user configurability

I was looking through some of the lib code the other day,
and in particular the shared lib stuff, and it dawned
on me that in some ways VSTa is not as configurable as
it could (should?) be. Each user is free to set up their
own mount table to customize their environment. Some
items, though, are accessed through fixed port numbers
and do not allow a user to replace them. In the case
of the shared libraries, the loader requires that libs
exist in /vsta/lib on the partition registered as fs/root
in the namer. Further, the namer is gotten through
the hardwired port "1". Many other services also use
the fixed namer port for locating things.

I was thinking that there may be situations where it
would be desirable to set up a completely custom
version of the root directory. In less extreme situations
a user may wish to provide his own lib directory.
In the first situation, it would be nice if one could
set up their own custom namer, or perhaps use the
existing namer to set up a sub-namespace to use. In
the second situation, it would be nice if the loaders
were able to traverse filesystems to search for the
lib directory.

How hard would it be for the loader to get access to
the mount table that is passed across an exec? I
dont imagine that the fs walking code would take up
much more space. Perhaps it could even be put in the
second stage loader, so that the first loader does not
have to grow at all.

It should also be quite easy to find the namer through
a lib call that first tried to find the namer at a fixed
path in the mount table, or perhaps through an env variable,
and then fell back to using port 1 if that technique failed
(for example, during the boot process).

I guess the question is, are such changes warranted?
Comments?

                                  Tim N.
Received on Tue Sep 19 20:57:23 2000