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- .\" Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
- .\" All rights reserved.
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- .\" must display the following acknowledgement:
- .\" This product includes software developed by the University of
- .\" California, Berkeley and its contributors.
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- .\" may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software
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- .\" @(#)1.0.t 6.3 (Berkeley) 4/17/91
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- .ds ss 1
- .sh "Kernel primitives
- .PP
- The facilities available to a UNIX user process are logically
- divided into two parts: kernel facilities directly implemented by
- UNIX code running in the operating system, and system facilities
- implemented either by the system, or in cooperation with a
- \fIserver process\fP. These kernel facilities are described in
- this section 1.
- .PP
- The facilities implemented in the kernel are those which define the
- \fIUNIX virtual machine\fP in which each process runs.
- Like many real machines, this virtual machine has memory management hardware,
- an interrupt facility, timers and counters. The UNIX
- virtual machine also allows access to files and other objects through a set of
- \fIdescriptors\fP. Each descriptor resembles a device controller,
- and supports a set of operations. Like devices on real machines, some
- of which are internal to the machine and some of which are external,
- parts of the descriptor machinery are built-in to the operating system, while
- other parts are often implemented in server processes on other machines.
- The facilities provided through the descriptor machinery are described in
- section 2.
- .ds ss 2
-