A question about a word "userland"

Josef El-Rayes j.el-rayes at daemon.li
Fri Dec 19 14:20:59 UTC 2003


Ken Smith <kensmith at cse.Buffalo.EDU> wrote:
> Anything that is not built into the kernel and is not a loadable
> kernel module is "userland".

i would have said that everything that runs in
kernel memory space belongs to the kernel
and the rest is userland.

not all devdrivers are kernel, x11 for example
(the graphic card device drivers do run in userspacememory).

additionally there is a distinction between what
is written by freebsd (userland, i.e. the base system, except contrib software like bind) and
what is 3rd party software (ports).

i think you could also say, everthing that is in ${BASE}/src is userland except ${BASE}/src/sys and ${BASE}/ports is 3rd party (in the cvs tree). 

i hope i could help and did not get too far away from reality :) 

-josef



More information about the freebsd-doc mailing list