Communication via native IPC

Once a resource manager has established its pathname prefix, it will receive messages whenever any client program tries to do an open(), read(), write(), etc. on that pathname. For example, after devc-ser* has taken over the pathname /dev/ser1, and a client program executes:

fd = open ("/dev/ser1", O_RDONLY);

the client's C library will construct an _IO_CONNECT message, which it then sends to the devc-ser* resource manager via IPC.

Some time later, when the client program executes:

read (fd, buf, BUFSIZ);

the client's C library constructs an _IO_READ message, which is then sent to the resource manager.

A key point is that all communications between the client program and the resource manager are done through native IPC messaging. This allows for a number of unique features:

• A well-defined interface to application programs. In a development environment, this allows a very clean division of labor for the implementation of the client side and the resource manager side.
• A simple interface to the resource manager. Since all interactions with the resource manager go through native IPC, and there are no special “back door” hooks or arrangements with the OS, the writer of a resource manager can focus on the task at hand, rather than worry about all the special considerations needed in other operating systems.
• Free network transparency. Since the underlying native IPC messaging mechanism is inherently network-distributed without any additional effort required by the client or server (resource manager), programs can seamlessly access resources on other nodes in the network without even being aware that they're going over a network.

Consider FTP filesystems, for instance. Here a resource manager would take over a portion of the pathname space (e.g., /ftp) and allow users to cd into FTP sites to get files. For example, cd /ftp/rtfm.mit.edu/pub would connect to the FTP site rtfm.mit.edu and change directory to /pub. After that point, the user could open, edit, or copy files.

Application-specific filesystems would be another example of a user-written resource manager. Given an application that makes extensive use of disk-based files, a custom tailored filesystem can be written that works with that application and delivers superior performance.

The possibilities for custom resource managers are limited only by the application developer's imagination.