> > In fact, we had this kind of thing in all BSD kernels starting > > with 4.4BSD Lite (read: in FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD). It's called > > 'portal' filesystem: > Hurd translators owe the original idea to the Portal concept in the > old BSD Architecture Manuals, first actually implemented in 4.4 BSD. Ah, that's good to know. The similarities were so apparent that it could not have been pure chance ;-)
> However, all the old BSD statements about what portals would be used > for did not include things like transparent FTP, tar and the like. As > far I have been able to tell, the Hurd design documents were the first > places to actually describe the idea. That is probably true. All BSD docs I came around just mentioned that the portal fs was designed to provide an open serivce. They didn't give as much examples as in the Hurd papers. 4.4 Lite also didn't provide support libraries for Portal-FS writers nor examples for transparent TCP and some such. The recent Portal-FS examples (e.g. in NetBSD) could also have been backported from the Hurd design paper. I don't know for sure though... -Farid. -- Farid Hajji -- Unix Systems and Network Admin | Phone: +49-2131-67-555 Broicherdorfstr. 83, D-41564 Kaarst, Germany | [EMAIL PROTECTED] - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - + - - - - - - - - - - - - One OS To Rule Them All And In The Darkness Bind Them... --Bill Gates.
