New Release of MINIX 3 For x86 and ARM Is NetBSD Compatible

An anonymous reader writes MINIX 3 is a small POSIX-compliant operating system aimed at high reliability (embedded) applications. A major new version of MINIX 3 (3.3.0) is now available for download at www.minix3.org. In addition to the x86, the ARM Cortex A8 is now supported, with ports to the BeagleBoard and BeagleBones available. Finally, the entire userland has been redone in 3.3.0 to make it NetBSD compatible, with thousands of NetBSD packages available out of the box. MINIX 3 is based on a tiny (13 KLoC) microkernel with the operating system running as a set of protected user-mode processes. Each device driver is also a separate process. If a driver fails, it is automatically and transparently restarted without rebooting and without applications even noticing, making the system self-healing. The full announcement, with links to the release notes and notes on installation, can be found at the Minix Google Groups page.

Comments

Re:Drivers as processes?

[bluefoxlucid]

The file system write or read request doesn't return anything, the driver is detected as dead (heartbeat?), it's killed, resurrected, journals are replayed, and the request is resubmitted to the FS driver.

It'll work. The program might notice a small pause, as if the disk was busy or the kernel yielded schedule to an interrupt handler.