This involves renaming the descriptor_from_fd function to the more appropriately named
open_descriptor_from_fd (since we check if the descriptor was opened and error out otherwise),
and creating a new function that does not verify that the file descriptor was opened.
That was a very old one from back in the old days. Now that the framebuffer is finally a device file,
and it can be memory-mapped by user programs for more performance,
this syscall is MORE than obsolete.
Some pages, such as framebuffer pages, are not physical memory frames reserved for the current process.
Some, such as the framebuffer, may be shared between all processes.
Yet, on exit() or on exec(), a process frees all frames mapped into its address spaces.
And on fork(), it copies all data between frames. So how could we map framebuffers.
Simple: we use one of the bits in page table entries which are available to the OS, and mark whether that page is owned by the current process.
If it is owned, it will be:
- Freed on address space destruction
- Its data will be copied to a new page owned by the child process on fork()
If it is not owned, it will be:
- Left alone on address space destruction
- On fork(), the child's virtual page will be mapped to the same physical frame as the parent
This still needs a bit more work, such as keeping a reference of how many processes use a page to free it when all processes using it exit/exec.
This should be done for MAP_SHARED mappings, for example, since they are not permanent forever,
unlike the framebuffer for example.
Not part of C or POSIX, but since there is no procfs right now, I thought it would be nice to have an interface to query process information.
It works like this: you pass the process ID and a pointer to a struct pstat (can be null).
If the process ID is -1, the kernel picks the process with the highest PID.
Then, if the pointer to a pstat struct is not null, the kernel fills it in with the process's information, and returns the process's PID.
