
Where rump kernels are heading - mrry
http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.rumpkernel.user/416
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valarauca1
History lesson:

The earliest "Operating Systems" as we call them today were developed at
General Motors. The system was a standard stack of punch cards that would be
executed with every program to take are of environmental tasks, provide a
standard library, and standard I/O functionality.

This system was built for the IBM701 in '56, but was used on all 40 IBM704's
that were sold. It influence the development of a lot of early 50's and 60's
OS's nobody ever heard of now-a-days. Namely the Michigan Terminal System,
which was very big and never spoken of.

This was still a batch processing operating system. But it was a far cry from
the automatic tape switching Univac had only 2 years earlier!

Literally a rump kernel.

:.:.:

The ultimate problem with rump kernels is looking into the future, we arrive
back at Unix. Follow the thought experiment.

1) We reach a standard rump kernel for virtualization, that support most users
needs.

2) Its declared an industry success and sees wide deployment.

3) In order to speed up its functionality hypermanagers are ran on native rump
kernels.

4) In order to speed up its functionality hypermanagers have rump features
built in.

5) Duplicate rump features exist in the hypermanager, and its (the hyper-
manager's) own rump kernel.

6) rump kerenels and hypermanagers are re-merged to multi-process OS's to
remove duplicate code and offer speed ups.

What we need is a more multi-process OS, not a multi-user + multi-processing
OS.

TL;DR we are back pedaling.

~~~
bch
This is going to sound sassy, but it's not _entirely_ meant to ---

Follow the thought experiment:

1) valarauca1 comments on rump

... [stuff goes here]

n) valarauca1 is dies

Is there a point to _anything_, if you use "following to logical conclusion"
as measuring stick? We can't tell what will come of this work yet.

-bch

~~~
valarauca1
I understand what your saying, an I agree. its the journey not the destination
that makes scientific progress worth it in the end.

But a lot of the "Rump Kernel" theory sounds like.

"I need a car with less features, and high performance."

"Okay, lets start with re-inventing the wheel, its the logical place to start.
We'll build ground up and move from there."

"I was gonna start pulling the head lights off."

"Nonsense! We must start fresh!"

~~~
justincormack
No part of the rump kernel is about reinventing the wheel. It is about reusing
existing OS code in other situations. So I don't exactly follow. This was a
mailing list post so didn't have all the background...

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0xdeadbeefbabe
I hope the rototill metaphor isn't lost on anyone. That's a metaphor worth
saving.

