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Responsibilities of the Loader

one of the essential stages in the process of starting a program, loading programs, that is, starting up programs by reading the contents of executable files (executables- files containing program text) into memory, then carrying out other required preparatory tasks, after which the program code is finally allowed to run and is started when the operating system passes control to the loaded program code.

All operating systems that support program loading have loaders, apart from systems where code executes directly from ROM or in the case of highly specialized computer systems that only a fixed set of specialised programs.

Historically the loader routine was permanently resident in main memory, although some operating systems that support virtual memory may allow the loader to be located in a region of memory that is pageable.

In the case of operating systems that support virtual memory, the loader may not actually copy the contents of executable files into memory, but rather may simply declare to the virtual memory subsystem indicate that there is a mapping between a region of memory allocated to contain the running program's code and the contents of the associated executable file. (See memory-mapped file.) The virtual memory subsystem is then be made aware that pages with that region of memory need to be filled on demand if and when program execution actually hits those areas of unfilled memory. This may mean parts of a program's code are not actually copied into memory until they are actually used, and unused code may never be loaded into memory at all.

Responsibilities

In Unix, the loader is the handler for the system call execve().^[3] The Unix loader's tasks include:

1. validation (permissions, memory requirements etc.);
2. copying the program image from the disk into main memory;
3. copying the command-line arguments on the stack;
4. initializing registers (e.g., the stack pointer);
5. jumping to the program entry point (_start).

See also

• Library (computing)
• Linker (computing)
• Prebinding

References

History

Ferdinand Feghoot

This storytelling model apparently originated in a long running series of short science fiction pieces that appeared under the collective title "Through Time and Space with Ferdinand Feghoot", published in various magazines over several decades, written by Reginald Bretnor under the anagrammatic pseudonym of Grendel Briarton. The usual formulae the stories followed were for the title character to solve a problem bedeviling some manner of being or extricate himself from a dangerous situation. The events could take place all over the galaxy and in various historical periods on Earth and elsewhere. In his adventures, Feghoot worked for the Society for the Aesthetic Re-Arrangement of History and traveled via a device that had no name but was typographically represented as the ")(". The pieces were usually vignettes only a few paragraphs long, and always ended with a deliberately terrible pun that was often based on a well-known title or catch-phrase.

"Through Time and Space with Ferdinand Feghoot" was originally published in the magazine Fantasy and Science Fiction from 1956 to 1973. (In 1973, the magazine ran a contest soliciting readers' Feghoots as entries.) The series also appeared in Fantasy and Science Fiction's sister magazine Venture Science Fiction Magazine, and later in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, Amazing Stories, and other publications. The individual pieces were identified by Roman numerals rather than titles. The stories have been collected in several editions, each an expanded version of the previous, the most recent being The Collected Feghoot from Pulphouse Publishing.

Many of the ideas and puns for Bretnor's stories were contributed by others, including F. M. Busby and E. Nelson Bridwell. Other authors have published Feghoots written on their own, including Isaac Asimov (who wrote a story that ended "A niche in time saves Stein") and John Brunner. There have been numerous fan-produced stories as well.

Other Story Puns

In 1962, Amazing Stories published "Through Time and Space with Benedict Breadfruit" by Grandall Barretton (Randall Garrett), which all ended in a pun on the name of a famous SF writer. One example of a Feghoot is the "Forty million Frenchmen" gag ("For DeMille, young fur-henchmen...") on page 559 of Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow.

The Callahan's Bar series by Spider Robinson uses "some of the worst puns known to man.... building up to the anticipated pun with skill and flair."^[2]

References

• Briarton, Grendel (1980). The (Even More) Compleat Feghoot, Manchester: The Mirage Press, LTD. ISBN 0-88358-022-5.

[[Category:Characters in written science fiction]] [[Category:Science fiction genres]] [[Category:Science fiction short stories]] [[Category:Short story types]] [[Category:Word play]] [[Category:Humor]]

Cherwell

Clive Labovitch was editor of the Oxford University student newspaper Cherwell in 1951, was regarded by some as 'the enterprising Oxonian who turned the sleepy Cherwell into a lively undergraduate tabloid'^[1].

Cornmarket Press

Labovitch remained involved with Cherwell after graduation and became a friend of Michael Heseltine who as President of the Oxford Union in 1954 'rented him a shed in the grounds of the union'^[2] (in Frewin Court, off Cornmarket) where Labovitch started his publishing business. In 1957 he acquired a publication called Oxford University What's What, containing a 40-page section of 'Opportunitities for Graduates' which Heseltine suggested should be expanded and distributed nationally to all University students in their final year. Labovitch and Heseltine became partners and the first Directory of Opportunities for Graduates was published in 1957. Simon Tindall (later to become managing director of Haymarket) joined them in 1959 and recalls Labovitch as "gentle and academic, a nice man".^[2]

Cornmarket purchased its first magazine Man About Town from the publishers of Tailor and Cutter in either 1959^[3] or 1960^[4] and "Clive [Labovitch] recruited a team that was to turn this tatty quarterly into a glossy monthly for men"^[5], which their subsidiary Fame Magazine Ltd relaunched as about town in Spring 1960. It was renamed again in July 1962, becoming simply Town^[6].

During this period Philip Kogan (founder of Kogan Page Ltd) joined Cornmarket as Publishing Director. He describes Labovitch as "a remarkable entrepreneur" amd "a man who was fecund — probably too fecund — of publishing ideas, but short of notions on management and financial control"^[7].

"I knew for a fact that this magazine was going to fold. And I thought to myself, 'I cannot destroy this young man's career by letting him be associated with this one-way ticket to disaster… so I turned him down'." 24 October 2003 Dog watches Dog - Why Hezza gave Tel the brush-off Press Gazette http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=28426&sectioncode=1

http://www.publishingnews.co.uk/pnarchive/display.asp?K=e2007053112071400&st_01=labovitch&pl=10&fields=default&sort=date%2Fd&sf_01=KEYWORD&stem=false&sf_03=type&sf_02=date&m=1&dc=2 Forty years on... 25/May/2007 Publishing News Archive

“It never made money, but it made our reputation,” Tarzan swings to new heights The Sunday Times October 28, 2007 James Ashton http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/media/article2752051.ece

n 1960 he appointed me editor of Town magazine, which he owned jointly with Clive Labovitch (`a kind, gentle man whom I trusted implicitly'). http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3724/is_200009/ai_n8916053 Boy's own story Spectator, The, Sep 16, 2000 by Hughes, David David Hughes LIFE IN THE JUNGLE: MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY by Michale Heseltine Hoddler, L20, pp. 560

http://www.vinmag.com/online/gbu0-display/town.html

Haymarket Publishing

Town made little money, it was a high profile title in swinging-sixties Britain and attracted the attention of Geoffrey Crowther, then chairman of printers Hazell Watson & Viney. He proposed a joint company, and bought a 40% stake in Cornmarket, which was renamed Haymarket.

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