[TUHS] 4.1c bsd ptrace man entry ("ptrace is unique and arcane")

[Rob Pike]

I have no informed opinion on Linux's /proc.

-rob


On Wed, Jun 26, 2019 at 10:46 AM Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:

> I'm curious what Rob and others think of the Linux /proc.  It's string
> based and it seems like it is more like /whatever_you_might_want.
>
> The AT&T /proc that Faulkner worked on was much more narrow in scope,
> in keeping with the Unix tradition.  The linux /proc was both a way
> to dig into kernel stuff and control kernel stuff, it was way broader.
>
> On Wed, Jun 26, 2019 at 10:37:39AM +1000, Rob Pike wrote:
> > Peter Weinberger started and Tom Killian finalized a version of /proc for
> > the eighth edition that is ioctl-driven. It was done in the early 1980s.
> I
> > don't know where the idea originated.
> >
> > In Plan 9, we (I?) replaced the ioctl interface, which was offensively
> > non-portable.
> >
> > -rob
> >
> >
> > On Wed, Jun 26, 2019 at 10:01 AM ron minnich <rminnich at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > On Tue, Jun 25, 2019 at 12:34 PM Norman Wilson <norman at oclsc.org>
> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > It's interesting that this comment about ptrace was written
> > > > as early as 1980.
> > > >
> > > > Ron Minnich's reference to Plan 9 /proc misses the mark, though.
> > >
> > > your comment about my comment misses the mark; I was not talking about
> > > the origins of /proc. This is probably because I was not clear and
> > > probably because few people realize that the plan 9 process debugging
> > > interface was strings written and read to/from /proc/<pid>/[various
> > > files], rather than something like ptrace.
> > >
> > > The first time I saw that debug-interface-in-proc in plan 9, it made
> > > me think back to the 4.1c bsd manual ptrace comment, and I wondered if
> > > there was any path that led from this man page entry to the ideas in
> > > the plan 9 methods.
> > >
> > > I actually implemented the plan 9 debug model in linux back around
> > > 2007, but was pretty sure getting it upstream would never happen, so
> > > let it die.
> > >
> > > ron
> > >
>
> --
> ---
> Larry McVoy                  lm at mcvoy.com
> http://www.mcvoy.com/lm
>
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