Subject: kernel development question
To: None <tech-kern@netbsd.org>
From: Zeljko Vrba <zvrba@globalnet.hr>
List: tech-kern
Date: 06/15/2005 20:56:13
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Hi!

I'm a PhD student in operating systems. I will not go into the details of my
work, but I'm considering NetBSD for my starting point. What I will most
probably do is to strip down all of the UNIX, filesystem (and maybe even
UVM)
stuff which would leave me with the boot loader, device drivers and bus
management... from this point I will design OS based on other abstractions
than UNIX model.

One of the reasons for choosing BSD is its clean code base (Linux code looks
simply horrible compared to the BSD code) and that the kernel API has
excellent
reference documentation in man pages.

However, for the start I'm looking for high-level design (or other)
documents
that would help me understand the workings of the device driver and bus
model
(routines like pci_*, then DMA mappings and such). Probably I'll need to
read
something about the PCI programming itself, so pointers to this subjects are
welcome too.

In fact, any kind of documentation that could help me understand various
NetBSD subsystems (but mostly I'm interested in the lowest level stuff: bus
and device management), including necessary background, is welcome.

What I currently have is Cranor's PhD thesis on UVM and "The Design and
implementation of the 4.4BSD.." book. However, from superficial reading
of the NetBSD code, it seems that NetBSD is quite different in some respects
to the system described in the book.

Thanks..

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