On Wed, 30 Jun 1999 09:58:25 -0700 (PDT) 
 Bill Studenmund <wrstuden@nas.nasa.gov> wrote:

 > The main applications I see are in new filesystems where userland daemons
 > help the kernel out. Like for the data migration system I'm working on,
 > where a daemon needs to load a file in from tape. By the time the fs gets
 > all the calls, it has no clue of the path to the file. But with these
 > calls, userland can be told how to find an daccess the file.

This sort of thing could be used for e.g. ARLA or CODA, too (where the file
system itself is in userland).

        -- Jason R. Thorpe <thorpej@nas.nasa.gov>