:  the kernel may not be *available* -- what then?

> (such as /onetbsd which happens to be up to date, ps and swapinfo and
> the like will actually _work_)

I think a much better solution is to have all this information available via
a system call like cmu's table() or sysinfo() or something like that. 
Scrabbling around through symbol tables is just plain evil.


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