From owner-freebsd-platforms Sun Dec 1 00:54:53 1996 Return-Path: owner-platforms Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id AAA07175 for platforms-outgoing; Sun, 1 Dec 1996 00:54:53 -0800 (PST) Received: from diablo.ppp.de (diablo.ppp.de [193.141.101.34]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id AAA07169 for ; Sun, 1 Dec 1996 00:54:49 -0800 (PST) From: Greg Lehey Received: from freebie.lemis.de by diablo.ppp.de with smtp (Smail3.1.28.1 #1) id m0vU7fg-000QrTC; Sun, 1 Dec 96 09:54 MET Received: (grog@localhost) by freebie.lemis.de (8.8.3/8.6.12) id JAA02306; Sun, 1 Dec 1996 09:31:43 +0100 (MET) Organisation: LEMIS, Schellnhausen 2, 36325 Feldatal, Germany Phone: +49-6637-919123 Fax: +49-6637-919122 Message-Id: <199612010831.JAA02306@freebie.lemis.de> Subject: Re: FreeBSD/MIPS anybody In-Reply-To: <199611301740.JAA19857@GndRsh.aac.dev.com> from "Rodney W. Grimes" at "Nov 30, 96 09:40:47 am" To: rgrimes@GndRsh.aac.dev.com (Rodney W. Grimes) Date: Sun, 1 Dec 1996 09:31:42 +0100 (MET) Cc: platforms@FreeBSD.org, carr_richard@tandem.com, andyo@ora.com (Andy Oram) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL28 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-platforms@FreeBSD.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Rodney W. Grimes writes: >>> >>> Of course, if I'm wrong and it's actually totally trivial, then I'll >>> just go sit in the corner and cry 8) Any chance of a pmap(9) manpage >>> detailing its features and requirements? 8) >>> >> PS, I FULLY intend to document the VM system. The more noise that >> is made about it, the higher priority it becomes. I am sure that >> if everyone said: I don't care about LFS for now, etc -- then I would be >> very willing to do the docs... Frankly, I am not in a programming >> mood right now, so it might not be a bad thing. >> >> Perhaps if DG and I produced more docs, then we could get more >> parallel efforts going. Actually, there are other kernel hackers >> that appear to be coming up to speed quite nicely (which is really >> a wonderful thing.) Maybe we can get the ball rolling!!! > > Have you ever tried to go buy a good book on VM system design? I seem > to remeber a day when David and myself where down at Powell technical > book store and he purchased one of the OSF manuals just because it had > a whole chapter on the VM system. Richard Carr (carr_richard@tandem.com) wrote one years ago. I suspect it's now completely out of date. > IMHO, a ``book'' written by one of the technical staff of O'Reiley with > John Dyson and David Greenman as the technical contributors would fill > a VERY LARGE void on many a persons technical library shelf/book case/ > library! Sadly, I think O'Reilly is the wrong choice now. They might have been the right choice a few years back, but they've all but turned their back on UNIX. Also, I think that a book on VM internals is rather more theoretical than the typical "hands-on" ORA book. I'm copying Andy Oram, my editor at ORA, to give him the chance to shout me down on either of those points--go for it, Andy. > I book sounds like a daunting task, but books often get created from smaller > documentation processes, and if we can get you two to write us 10 pages on > the pmap code, perhaps a technical writter can be recruited someplace to > grow this start into something larger. Even a 10 page paper would be > well recieved at many of the technical conferences, though I am not sure > how you feel about doing paper presentations :-). I'm certainly prepared to help on putting this together. Apart from anything else, I'll finally be forced to learn something about the internals. I'd suggest that we go for more than "the design of the FreeBSD 3.0 virtual memory system", though. Greg