[cap-talk] Modelling capability manipulation

[Bill Frantz]

neal at walfield.org (Neal H. Walfield) on Thursday, November 20, 2008 wrote:

>What is the right way to expose and think about interfaces such as
>cap_copy?

The way KeyKOS, CapROS, and Coyotos describe them is that some
object capable of sending or receiving capabilities is being
invoked. These systems define a number of objects which can store
capabilities.

For example, there is the Node[1]: The node has a fixed number of
slots which can store capabilities. Calls on the node either fetch
or store a particular slot.

Another example is the process[2] or domain: Since this object
represents a possibly running process, fetches and stores may
directly address that process's capability registers.

In the case of copying a capability between a process's registers,
an external object is used. In practice, that object is frequently
the process object for the process's own process or the
returner[3].


[I was having trouble getting to www.agorics.com, so the returner
description below is from the Google cache.]

[1] <http://www.eros-os.org/devel/ObRef/primary/Node.html>
[2] <http://www.eros-os.org/devel/ObRef/primary/Process.html>
[3] <http://209.85.173.132/search?q=cache:Qi2wyJ7aN78J:www.agorics.com/Library/KeyKos/Gnosis/43.html+http://www.agorics.com/Library/KeyKos/Gnosis/43.html&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us#retner>

Cheers - Bill

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