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authorThomas Schwinge <thomas@schwinge.name>2010-12-13 17:11:51 +0100
committerThomas Schwinge <thomas@schwinge.name>2010-12-13 17:11:51 +0100
commit2d75167da62e3486836e5f1773e5f1ab06e43fe8 (patch)
treee44fc83e0b1419836d1b21652ad1d38b8d0af2c4 /microkernel/faq
parent217998d56f5b6424a685f8c87f2c0e924d1c89da (diff)
parent5c5c16e265d8ef56b71f319885f32bf144bdea23 (diff)
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+[[!meta copyright="Copyright © 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2008, 2009 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]]."]]"""]]
+
+[[!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]].