From owner-freebsd-hackers Sun Jul 5 14:15:17 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id OAA08922 for freebsd-hackers-outgoing; Sun, 5 Jul 1998 14:15:17 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from mushi.colo.neosoft.com (qmailr@mushi.colo.neosoft.com [206.109.6.82]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id OAA08916 for ; Sun, 5 Jul 1998 14:15:15 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from peter@taronga.com) Received: (qmail 560 invoked from network); 5 Jul 1998 18:27:53 -0000 Received: from bonkers.neosoft.com (HELO bonkers.taronga.com) (root@206.109.2.48) by mushi.colo.neosoft.com with SMTP; 5 Jul 1998 18:27:53 -0000 Received: (from peter@localhost) by bonkers.taronga.com (8.6.11/8.6.9) id NAA10291 for hackers@freebsd.org; Sun, 5 Jul 1998 13:26:00 -0500 Date: Sun, 5 Jul 1998 13:26:00 -0500 From: peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva) Message-Id: <199807051826.NAA10291@bonkers.taronga.com> To: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: A really hoopy idea for variant symlinks. Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Stop me if you've heard this one. OK, the thing you need for variant symlinks is a per-process inherited namespace, like the environment, but one that's in the kernel so symlinks can get to it, unlike the environment. IK, let's say you built one and hung it off the process structure. How are you going to access it? Well, you could create a couple new system calls to browse the namespace, or... and here's the hoopy idea... you hang it off /proc/*/syms. As symlinks. So yours would be under /proc/curproc/syms. and if you had permission you could browse other processes you own and examine them under /proc/pid/syms. AND, because you're exposing them as symlinks, you don't have to change how symlinks work. Instead of going through .../${USER}/... you'd just set up a symlink in the proper place to /proc/curproc/syms/user. And instead of creating new system calls, you could examine the buggers using "ls". Or diddle them from scripts. Does that look like a workable low-impact almost-transparent way to do this that works really well with the way UNIX already works or what? To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message