HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: peter@NeoSoft.com (Peter da Silva)
Subject: Re: So You Want To Be A Wizard? (A modest proposal)
Organization: NeoSoft Communications Services -- (713) 684-5900
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 12:14:07 GMT

In article <1992Dec14.080551.12999@blaze.cs.jhu.edu> bogstad@gauss.cs.jhu.edu (Bill Bogstad) writes:
> small and Unix-like, I'ld suggest getting a copy of Minix and the book that
> goes with it.  It's legally available and is probably as similar to modern
> Unix kernels as the V6 kernel described in the Lions books anyway.

I doubt it. It's a flakey microkernel with separate kernel-level tasks for
the file system, memory management, and so on. Quite unlike any traditional
UNIX kernel. The V6, V7, System III, BSD, and System V kernels all share the
same basic model where the kernel carries all these tasks through in the
execution context of the calling process. It's an amazingly responsive design,
even if it does make it damned hard to do realtime.
-- 
Peter da Silva.  <peter@sugar.neosoft.com>.
 `-_-'   Oletko halannut suttasi tnn?
  'U`    
Tarjoilija, tm ateria el viel.
Xref: sparky comp.unix.wizards:5271 alt.folklore.computers:18059
From: daniel@mertwig.uucp (Daniel Drucker)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards,alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: So You Want To Be A Wizard? (A modest proposal)
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 92 16:19:02 EST
Reply-To: daniel%mertwig@uunet.uu.net  (Daniel Drucker)
Organization: Abnormalities of Reality

pt@geovision.gvc.com (Paul Tomblin) writes:

> fjh@munta.cs.mu.OZ.AU (Fergus James HENDERSON) writes:
> >esr@snark.thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond) writes:
> >>I earned my wizard hat [...]
> 
> >Ah! A self-proclaimed wizard!
> >Isn't that a contradiction in terms?
> 
> Only if you're a 14 year old self-proclaimed wizard - and you proclaim it in
> your signature so that you can annoy the real wizards with every single
> posting you make.

roadrash@bcstec.ca.boeing.com writes in a mail message:

> Regarding flamers, the best way to respond to them is via Email or
> not at all.  On this thread, I was amused that all of these great
> ancient.net.gurus were making fun of flaming in one thread while
> joining in a mad flame-fest in another.

Well said.



--
Daniel Drucker        N2SXX       Coconut seashells whispering to me
daniel%mertwig@uunet.uu.net         "Forever, forever, my Coda..."
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards,alt.folklore.computers
From: pt@geovision.gvc.com (Paul Tomblin)
Subject: Re: So You Want To Be A Wizard? (A modest proposal)
Reply-To: pt@geovision.gvc.com
Organization: Not officially GeoVision Systems Inc., Ottawa, Ontario
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 13:39:13 GMT

fjh@munta.cs.mu.OZ.AU (Fergus James HENDERSON) writes:
>esr@snark.thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond) writes:
>>I earned my wizard hat [...]

>Ah! A self-proclaimed wizard!
>Isn't that a contradiction in terms?

Only if you're a 14 year old self-proclaimed wizard - and you proclaim it in
your signature so that you can annoy the real wizards with every single
posting you make.

(And no - I'm not self-proclaiming myself - I'm a couple of steps below
wizard for now)

-- 
Paul Tomblin (I don't make or state policy for this company)
"Well, this looks absolutely brilliant and completely unmarketable."
"Thanks.  I'm technology driven" - Dilbert
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards,alt.folklore.computers
From: hitz@netapp.com
Subject: Re: So You Want To Be A Wizard? (A modest proposal)
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest)
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 05:48:57 GMT

In article <1jlgwJ#6PNbyC9ljB052jnDYX3BKLvj=esr@snark.thyrsus.com> esr@snark.thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond) writes:
>I earned my wizard hat in late '83, early '84, administering a VAX 750 under 
>BSD 4.1 (the BSD nobody remembers...).   As I recall, the Lions book (which
>described V6) was considered historical even then.  I don't think I'd
>recommend it to aspiring newbies ten years later.

My advice is questionable (due to my lack of a wizard hat), but I
recommend the Lions books highly.  The UNIX kernel today is so large
that few (if any) have time to read and understand it all.  But you
*can* read and undertand the 9000 lines in Lions.  In my experience,
understanding the simple way that something can be done often clarifies
the more complicated current way.

Dave Hitz			hitz@netapp.com
Network Appliance 		(408) 562-1906
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
From: injc@helios.rz.tu-clausthal.de (Joerg Czeranski)
Subject: Re: sh/csh interpretation of backquotes 
Organization: Techn. Univ. Clausthal
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL5
Distribution: mf
Date: Sun, 20 Dec 1992 21:13:51 GMT

Shaun Lowry (sml@mfltd.co.uk) wrote:
: 
: Can anyone tell me why 
: 
: $ echo `tput bold`
: 
: works in sh and ksh, but not in csh?

Maybe csh gets confused, because it tries to break the output of
`tput' into words.  You may try:
% echo "`tput bold`"

I have tried this with both sh/csh and it gives the desired result
(on SunOS 4.1.3).

Joerg

--
Joerg Czeranski
Osteroeder Strasse 55          EMail injc@sun.rz.tu-clausthal.de
W-3392 Clausthal-Zellerfeld    SMTP  injc@[139.174.1.3]
Germany

(.sig under construction, sorry for the inconvenience)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards,alt.folklore.computers
From: bogstad@gauss.cs.jhu.edu (Bill Bogstad)
Subject: Re: So You Want To Be A Wizard? (A modest proposal)
Organization: Johns Hopkins Computer Science Department, Baltimore, MD
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 08:05:51 GMT

In article <1992Dec14.054857.6882@netcom.com> hitz@netapp.com writes:
>In article <1jlgwJ#6PNbyC9ljB052jnDYX3BKLvj=esr@snark.thyrsus.com> esr@snark.thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond) writes:

>My advice is questionable (due to my lack of a wizard hat), but I
>recommend the Lions books highly.  The UNIX kernel today is so large
>that few (if any) have time to read and understand it all.  But you
>*can* read and undertand the 9000 lines in Lions.  In my experience,
>understanding the simple way that something can be done often clarifies
>the more complicated current way.

	Unfortunately, the Lions books hasn't been legally available in quite
some time (over a decade I think).  If you want to start with something
small and Unix-like, I'ld suggest getting a copy of Minix and the book that
goes with it.  It's legally available and is probably as similar to modern
Unix kernels as the V6 kernel described in the Lions books anyway.

				Bill Bogstad
Xref: sparky comp.unix.wizards:5232 comp.unix.admin:6652
From: adf@crosfield.co.uk (alex france)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards,comp.unix.admin
Subject: Re: Causes Of Death On Heavily-Loaded UNIX System?
Date: 15 Dec 92 11:58:49 GMT
Organization: Crosfield Electronics, Hemel Hempstead, United Kingdom.

In article <1gjlnjINN9eb@smurf.sti.com> westes@smurf.sti.com (Will Estes) writes:
>A local SunOS host is experiencing extremely poor performance, and I am
>interested in understanding .....
>
>A typical symptom of poor performance on the subject system would be
>very slow character echoing in a vi session, with occasional delays of
>as much as 15 seconds when you type a character.
>

It has been my experienc that these kind of delays are caused when
there are too many processes chasing too few pages of memory. After a
couple of seconds of inactivity (i.e. you thinking a moment) your
vi process becomes eligible to have pages stolen, and in a very busy
system then proceeds to lose them fast. When you next type a character
your process goes back on the run queue, but as it runs faults almost
immediately and goes back on the queue waiting for the page to be
fetched from disk. This repeats itself several times until you finally
get enough pages in to echo the character.

Two solutions to this:-

i) Add more real memory.

ii) Whenever you pause to think, sit there with your hand rocking
    on space-delete-space-delete-.....

Alex.

# Alex France, Crosfield Electronics, | Phone: +44 442 230000 xt.3541 #
# Three Cherry Trees Lane,            | Fax:   +44 442 232301         #
# Hemel Hempstead, HP2 7RH, England.  | Email: adf@crosfield.co.uk    #
From: mouse@thunder.mcrcim.mcgill.edu (der Mouse)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: a novice unix internals question
Date: 20 Dec 92 22:52:10 GMT
Organization: McGill Research Centre for Intelligent Machines

In article <1992Dec16.081648.22123@sbcs.sunysb.edu>, synchem@sbcs.sunysb.edu (Synchem proj acct) writes:

> In the Leffler 4.3BSD Unix book, it was discussed that the run-time
> structure of the kernel is divided into a top and a bottom half.
> [...]  My question is, which process does the bottom half belong
> to[?]

As you guess (in text I deleted), bottom-half routines do not
inherently belong to any process.  If they correspond to a device that
is being used by only one process, they could be thought of as
belonging to that process, but the code is generally not written to
correspond to this, and for some devices (eg, disks) it doesn't even
really make sense.  There usually is some process current when the
bottom half runs, but it bears no relation to anything in particular;
it's simply whatever process happened to have the cpu when the
interrupt happened.  If the machine isn't busy, it's even reasonably
likely that the interrupt happened during the idle loop.  (For example,
the bottom half cannot count on any given process being incore.  Some
things are kept incore even for swapped processes, like the proc struct
in 4.3; these can of course be used once the correct one is found.  But
the u area may be swapped....)

					der Mouse

			    mouse@larry.mcrcim.mcgill.edu
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
From: boyd@prl.dec.com (Boyd Roberts)
Subject: Re: select function
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation - Paris Research Laboratory
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 21:37:31 GMT

In article <1992Dec11.163537.513@gamelan>, thf@zelator.in-berlin.de (Thomas Funke) writes:
> 
> Is this true ? I believe you cannot call something "UNIX" if there is no  
> select(). 
> 

Well there's V6 and V7 for a start.  V7 is pretty definitive.


Boyd Roberts			boyd@prl.dec.com

``Not only is UNIX dead, it's starting to smell really bad.''  -- Rob Pike
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
From: sml@mfltd.co.uk (Shaun Lowry)
Subject: sh/csh interpretation of backquotes 
Organization: Micro Focus Ltd., Newbury, UK
Distribution: mf
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 17:42:08 GMT


Can anyone tell me why 

$ echo `tput bold`

works in sh and ksh, but not in csh?

    Shaun.
-- 
/s(Shaun Lowry)def/g{.7 setgray}def/c{10 0 -1 arc fill}def 300 600 100 0 360 arc
stroke 300 600 50 180 0 arc stroke g 300 600 c stroke 1 2 scale 270 325 c stroke
330 325 c stroke grestore 125 450 moveto/Helvetica findfont 60 scalefont setfont
gsave 0.03 .09 rmoveto g [ 1 0 2 -1 0 0 ] concat s show grestore s show showpage
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
From: klaus@saifr00.cfsat.honeywell.com (Todd Klaus)
Subject:  What is text, data & bss anyway?
Organization: Honeywell Air Transport Systems Division
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 92 23:42:21 GMT

Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: What is text, data & bss anyway?
Summary: 
Expires: 
Followup-To: 
Distribution: 
Organization: Honeywell Air Transport Systems Division
Keywords: 

My collegues and I are experiencing some confusion as to the exact definition
of the text, data and bss segments of a executable image on disk and how this
changes when it is loaded into core memory.  My understanding (simplistic) is
that the text segment is executable instructions, data is initialized data, and 
bss is uinitialized data.  Is this correct?  Could someone please show me a code
fragment showing what types of variables would fall into each category?  As an
aside, does copy-on-write have anything to do with this scheme?

Thanks,

tk

klaus@saifr00.cfsat.honeywell.com
-- 
This is a sample sig file!
From: klaus@saifr00.cfsat.honeywell.com (Todd Klaus)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: What is text, data & bss anyway?
Date: 18 Dec 92 02:19:55 GMT
Organization: Honeywell Air Transport Systems Division

Thanks to everyone who responded on this!

tk


-- 
/=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=\
= Todd C. Klaus                       ! tele : (602) 436-3858             =
=                                     ! net  :                            =
= ZenSoft (tm): Enlightened Solutions ! klaus@saifr00.cfsat.honeywell.com =
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
From: mdw@db.TC.Cornell.EDU (Matt Welsh)
Subject: Re: O Wizards, is there vi w/out shell?
Organization: The Linux Inquisition, Propaganda Division
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1992 06:45:17 GMT

In article <1992Dec11.201528.23902@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>In article <1992Dec11.180118.1144@leland.Stanford.EDU> dkeisen@leland.Stanford.EDU (Dave Eisen) writes:
>>>>Well, basically, what I'm looking for is a vi text editor, or emacs
>>>>acting like vi, for that matter, that will NOT allow shell commands, as
>>
>>>How about setting the SHELL environment variable to something like
>>>/bin/false.  Don't know about other Unixs, but this appears to work
>>>for both vi and gnuemacs on the Ultrix system that I posted this from.
>>
>>This doesn't do any good. The user can still type :set shell=/bin/csh
>>and give himself a shell whenver he wants. The SHELL environment
>>vaiable is only used to initialize the internal vi shell variable.
>
>It is worse than that.  Disallowing ':set shell= ..' does not help.  On
>the version of 'vi' that I use, I can type
>	:r !command
>to read the output of command into the file.  In this case 'vi' uses
>/bin/sh regardless of how $SHELL is defined.

Then replace /bin/sh with a wrapper that only lets
privileged to actually run the shell. That really should work;
I know of a number of UNIX-based BBS's that seem to operate on this
principle. This would be the most secure solution (assuming
that other shells were also locked up, and things like rsh 
were disabled as well).

mdw

-- 
Matt Welsh     mdw@tc.cornell.edu     Cornell Theory Center
  "Go on, emote! I was raised on thought balloons!"
Xref: sparky comp.unix.wizards:5228 comp.unix.admin:6644
From: westes@smurf.sti.com (Will Estes)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards,comp.unix.admin
Subject: Causes Of Death On Heavily-Loaded UNIX System?
Date: 14 Dec 1992 20:08:19 -0800
Organization: Mail Group
NNTP-Posting-Host: smurf.sti.com

A local SunOS host is experiencing extremely poor performance, and I am
interested in understanding a little more about the dynamics of UNIX
performance given a large number of users.  The system in question is a
SPARC2 system that routinely gets about 80 users on it.  The workload
mix is probably something like this:

50% mail
30% news
20% compiles or other activities with heavy file I/O

A typical symptom of poor performance on the subject system would be
very slow character echoing in a vi session, with occasional delays of
as much as 15 seconds when you type a character.

What are the major factors that contribute to performance death on a
system that is heavily loaded by the sheer number of users?  If you
could list the major causes of system slowdown, what would be the
percentage contribution of each cause to the total slowdown of performance 
of the system?  

I realize that performance is a very complex topic, and a lot depends on
particulars of a situation.  Still, I am hoping that some
generalizations can be made, even based on the sparse facts listed
above.  Thanks to all who respond.

-- 
Will Estes		Internet: westes@netcom.com
From: lasseh@microfront.se (Lars Hornborg)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Graphic Library wanted ....
Date: 12 Dec 92 12:30:39 GMT

SCO has their own CGI library as part of the development kit.

Lars.
From: vw@tessa.rug.ac.be (Vincent Willems)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Graphics Support for SCO UNIX
Date: 15 Dec 92 10:07:48 GMT

On a beautifull day dasb%tifrnos%TIFRVAX.BITNET@VM1.NoDak.EDU wrote to me:
>    I am using SCO UNIX SVR3 on a 486 Machine witha very powerful VGA
>    monitor but not able to utilize fully as graphics library is absent.
>    In fact I need a lot of image processing and wish to develop software
>    ourself.

>    What kind of library is used by most of the wizards for grahic
>    manipulation ? Can it be transmitted over the wire ?
>     Library for C or Fortran Compiler will be all right.
>
Hi,

I don't know if it's still availbale, but we have here an SCO CGI (Com-
puter Graphics Interface, with some C libraries and a device drivers suple-
ment).  We bought it as second hand software; right now we're not using it,
so I can't be of more help...

Greetings,

Vincent.

--
-----------Vincent Willems------(vwillems@toeg.rug.ac.be)---------------------
     Zeus RUG mailserver maintainer (info: zeus-info@cdr.rug.ac.be),
              Perikles FTP Mailing List Moderator (please
   mail topics concerning *ONLY* Perikles to Perikles@cdr.rug.ac.be).
-----------"The proper Study of Mankind is man" (Pope)-----------------------



Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
From: mea@polaris.utu.fi (Matti Aarnio)
Subject: Re: select function
Organization: University of Turku, Computing Centre
Date: Sun, 13 Dec 92 23:49:12 GMT

thf@zelator.in-berlin.de (Thomas Funke) writes:
>In article <34398@adm.brl.mil> jbowyer%ovc.vutbr.cs@csbrmu11.bitnet (Jeff  
>Bowyer) writes:
>> I am trying to compile a program under Interactive UNIX (on some
>> machine that I seldom use).  However, the program includes a call to
>> the select() function, which is not present in our Interactive UNIX
>> installation.  What should I use instead of the select() function?

   Add  -linet  into linking phase.
Alternatively, learn the   poll(2)  call of SysV.

>Is this true ? I believe you cannot call something "UNIX" if there is no  
>select(). 

  :-)  (True, I like BSD 4.3+ a lot more than raw SysVr3.2 ..)

>------------------------------------------------------------------
>Thomas Funke  ** E-mail: thf@zelator.in-berlin.de
>NeXT-Developer * Unix-Consultant
>------------------------------------------------------------------

	/Matti Aarnio <mea@nic.funet.fi> <mea@utu.fi>  Postmaster
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
From: rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
Subject: Re: O Wizards, is there vi w/out shell?
Organization: Northern Illinois University
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 19:38:38 GMT

In article <67@nearside.UUCP> shwake@nearside.UUCP (Raymond Shwake) writes:
>dkeisen@leland.Stanford.EDU (Dave Eisen) writes:
>
>	I like to set SHELL to /bin/echo; the only point is to invoke
>	something innocuous.
>
>>This doesn't do any good. The user can still type :set shell=/bin/csh
>>and give himself a shell whenver he wants. The SHELL environment
>>vaiable is only used to initialize the internal vi shell variable.
>
>	Quite true. What I've done is binary patch the "set" string to
>	include an embedded space (like "s x"). Seems to work.

Try doing

	:r !command

chances are you find that still uses /bin/sh, regardless of your SHELL
environment.

Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
From: dcp@fed_img.ingr.com
Subject: How do you setup an rs232 port as the console window
Organization: Intergraph
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 19:42:54 GMT

I have an Intergraph 6000 running unix, with three rs-323 ports.
tty00 is attached to a terminal.  I'ld like to setup one of them
as the console window.  Can I do this using the inittab file in /etc?
Do I have to redirect /dev/console into /dev/tty00 and visa-versa?
Tried:

co:234:respawn:/etc/getty tty00 console
t0:234:respawn:/etc/getty tty00 9600 none

This didn't work.

I used to have an entry something like:
cl:234:respawn:/etc/clink 2>&1
but I don't know what /etc/clink did to link /dev/console into /dev/tty00...

dfw
From: guy@Auspex.COM (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: What is text, data & bss anyway?
Date: 18 Dec 92 02:29:01 GMT
Organization: Auspex Systems, Santa Clara

>Guy> What does GCC do with
>
>Guy> 	const char foo[] = "abcd";
>
>Guy> I.e., does it put it in the text or data segments?  (Text segment, I
>Guy> hope.)
>
>It puts it in the text segment by default. However, you can tell gcc to put
>strings into the data segment (some programs actually expect to be able to
>modify strings!) with the flag -fwritable-strings.

I hope, however, that even with the flag "-fwritable-strings", it'd put
"foo" in the text segment in my example.

I.e., in my example, "abcd" isn't a string constant, it's a string
initializer of a named array of "char".

What does GCC do with

	const int foo[] = { 1, 137, 666 };

Does it put it in the text or data segments?  (Text segment, I hope.) 
The answer should be the same as the answer to my original question....
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
From: rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
Subject: Re: O Wizards, is there vi w/out shell?
Organization: Northern Illinois University
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1992 20:15:28 GMT

In article <1992Dec11.180118.1144@leland.Stanford.EDU> dkeisen@leland.Stanford.EDU (Dave Eisen) writes:
>>>Well, basically, what I'm looking for is a vi text editor, or emacs
>>>acting like vi, for that matter, that will NOT allow shell commands, as
>
>>How about setting the SHELL environment variable to something like
>>/bin/false.  Don't know about other Unixs, but this appears to work
>>for both vi and gnuemacs on the Ultrix system that I posted this from.
>
>This doesn't do any good. The user can still type :set shell=/bin/csh
>and give himself a shell whenver he wants. The SHELL environment
>vaiable is only used to initialize the internal vi shell variable.

It is worse than that.  Disallowing ':set shell= ..' does not help.  On
the version of 'vi' that I use, I can type
	:r !command
to read the output of command into the file.  In this case 'vi' uses
/bin/sh regardless of how $SHELL is defined.
From: rmtodd@servalan.servalan.com (Richard Todd)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: What is text, data & bss anyway?
Date: 19 Dec 92 02:39:47 GMT
Article-I.D.: servalan.BzHJEr.3Kn
Organization: Ministry of Silly Walks

guy@Auspex.COM (Guy Harris) writes:

>What does GCC do with

>	const int foo[] = { 1, 137, 666 };

>Does it put it in the text or data segments?  (Text segment, I hope.) 
>The answer should be the same as the answer to my original question....

As you can see from this example, it puts it in the text segment.  Glad to
see that GCC did the right thing.  (This is with gcc 2.1;  I presume they
haven't changed this in more recent gcc versions...)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
295 servalan /tmp[8:34pm] Z% cat foo.c
 const int foo[] = { 1, 137, 666 };
296 servalan /tmp[8:35pm] Z% gcc -fwritable-strings -S foo.c 
297 servalan /tmp[8:35pm] Z% cat foo.s
#NO_APP
gcc2_compiled.:
        .file "foo.c"
.globl foo
.text
        .even
foo:
        .long 1
        .long 137
        .long 666
298 servalan /tmp[8:35pm] Z% 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
Richard Todd	rmtodd@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu  rmtodd@chinet.chi.il.us
  rmtodd@servalan.uucp  New Improved Domain: rmtodd@servalan.servalan.com
"Try looking in the Yellow Pages under 'Psychotics'." -- Michael Santana
From: jbarth@ep.ieee.org (Jeremy Barth)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: /dev/null and file locking
Date: 18 Dec 92 18:21:07 GMT
Reply-To: jbarth@ep.ieee.org
Organization: IEEE, New York, NY

>What happens when two processes try to lock /dev/null and /dev/another_null?
>
>My guess is the locking is done at the inode level and each will have a
>successful lock.

>>Inode or vnode or equivalent level; that should be true on most if not all
>>flavors of UNIX.

I recall reading in Bach's "The Design of the UNIX Operating System" that
device inodes, unlike regular inodes, are never locked.  I don't remember
what the rationale was -- perhaps someone more knowledgeable than me could 
comment.


Jeremy
From: sbmn@hpcupt3.cup.hp.com (S.Subramanian(contr))
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 18:32:55 GMT
Subject: Re: defunct processes with fork and sockets
Organization: Hewlett Packard, Cupertino