[TUHS] UNIX of choice these days?

[Larry McVoy]

+1 on what Ron said.  I don't get the rationale for going back to ptrace.
Anyone know what it is?  Is there a perf issue?

On Sun, Sep 24, 2017 at 02:02:54PM +0000, ron minnich wrote:
> ptrace replaces procfs? Wow, that's a disappointing turn of events. It's
> also against the flow of thought in the Unix community I knew in 1980. If
> somebody has any of the old ca-1980 BSD manuals, you should find a BUGS
> section on ptrace advocating a move to a file-system-like interface. I
> always assumed ken wrote that little note when he was visiting UCB --
> anybody know?
> 
> Plan 9 implements process debug via /proc, and several debuggers use that
> interface -- including, in harvey, gdbstub so we can remote gdb processes.
> I also implemented an strace-like command by extending /proc/pid/ctl with a
> few extra commands. In so doing, I made it possible to write strace with a
> shell script, which was kind of fun.
> 
> I always felt the /proc/pid/ctl model in Plan 9 implemented what we hoped
> to see implemented in Unix to replace ptrace. ptrace, even the new ones,
> are clunky in the best times.
> 
> The file system model is powerful. The strace based on /proc was a few
> dozen lines.
> 
> 
> 
> On Sun, Sep 24, 2017 at 6:47 AM Andy Kosela <akosela at andykosela.com> wrote:
> 
> >
> >
> > On Saturday, September 23, 2017, Steve Mynott <steve.mynott at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> >> On 23 September 2017 at 10:17, Dario Niedermann
> >> <dario at darioniedermann.it> wrote:
> >> > Il 20/09/2017 alle 02:39, Dave Horsfall ha scritto:
> >> >
> >> >> Definitely FreeBSD, because it's solid, has thousands of ports,
> >> >> and well, is BSD...
> >> >
> >> > I have been a user in the past, but I just can't forgive FreeBSD for
> >> > abandoning the proc filesystem  :-(
> >>
> >> procfs still exists in FreeBSD and can be added to fstab but isn't
> >> mounted by default after an install.
> >>
> >> Generally the BSDs (and OS X) don't seem to actively maintain procfs
> >> and it has been remove from OpenBSD.
> >>
> >> --
> >> 4096R/EA75174B Steve Mynott <steve.mynott at gmail.com>
> >>
> >>
> > This is not true.  Procfs has been deprecated in FreeBSD since at
> > least 2012.
> >
> >   https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/head/sys/fs/procfs/procfs.c?view=log
> >
> > And replacement for procfs is not sysctl, but rather ptrace(2).
> >
> >   https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-fs/2011-February/010765.html
> >
> > I am one of those that also did not like that.  There is some magical
> > simplicity in the way procfs is implemented -- it spells real UNIX to me.
> >
> > --Andy
> >
> >
> >

-- 
---
Larry McVoy            	     lm at mcvoy.com             http://www.mcvoy.com/lm