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This article is based on material taken from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing prior to 1 November 2008 and incorporated under the "relicensing" terms of the GFDL, version 1.3 or later. |
open,read,write and close, and fork,exec,exit and wait should all be in whatever truetype font we normally use to represent programs or functions. Can someone get around to this? I'm not leet to change the font. -- Carbonrodney 12:08, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
Do we need the Category:System calls ? ` a5b ( talk) 11:17, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
User:Calaka proposed merger of Supervisor Call instruction into System call with the subject To me the sound like the same thing but otherwise leave as they are or maybe add a see also section. Ref here: http://www.answers.com/topic/supervisor-call.
Oppose - They are not the same thing. The Supervisor Call instruction simply causes an interrupt; it is up to the interrupt handler to decode the SVC number, determine the type of routine and dispatch it. Instruction like MME and SVC can be used as part of the implimentation of a System Call, but they are not themselves System Calls.
This is very different from, e.g., the Program Call instruction. PC and similar instructions actually perform the context switch and dispatch the proper routine without intervention from the operating system, although they do rely on the proper control blocks and registers having been initialized. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul ( talk) 06:43, 14 November 2010 (UTC)
Oppose - system call is for the general concept, Supervisor Call instruction is for a particular instruction that's used to implement it. (Shorter Guy Harris: "what he said.") Guy Harris ( talk) 21:00, 17 November 2010 (UTC)
Strongly Oppose - PC, etcetera, are new to S/390, etcetera, and are apparently similar to competitive architecture implementations whereas SVC is historical, and is specific to the S/360 and successor architectures. In actual applications, SVC has proved to be faster than PC, although PC is less constrained, whereas SVC is architecturally constrained to 256 distinct functions (a few of which have been "extended"), with functions 0x00 on up to about 127 defined for IBM-supplied and supported functions, and with functions 0xFF on down to about 128 reserved for user-supplied and supported functions. SVC's implementation implicitly includes at least a first-level (SVC) interrupt handler, and possibly a second-level (SVC) interrupt handler with associated control blocks for saving of status, plus the possibility for a delayed return to the SVC invoker, or the immediate return to the SVC invoker. In the delayed return case, the OS supervisor's dispatcher is possibly involved, and may cause a task switch (which PC cannot and does not do). Finally, SVC allows for the possibility of the invoked function running disabled for interrupts (SVC Type 6 in MVS also Type 1 in pre-MVS). To merge SVC with PC or other similarly named functions would be a serious mistake and would not be true to history. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Peterh5322 ( talk • contribs) 17:48, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
Oppose - "Supervisor Call instruction" goes into a lot of IBM-specific detail that would be out of place in "system call", a more general article. Peter Flass ( talk) 00:32, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
Oppose - Really? Is "sound like the same thing" a valid justification? The name of the planet "Uranus" can be pronounced as if it is a part of a person's body, not a heavenly body; should Uranus be merged with human anatomy? Sam Tomato ( talk) 20:32, 30 April 2018 (UTC)
Hey Peter Flass! Regarding your recent edit, I'd say that this description of the available multithreading models and associated mappings between user-level and kernel-level threads would fit much better into an article that deals with the threads themselves, while System call article should contain just a very brief summary of the pros and cons between various models. Thoughts? — Dsimic ( talk | contribs) 05:20, 14 September 2014 (UTC)
Some hardware architectures, e.g., GE 645 [1], Intel iAPX 432, have provision in the architectures for calls through, e.g., access descriptors, gateway segments, that raise or lower the privilege level, or even cause a task switch. These are similar to the newer IBM instruction Program Call. Should System call say anything about those? Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul ( talk) 17:58, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
References
Who first started using the term "system call"? The article should include this info. Pacerier ( talk) 02:42, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
The "library as an intermediary" section describes undocumented mechanisms, or at least mechanisms the typical application programmer does not use. In my opinion the internals of how a system works is more of the system side than the application side. By definition of what a system call mechanism is, the typical application programmer's view of how to interface with the operating system should be described, at least for a typical assembler programmer.
For example, for Windows, system calls are made by calls to DLLs. The internals of what the DLLs do are the system side, not the application side. Even an assembler program would typically call a DLL to call Windows. For other operating systems, an assembler programmer might use a machine instruction, such as "int" or "svc". Sam Tomato ( talk) 20:52, 30 April 2018 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
System call article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
This
level-5 vital article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
This article is based on material taken from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing prior to 1 November 2008 and incorporated under the "relicensing" terms of the GFDL, version 1.3 or later. |
open,read,write and close, and fork,exec,exit and wait should all be in whatever truetype font we normally use to represent programs or functions. Can someone get around to this? I'm not leet to change the font. -- Carbonrodney 12:08, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
Do we need the Category:System calls ? ` a5b ( talk) 11:17, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
User:Calaka proposed merger of Supervisor Call instruction into System call with the subject To me the sound like the same thing but otherwise leave as they are or maybe add a see also section. Ref here: http://www.answers.com/topic/supervisor-call.
Oppose - They are not the same thing. The Supervisor Call instruction simply causes an interrupt; it is up to the interrupt handler to decode the SVC number, determine the type of routine and dispatch it. Instruction like MME and SVC can be used as part of the implimentation of a System Call, but they are not themselves System Calls.
This is very different from, e.g., the Program Call instruction. PC and similar instructions actually perform the context switch and dispatch the proper routine without intervention from the operating system, although they do rely on the proper control blocks and registers having been initialized. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul ( talk) 06:43, 14 November 2010 (UTC)
Oppose - system call is for the general concept, Supervisor Call instruction is for a particular instruction that's used to implement it. (Shorter Guy Harris: "what he said.") Guy Harris ( talk) 21:00, 17 November 2010 (UTC)
Strongly Oppose - PC, etcetera, are new to S/390, etcetera, and are apparently similar to competitive architecture implementations whereas SVC is historical, and is specific to the S/360 and successor architectures. In actual applications, SVC has proved to be faster than PC, although PC is less constrained, whereas SVC is architecturally constrained to 256 distinct functions (a few of which have been "extended"), with functions 0x00 on up to about 127 defined for IBM-supplied and supported functions, and with functions 0xFF on down to about 128 reserved for user-supplied and supported functions. SVC's implementation implicitly includes at least a first-level (SVC) interrupt handler, and possibly a second-level (SVC) interrupt handler with associated control blocks for saving of status, plus the possibility for a delayed return to the SVC invoker, or the immediate return to the SVC invoker. In the delayed return case, the OS supervisor's dispatcher is possibly involved, and may cause a task switch (which PC cannot and does not do). Finally, SVC allows for the possibility of the invoked function running disabled for interrupts (SVC Type 6 in MVS also Type 1 in pre-MVS). To merge SVC with PC or other similarly named functions would be a serious mistake and would not be true to history. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Peterh5322 ( talk • contribs) 17:48, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
Oppose - "Supervisor Call instruction" goes into a lot of IBM-specific detail that would be out of place in "system call", a more general article. Peter Flass ( talk) 00:32, 10 September 2012 (UTC)
Oppose - Really? Is "sound like the same thing" a valid justification? The name of the planet "Uranus" can be pronounced as if it is a part of a person's body, not a heavenly body; should Uranus be merged with human anatomy? Sam Tomato ( talk) 20:32, 30 April 2018 (UTC)
Hey Peter Flass! Regarding your recent edit, I'd say that this description of the available multithreading models and associated mappings between user-level and kernel-level threads would fit much better into an article that deals with the threads themselves, while System call article should contain just a very brief summary of the pros and cons between various models. Thoughts? — Dsimic ( talk | contribs) 05:20, 14 September 2014 (UTC)
Some hardware architectures, e.g., GE 645 [1], Intel iAPX 432, have provision in the architectures for calls through, e.g., access descriptors, gateway segments, that raise or lower the privilege level, or even cause a task switch. These are similar to the newer IBM instruction Program Call. Should System call say anything about those? Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul ( talk) 17:58, 19 February 2015 (UTC)
References
Who first started using the term "system call"? The article should include this info. Pacerier ( talk) 02:42, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
The "library as an intermediary" section describes undocumented mechanisms, or at least mechanisms the typical application programmer does not use. In my opinion the internals of how a system works is more of the system side than the application side. By definition of what a system call mechanism is, the typical application programmer's view of how to interface with the operating system should be described, at least for a typical assembler programmer.
For example, for Windows, system calls are made by calls to DLLs. The internals of what the DLLs do are the system side, not the application side. Even an assembler program would typically call a DLL to call Windows. For other operating systems, an assembler programmer might use a machine instruction, such as "int" or "svc". Sam Tomato ( talk) 20:52, 30 April 2018 (UTC)