From owner-freebsd-hackers  Sat Sep 20 10:32:54 1997
Return-Path: <owner-freebsd-hackers>
Received: (from root@localhost)
          by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id KAA17355
          for hackers-outgoing; Sat, 20 Sep 1997 10:32:54 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from ns.mt.sri.com (SRI-56K-FR.mt.net [206.127.65.42])
          by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id KAA17349
          for <freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org>; Sat, 20 Sep 1997 10:32:50 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from rocky.mt.sri.com (rocky.mt.sri.com [206.127.76.100])
	by ns.mt.sri.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id LAA27506;
	Sat, 20 Sep 1997 11:32:18 -0600 (MDT)
Received: (from nate@localhost) by rocky.mt.sri.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id LAA24068; Sat, 20 Sep 1997 11:32:17 -0600 (MDT)
Date: Sat, 20 Sep 1997 11:32:17 -0600 (MDT)
Message-Id: <199709201732.LAA24068@rocky.mt.sri.com>
From: Nate Williams <nate@mt.sri.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
To: "Jamil J. Weatherbee" <jamil@counterintelligence.ml.org>
Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: UserLand Device Driver Thingys
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.96.970919194628.263C-100000@counterintelligence.ml.org>
References: <Pine.BSF.3.96.970919194628.263C-100000@counterintelligence.ml.org>
X-Mailer: VM 6.29 under 19.15 XEmacs Lucid
Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org
X-Loop: FreeBSD.org
Precedence: bulk

> Why is it so impossible to have an arbitruary interrupt passed to a
> userland process, very much like a signal?

It's not impossible, it's too darn slow crossing so many boundaries?
And, you *never* want an userland program to call cli.

> It would be nice to be able to
> write device drivers that could open sockets and make data available on
> the network in an arbitruary way.

See the 'tun' device, it does this for you already.


Nate