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Diffstat (limited to 'faq/multiserver_microkernel.mdwn')
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diff --git a/faq/multiserver_microkernel.mdwn b/faq/multiserver_microkernel.mdwn new file mode 100644 index 00000000..b4edd9af --- /dev/null +++ b/faq/multiserver_microkernel.mdwn @@ -0,0 +1,27 @@ +[[!meta copyright="Copyright © 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2008, 2009, 2013 +Free Software Foundation, Inc."]] + +[[!meta license="""[[!toggle id="license" text="GFDL 1.2+"]][[!toggleable +id="license" text="Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this +document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or +any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant +Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license +is included in the section entitled [[GNU Free Documentation +License|/fdl]]."]]"""]] + +[[!tag faq/general]] + +[[!meta title="What is a Multiserver Microkernel?"]] + +A Microkernel has nothing to do with the size of the kernel. Rather, it refers +to the functionality that the kernel provides. It is generally agreed that +this is; a set of interfaces to allow processes to communicate and a way to +talk to the hardware. *Software drivers*, as we like to call them, are then +implemented in user space as servers. The most obvious examples of these are +the TCP/IP stack, the ext2 filesystem and NFS. In the case of the Hurd, users +now have access to functionality that, in a monolithic kernel, they could never +use, but now, because the server runs in user space as the user that started +it, they may, for instance, mount an FTP filesystem in their home directory. + +For more information about the design of the Hurd, read the paper by Thomas +Bushnell, BSG: [[Towards a New Strategy of OS Design|hurd-paper]]. |