Miscellaneous functionality not belonging to other packages. This package implements some functionality which doesn't fit into other packages, mainly to support some features of a C library and to support some features of the L4 microkernel: - programming of the Local APIC of x86 processors (PPro+) - using the time stamp counter of x86 processors (Pentium+) - using the performance counters of x86 processors (Pentium+) - atomic operations (compare and exchange) - bit and bit field manipulation operations - x86 port I/O (in/out) - x86 cli/sti, irq_acknowledge for the fully special nested mode - comfortable parsing of command line arguments - a simple random number generator - touching memory to preclude later pagefaults - a very simple lock implementation (better use the L4env lock package) - a simple function for creating threads (better use the L4env thread package) - etc.