/share/doc/psd/21.ipc/1.t

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 32.\"	@(#)1.t	8.1 (Berkeley) 8/14/93
 33.\"
 34.\".ds LH "4.4BSD IPC Primer
 35.\".ds RH Introduction
 36.\".ds RF "Leffler/Fabry/Joy
 37.\".ds LF "\*(DY
 38.\".ds CF "
 39.nr H1 1
 40.LP
 41.bp
 42.LG
 43.B
 44.ce
 451. INTRODUCTION
 46.sp 2
 47.R
 48.NL
 49One of the most important additions to UNIX in 4.2BSD was interprocess
 50communication.
 51These facilities were the result of
 52more than two years of discussion and research.  The facilities
 53provided in 4.2BSD incorporated many of the ideas from current
 54research, while trying to maintain the UNIX philosophy of
 55simplicity and conciseness.
 56The 4.3BSD release of Berkeley UNIX
 57improved upon some of the IPC facilities
 58while providing an upward-compatible interface.
 594.4BSD adds support for ISO protocols and IP multicasting.
 60The BSD interprocess communication
 61facilities have become a defacto standard for UNIX.
 62.PP
 63UNIX has previously been very weak in the area of interprocess
 64communication.  Prior to the 4BSD facilities, the only
 65standard mechanism which allowed two processes to communicate were
 66pipes (the mpx files which were part of Version 7 were
 67experimental).  Unfortunately, pipes are very restrictive
 68in that
 69the two communicating processes must be related through a
 70common ancestor.
 71Further, the semantics of pipes makes them almost impossible
 72to maintain in a distributed environment. 
 73.PP
 74Earlier attempts at extending the IPC facilities of UNIX have
 75met with mixed reaction.  The majority of the problems have
 76been related to the fact that these facilities have been tied to
 77the UNIX file system, either through naming or implementation.
 78Consequently, the IPC facilities provided in 4.2BSD were
 79designed as a totally independent subsystem.  The BSD IPC
 80allows processes to rendezvous in many ways. 
 81Processes may rendezvous through a UNIX file system-like
 82name space (a space where all names are path names)
 83as well as through a
 84network name space.  In fact, new name spaces may
 85be added at a future time with only minor changes visible
 86to users.  Further, the communication facilities 
 87have been extended to include more than the simple byte stream
 88provided by a pipe.  These extensions have resulted
 89in a completely new part of the system which users will need
 90time to familiarize themselves with.  It is likely that as
 91more use is made of these facilities they will be refined;
 92only time will tell.
 93.PP
 94This document provides a high-level description
 95of the IPC facilities in 4.4BSD and their use.
 96It is designed to complement the manual pages for the IPC primitives
 97by examples of their use.
 98The remainder of this document is organized in four sections.  
 99Section 2 introduces the IPC-related system calls and the basic model
100of communication.  Section 3 describes some of the supporting
101library routines users may find useful in constructing distributed
102applications.  Section 4 is concerned with the client/server model
103used in developing applications and includes examples of the
104two major types of servers.  Section 5 delves into advanced topics
105which sophisticated users are likely to encounter when using
106the IPC facilities.