[Ilugc] Re: Doubt on Kernel Arch. ???
- From: lug@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Chandrashekar Babu)
- Date: Fri Sep 10 19:18:27 2004
Sivasankar Chander writes:
AFAIK, Minix 1.0 was monolithic, but 2.0 was a microkernel. The famous
Tanenbaum-Linus debate on Usenet occurred sometime between this transition.
(I could be mistaken on the version, but the first version of Minix that
I tried could run on a PC/XT (8088 without an MMU), so I doubt that it
was a microkernel).
I think Minix 1.0 should also be a microkernel (atleast from the architect's
perspective). Of course, 8088 does not support multiple privilege levels (or
rings). But the sources (protect.h) contain code to determine processor
type (8088, 286, 386, 486, so on) to make use of privilege levels if they
are available in order to run other subsystems (net, fs, ...) on lower level
privilege levels (TASK_PRIVILEGE or USER_PRIVILEGE).
Ofcourse, what Minix seriously lacked was virtual memory support (which was
the primary reason for Linus to fork off his own project). I also remember
another unofficial spin-off project by Kees J. Bot called Minix-vmd that
implemented virtual memory support on Minix 2.0.
Anyways, the information that you provided were insightful, thanks :-)
Cheers,
Chandrashekar Babu.
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