Does anyone still use Multics??

[Barry Margolin]

In article <Dec.5.23.16.06.1988.13632 at athos.rutgers.edu> webber at athos.rutgers.edu (Bob Webber) writes:
>Is there anything one should be aware of that isn't presented in the
>Organick book?

I don't recall how much the book talks about details of the file
system implementation, but it was extensively revised in the early
70's.  Additionally, at the time the book was written, the ring
security facility was implemented primarily in software (resulting in
many unavoidable security holes), and it was later moved into the
hardware; all the stuff in the book about the gatekeeper routine is
obsolete.

Most of the rest of the book is still pretty accurate.  The dynamic
linker and the the memory mapped file system haven't changed much.
Peripheral I/O has been improved quite a bit, but I doubt that the
book goes into that much.

Barry Margolin
Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar at think.com
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