Table Of ContentS I
OLARIS NTERNALS
Core Kernel Components
i
S I
OLARIS NTERNALS
Core Kernel Components
Jim Mauro and Richard McDougall
Sun Microsystems Press
A Prentice Hall Title
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A Prentice Hall Title
For Traci.
.. for your love and encouragement
..........................................Richard
For Donna, Frankie and Dominick.
All my love, always...
..........................................Jim
A
CKNOWLEDGEMENTS
It ‘s hard to thank all people that helped us with this book. As a minimum, we owe:
• Thanks to Brian Wong, Adrian Cockcroft, Paul Strong, Lisa Musgrave and
Fraser Gardiner for all your help and advise for the structure and content of
this book.
• Thanks to Tony Shoumack, Phil Harman, Jim Moore, Robert Miller, Martin
Braid, Robert Lane, Bert Beals, Magnus Bergman, Calum Mackay, Allan
Packer, Magnus Bergman, Chris Larson, Bill Walker, Keith Bierman, Dan
Mick and Raghunath Shenbagam for helping to review the material.
• A very special thanks to David Collier-Brown, Norm Shulman, Dominic Kay,
Jarod Jenson, Bob Sneed, and Evert Hoogendoorn for painstaking page by
page reviews of the whole book.
• Our thanks to the engineers in the Solaris business unit - Jim Litchfield,
Michael Shapiro, Jeff Bonwick, Wolfgang Thaler, Bryan Cantrill, Roger
Faulker, Andy Tucker, Casper Dik, Tim Marsland, Andy Rudoff, Greg Onufer,
Rob Gingell, Devang Shah, Deepankar Das, Dan Price and Kit Chow for
their advise and guidance. We’re quite sure there are others, and we apolo-
gize up front to those whose names we have missed.
• ThankyoutothesystemsengineersandtechnicalsupportstaffatSunforthe
corrections and suggestions along the way.
• Thanks to Lou Marchant - for the endless search for engine pictures, and
Dwayne Schumate at Lotus Cars USA for coordinating permission to use the
images of the Lotus V8 engine.
• Thanks to the folks at Prentice Hall - Greg Doench for his patience (we did
slip this thing a few times) and support.
vii
viii Acknowledgements
• Thanks to our enduring copy editor, Mary Lou Nohr for her top notch edito-
rial work and style suggestions.
Without your help, this book wouldn’t be what it is today.
From Jim:
I wish to personally acknowledge Jeff Bonwick and Andy Tucker of Solaris ker-
nel engineering. They demonstrated great patience in clarifying things that were
complex to me but second nature to them. They answered innumerous emails,
which contributed significantly to the accuracy of the text, as well as insuring all
thekeypointsweremade.Theyalsoprovidedsomewonderfulexplanationsinvar-
ious areas of the source code, which definitely helped.
Roger Faulkner and Jim Litchfield, also of Solaris kernel engineering, deserve
and additional note of thanks for their efforts and time.
Thanks to Nobel Shelby and Casey Palowitch for reviewing sections of the
manuscript and providing insightful feedback and suggestions.
I owe a debt of gratitude to Hal Stern that goes way beyond his support for this
work. His mentoring, guidance and friendship over the years have had a profound
impact on my development at Sun.
Last, but certainly not least, comes the family acknowledgment. This may
appear cliche’, as every technical book I’ve ever seen recognizes the writers family
in the acknowledgements section. Well, there’s a very good reason for that. There
are only 24 hours in a day and 7 days in a week. That doesn’t change just because
you decide to write a book, nor do the other things that demand your time, like
your job, your house, your lawn, etc., all of a sudden become less demanding. So
the ones that end up getting the short end of the stick is invariably your family.
Thus, my deepest gratitude goes to my wife Donna, and my sons, Frankie and
Dominick. Without their love, sacrifice and support, I would not have been able to
complete this work. Thanks guys, I’m back now (of course, there is that pesky lit-
tle matter of the updated version for Solaris 8...).
Jim Mauro
[email protected]
Green Brook, New Jersey
June, 2000
Acknowledgements ix
From Richard:
I would like to thank Adrian Cockcroft and Brian Wong for first giving me the
opportunity to join their engineering group in 1995, working from my remote out-
post in Australia. Their leadership and guidance has meant a lot to me during my
career at Sun.
Thank you to our friends, visitors and family who seemingly understood for 2
years when I abstained from many invites to dinners, day trips and fun events cit-
ing “when the books done...”. Yes - itis done now!
And yes, a special thank you to my wife Traci, who provided a seemingly end-
less amount of encouragement and personal sacrifice along the way. This project
would have been forever unfinished without her unquestionable co-operation and
support.
Richard McDougall
[email protected]
Cupertino, California
June, 2000
x Acknowledgements
