Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2001 23:57:57 -0400 (EDT) From: Robert Watson <rwatson@freebsd.org> To: Mike Karels <karels@bsdi.com> Cc: arch@freebsd.org Subject: Re: syscall numbering Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.3.96L.1010731235208.54921D-100000@fledge.watson.org> In-Reply-To: <200107120234.f6C2YLC14835@redrock.eng.bsdi.com>
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Mike, Sorry about the delay in responding, I went off and got married and am only just digging out on the e-mail front :-). With regards to your proposal--this seems to be a generally good idea to me, as it would certainly improve the opportunities for compatible ABIs in the future. With regards to your specific proposed ranges--the ranges you've laid out seem generally fine to me. I'm responsible for about the last twenty or thirty system calls added to FreeBSD as part of the TrustedBSD work, and there are a number of further components added that will introduce more API calls. This suggests that the range 375-399 is too small for future FreeBSD work. If you're willing to allocate an additional higher chunk, and/or adjust the BSD/OS customer range, that would probably meet all of our needs. I'd also be quite willing to add necessary comments to our syscalls.master indicating range allocations, and pointing at you as the person allocating ranges for BSD-style operating systems. Given that there is a moderate chance of other BSD platforms picking up system calls from each other (as you describe), would your plan generally be for the platform introducing a new call to allocate a number from their range, and to encourage other platforms to use the same number if the ABI and API are identical? I.e., if OpenBSD were to pick up ACL/EA calls (something they've expressed interest in doing), I would ask them to use the FreeBSD numbers if identical, their own otherwise? Robert N M Watson FreeBSD Core Team, TrustedBSD Project robert@fledge.watson.org NAI Labs, Safeport Network Services On Wed, 11 Jul 2001, Mike Karels wrote: > I am sending this message at Jordan's suggestion after corresponding > with him. The subject is coordination of system call numbers. > > As some of you probably know, the syscall.master file in Berkeley BSD > releases had some ranges reserved for "vendors". Unfortunately, both > BSDI (now Wind River) and their customers were "vendors", and there > have been some collisions. I would now like to reserve another range > of system calls for those customers. This would not be of interest > to FreeBSD, except that BSD/OS also picks up system calls from FreeBSD, > and FreeBSD has a number of BSD/OS-compatible calls as well as other > entries for compatibility with NetBSD and/or OpenBSD. In theory, it > would be nice to coordinate all of this globally, but I understand > that NetBSD doesn't even have consistent numbering across all of their > platforms. I'm sure we won't be able to prevent conflicts completely, > but it is convenient that we can mostly use a single system call table. > > For now, I'm tempted to reserve 400-449 for BSD/OS customers. FreeBSD > seems to be using 300 up, to 374 currently, and BSD/OS calls are all > below that. Does this sound plausible? Does that leave enough for > FreeBSD expansion? > > I'm happy to consider other suggestions, including some larger level > of coordination. Feel free to contact me directly, off the list. > > Mike > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message
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