Re: DragonFlyBSD / 386BSD 1.0 - modularity

["Pedro F. Giffuni" <giffunip@xxxxxxxx>]

From my understanding.. there's not much 386BSD left on FreeBSD, since 
the 2.x series they (re)started from the BSD4-lite code.  Perhaps the 
most notable caracteristic of FreeBSD is it's unified VM/cache; mostly 
the masterpiece of John Dyson. I understand NetBSD was more conservative 
during this particular stage.

About books.. there is "The Design and Implementation of FreeBSD", by 
Kirk McKusick and others.

DragonFly and FreeBSD-5.x have a lot of divergences though, and I doubt 
they are covered in any book.

hope that helps,

    Pedro.


Alex Burke wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have been reading up allot on the history of BSD based operating
> systems, and I know that Net/FreeBSDs came from 386BSD 0.1 (based
> heavily on 4.3 Net/2 tape with missing files replaced) with patch kits
> applied.
>
> As I understand it, 386BSD 1.0 was the continuation of 0.1 but with
> the kernel modularized. Since I have read that DragonFlyBSD aims to
> eventually try to run large components (such as VFS) in user land, I
> was wondering whether conceptually they are at all similar? What is
> the eventual aim of DragonFlyBSD and userland services?
>
> I realise that this might seem stupid question since the code has
> changed so much (4.4BSD-Lite code integrated, VM system...etc) but I
> guess this is my attempt to try to understand things better, hopefully
> with the aim of one day being able to help in some form.
>
> I also wanted to ask if anybody knew any good books about the
> architecture of BSD systems that can be read by someone no already
> knowledgeable about kernel design.
>
> Thanks in advance, Alex J Burke