Solaris™ Internals: Core Kernel Components

4.3. Kernel Module Loading and Linking

Much of the kernel architecture is layered architecture, and many of the kernel's major subsystems call into a common set of lower-level services. In some respects, the kernel architecture is similar to that of a client/server application, except that the interfaces in this case are, for the most part, private to the kernel. That is, many of the callable routines are not public interfaces available for use for general application software development. The other obvious distinction is that the users of the services, or clients, in this context, are other kernel subsystems, as opposed to application code. Exceptions to the private interface generalization are those interfaces defined for device drivers and ...