[coyotos-dev] Binary naming

[Valerio Bellizzomi]

On 10/04/2008, at 4.03, Jonathan S. Shapiro wrote:

>I'm hitting a debugging annoyance.
>
>In UNIX, processes are constructed from files, and the system can tell
>you the binary file name. This is surprisingly useful, since you know
>what to go disassemble when something goes wrong.
>
>In EROS, I used a slot in the process state for a short string to serve
>the same purpose. Actually, I initially had EROS mkimage emit a "map"
>file for me, but it was much more convenient to just stick a short
>string into the process state that the kernel could print out when
>something went wrong.
>
>This is mostly a bootstrap issue. Once you get far enough to have a
>debugger, the need for this largely disappears.
>
>In Coyotos, I can basically take two approaches here:
>
>  1. Introduce a grand fallback keeper. All of the primal processes
>     will specify this fallback process as their keeper. The fallback
>     process has a (statically constructed) list of process name
>     strings. When a primal process dies, it does a printf telling
>     us what happened.
>
>  2. Add space in the process structure for an 8 byte string or so
>     that the kernel can print.


 A small set of tools might want to read the process name (process status,
various system monitors).


val