Re: asmtools - Unix commands in assembler

From: Michele Andreoli (m.andreoli@tin.it)
Date: Wed Mar 08 2000 - 19:08:40 CET


On Wed, Mar 08, 2000 at 04:49:19PM +0100, Martin_Doering@mn.man.de nicely wrote:
> Hi!
>
> Could this be an interesting alternative to scripting? Look at all these
> re-implemented tools:
>
> http://linuxassembly.org/asmutils.html
>
> What's it all about?

In the past I looked to asmutils, thanks to suggestion got from the
old muLinux mailing-list. I do not remember my personal conclusion about
them, but never really planned an usage in muLinux. This kind of
code requires additional knowledge and final result do not pay back
the effort employed.

In the past, I entertained another project, related to small linux
installation: to implement UNIX basic commands using kernel modules!

For example: in the kernel there is a routine for gzip; kernel uses
it for unpack the root.gz ramdisk images. Why do not write a kernel
module called gzip.o which, using /proc interface, re-use the code
for user-space gzipping? It is enough to create two file, let me
call /proc/gzip-in and /proc/gzip-out. Using a script, you can "cat"
the compressed file in /proc/gzip-in, and get the output in /proc/gzip-out.

Kernel modules are smalls, because they are not linked with C
libraries and surely this kind of programming is VERY useful to
learn a lot about Linux kernel programming.

To check what class of UNIX commands can be implemented in this way
is only matter of imagination.

Michele

-- 
I'd like to conclude with a positive statement, but I can't 
remember any. Would two negative ones do?       -- Woody Allen
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