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Re: Don Norman: The Truth About Unix

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In article <KqODR.276695$4wI6.150281@fx24.iad>,
Scott Lurndal <slp53@pacbell.net> wrote:
>cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) writes:
>>In article <slrn10tq1pr.467.anthk@openbsd.home>,
>>Anthk  <anthk@disroot.org> wrote:
>>>On 2026-01-27, Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
>>>> [snip]
>>>> The truth about Unix: The user interface is horrid
>>>> Donald A. Norman
>>>> Department of Psychology and Program in Cognitive Science
>>>> Center for Human Information Processing
>>>> University of California, San Diego
>>>> La Jolla, California 92093
>>>>
>>>> [snip 500+ lines of quoted text]
>>>
>>>9front tried to fix consistency on commands, everything it's a file (yes,
>>>no ioctls), and far less syscalls.
>>>
>>>Plan9/9front killed Unix for the good.
>>
>>It is true that the number of system calls Plan 9 exposes is
>>smaller than anything in the Unix family, and there is no
>>`ioctl`.  But regardless of that, the system Plan 9 interface is
>>deceptively wide: each driver synthesizes a small filesystem
>>for userspace programs to interact with it, and usually exposes
>>a `ctl` file that takes free-form text to direct a device or
>>other program to do something; these must be parsed, in the
>>kernel.  Fortunately, there are some library routines to help
>>with this.  But as a result, the system interface is arguably
>>less coherent than `ioctl`.
>
>SVR4 picked up some of this when they replaced 'ptrace' with
>the /proc file system as the debugger-kernel interface for
>application debugging.
>
>With /proc, the interfaces were binary, not text, however,
>so the kernel wasn't required to parse strings.
>
>     STRUCTURE OF /proc/pid
>          A given directory /proc/pid contains the following entries:
>
>          as        Contains the address-space image of the process;
>                    the file can be opened for both reading and writing.
>                    lseek is used to position the file at the virtual
>                    address of interest and then the address space can
>                    be examined or changed through read and write.
>
>          ctl       A write-only file to which structured messages are
>                    written directing the system to change some aspect
>                    of the process's state or control its behavior in
>                    some way. The types of control messages are
>                    described in detail below. Individual LWPs also
>                    have associated lwpctl files. A control message may
>                    be written either to the process's ctl file or to
>                    a specific lwpctl file with operation-specific
>                    effects as described. The effect of a control
>                    message is immediately reflected in the state of
>                    the process visible through appropriate status and
>                    information files.
>
>          status    Contains state information about the process and one
>                    of its LWPs (chosen according to rules described
>                    below).
>    ...
>

Yeah, that was the original procfs; Killian did it in 8th
Edition Research Unix (which was, itself, basically a "re-port"
of 4.1BSD).  Faulkner did procfs2 for Solaris (wikipedia says
Sol2.6), which follows the binary-only model of the original..

Linux's /proc was modeled after the Plan 9 code.

Norman Wilson said that after everything was switched over to
the FS-based model, he glued the (facing) pages for `ptrace(2)`
together in the UPM in the Unix Room.  :-D

	- Dan C.

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Re: Don Norman: The Truth About Unix Anthk <anthk@disroot.org> - 2026-04-15 06:48 +0000
  Re: Don Norman: The Truth About Unix cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2026-04-15 11:24 +0000
    Re: Don Norman: The Truth About Unix scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2026-04-15 15:47 +0000
      Re: Don Norman: The Truth About Unix cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2026-04-15 16:11 +0000
  Re: Don Norman: The Truth About Unix Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-04-15 22:10 +0000

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