From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net> In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 15 Aug 2012 16:17:28 EDT." References: <20120803171847.GA2720@polynum.com> <501D12A1.1060906@yahoo.fr> <20120804152016.GB433@polynum.com> <20120805173639.GA395@polynum.com> <20120815173327.GA424@polynum.com> <20120815200949.4628BB85B@mail.bitblocks.com> Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2012 14:00:03 -0700 From: Bakul Shah Message-Id: <20120815210003.25E16B827@mail.bitblocks.com> Subject: Re: [9fans] Multi-dimensional filesystem Topicbox-Message-UUID: a9c801b6-ead7-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 On Wed, 15 Aug 2012 16:17:28 EDT erik quanstrom wrote: > > x = open("a/b/c", mode) > > > > can yield a vector of file descriptors! Leaving component > > interpretation to the current node makes this a very dynamic > > and powerful system (for example, one can think of a node that > > maps to a list of network nodes -- so something like > > > > echo "date" > /net/my-nodes/foo > > chmod +x /net/my-nodes/foo > > /net/my-nodes/foo > > one would think that a distributing file server would be > a better abstraction as the normal tools could be brought > to bear on the problem. I was just exploring the APLish nature of the idea. I used shell syntax to get the idea across -- here my-nodes would map to a set of fileserver nodes that interpret the remaining path so this path actually maps to a whole bunch of files. No idea if this is better, worse or even sensible. There are some graph languages that could possibly map here. What is a "distributing" file server? If you mean something like cxfs, luster, glusterfs, ceph, etc they wouldn't do the same thing. The above would in fact be kind of a distributed filesystem!