[GRLUG] Tanenbaum in Ann Arbor

[Bob Kline]

Basically correct I believe.  Minix first
came out about 30 years ago, with a
book, as a reaction to the fact that AT&T,
owners of Unix, would no longer let
schools have Unix source code to study.
A truly sad decision for the world...

Anyone here plan to try it, if only for fun.

    --  Bob


On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 12:28 PM, Michael Mol <mikemol at gmail.com> wrote:

> My understanding is that it's primarily an educational tool.
>
> Debian and Arch both have Hurd distributions, if you want to try a
> microkernel system. As I recall, Emacs was recently ported to Hurd as
> well (via the Arch distribution, not directly on top, amusing as that
> would be), which means you should be able to do darn near anything.
>
> Expect the driver availability issues to feel a lot like Linux in the
> mid to late 90s.
>
> With luck, SATA AHCI, SVGA, USB UHCI/EHCI and a handful of
> standardized USB profiles like HID(intput) and CDC(networking) would
> be close to enough to get a new system's foot in the door on x86.
>
> On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 12:03 PM, Ben Rousch <brousch at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Just in case any of you are interested ...
> >
> > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> > From: Dug Song <dugsong at monkey.org>
> > Date: Mon, Jan 3, 2011 at 11:26 AM
> > Subject: [a2geeks] Fwd: andrew tanenbaum speaking wednesday
> > To: a2geeks <a2geeks at googlegroups.com>
> >
> >
> > Wow, MINIX still going!
> >
> > Curious to see what new direction they've taken it in (how is this
> > different than exokernels)? Linux did prevail after all (e.g.
> > http://www.dina.dk/~abraham/Linus_vs_Tanenbaum.html ), and it seems
> > there are only microkernel vestiges left in Windows or MacOS X.
> >
> > This should be a good one. Please fwd it to any systems folks you know!
> >
> > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> > From: peter honeyman <honey at citi.umich.edu>
> > Date: Mon, Jan 3, 2011 at 11:08 AM
> > Subject: andrew tanenbaum speaking wednesday
> > To: thebackrow at citi.umich.edu
> > Cc: Greg Minshall <minshall at umich.edu>
> >
> >
> > TITLE: MINIX3: A Reliable and Secure Operating System
> >
> > BY: Andrew Tanenbaum, Vrije Universiteit
> >
> > WHERE: Wednesday Jan 5, 4:30-5:30, 1690 CSE
> >
> > ABSTRACT:
> > Most computer users nowadays are nontechnical people and have a
> > mental model of what they expect from a computer based on their
> > experience with TV sets and stereos: you buy it, plug it in, and
> > it works perfectly for the next 10 years. Unfortunately, they are
> > often disappointed as computers are not very reliable when
> > measured against the standards of other consumer electronics
> > devices.
> >
> > A large part of the problem is the operating system, which is
> > often millions of lines of kernel code, each of which can
> > potentially bring the system down. The worst offenders are the
> > device drivers, which have been shown to have bug rates 3-7x more
> > than the rest of the system. As long as we maintain the current
> > structure of the operating system as a huge single monolithic
> > program full of foreign code and running in kernel mode, the
> > situation will only get worse. While there have been ad hoc
> > attempts to patch legacy systems, what is needed is a different
> > approach.
> >
> > In an attempt to provide much higher reliability, we have created
> > a new multiserver operating system with only 5000 lines in kernel
> > and the rest of the operating system split up into small
> > components each running as a separate user-mode process. For
> > example, each device driver runs as a separate process and is
> > rigidly controlled by the kernel to give it the absolute minimum
> > amount of power to prevent bugs in it from damaging other system
> > components. A reincarnation server periodically tests each user-
> > mode component and automatically replaces failed or failing
> > components on the fly, without bringing the system down and in
> > some cases without affecting user processes. The talk will
> > discuss the architecture of this system, called MINIX 3.
> >
> > The system can be downloaded for free from www.minix3.org.
> >
> > BIO:
> > Andrew Stuart "Andy" Tanenbaum is a member of the faculty of the
> > Department of Computer Systems, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, in
> > the Netherlands. He is best known as the author of Minix, a free
> > UNIX operating system, and for his computer science textbooks. He
> > was born in New York City and raised in White Plains, NY. He
> > received his undergraduate degree from MIT and his doctorate from
> > UC Berkeley. Currently, he teaches courses about Computer Organization
> > and Operating Systems. He is well recognized for his texts on
> > computer science, which are famous as standard texts in the field,
> > including "Computer Networks", "Operating Systems: Design and
> > Implementation", and "Structured Computer Organization".
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > http://monkey.org/~dugsong/
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Discuss mailing list
> > Discuss at mug.org
> > http://www.mug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss
> >
> > --
> >   Ben Rousch
> >   brousch at gmail.com
> >   http://ishmilok.blogspot.com/
> >
> > --
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> >
>
>
>
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> :wq
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