Книга: Distributed operating systems

9.4.1.Messages

9.4.1.Messages

Each message contains a header (for the microkernel's internal use only), an optional fixed part and an optional body. The header identifies the source and destination and contains various protection identifiers and flags. The fixed part, if present, is always 64 bytes long and is entirely under user control. The body is variable sized, with a maximum of 64K bytes, and also entirely under user control. From the kernel's point of view, both the fixed part and the body are untyped byte arrays in the sense that the kernel does not care what is in them.

When a message is sent to a thread on a different machine, it is always copied. However, when it is sent to a thread on the same machine, there is a choice between actually copying it and just mapping it into the receiver's address space. In the latter case, if the receiver writes onto a mapped page, a genuine copy is made on the spot (i.e., Mach's copy-on-write mechanism). When a message is not an integral number of pages but the message is mapped, some data just beyond the buffer (or before it) will be lost when the final (or first) page is mapped in.

Another form of message is the minimessage, which is only used between kernel processes for short synchronization messages, typically to signal the occurrence of an interrupt. The minimessages are sent to special low-overhead miniports.

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