Erlang OS

[Thierry Mallard]

On Wed, Feb 28, 2001 at 09:27:26PM +0100, Vlad Dumitrescu wrote:
> Hi all!
> 
> I was reading again through the Erlang book, and got to the OS chapter. And
> I started wondering... what if there was an ErlangOS? 

Since a few weeks now, I was considering something like this too. I think one
first step could be to build, on top of a classical GNU/Linux distribution,
specific services that would replace existing one. Namely, I'm thinking about
inetd.

This service, as you probably know, is responsible for the launch of TCP
services corresponding to specific ports, and with some security checks. For
example, when someone connects to port 80, inetd launches a httpd process after
having checked the rights of the client. Ok, that's not the best example,
since Apache is most oftently used as standalone ;-)... but you get the point.

So now I wondered if we could replace inetd by an Erlang written one. But
this one would launch Erlang processes instead of binary programs.
Some typical services do have prototypes, like Inets for httpd if i'm not
mistaken.

One specific feature of this Erlang version could be distribution of the
processes, with load balancing, but that has to be more deeply considered. In
fact i was thinking of reusing Eddie as a base for this Erlang INetd.

Mickael Remond and I did start to write a IRC bot in Erlang
(manderlbot.sourceforge.net). We were aiming to write a minimal IRC server
within this project too, first as a proxy, but then of course as a real IRC
server. This could be a second INetD services ;-)

The only point that makes me hesitate is performance. But i'm still not
familiar enough with this domain to speak of it.

Ok i'll stop here my dream for the moment. I have begun to write an article
for the new-born erlang-fr.org website, with english translation
simultaneously, but i've still work to do on it. So i'd better get back to
it...


Best regards to you all    :-)

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