12.1 KERNEL TYPES

All systems allow you to provide the kernel with explicit information about the hardware it should expect to find on your system (or pretend not to find, as the case may be). Some kernels can also prospect for devices on their own.

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Solaris uses an almost completely modular kernel, and it can load device drivers as they are needed. You do not need to tell Solaris ahead of time what hardware is on the system, thanks largely to Sun’s well-defined (compared with a PC), proprietary hardware architecture. When Solaris finds a new device connected to the system, it looks for and loads a corresponding driver module. Surprisingly, ...

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